Sustained competitive advantage using business entities (SCUBE): A practical approach for business agility

Abstract

Enterprises competing in today's highly dynamic business environment aim at achieving Sustained Competitive Advantage (SCA) as defined by Barney. In this paper, we present an operational method and the protocol for its application for realizing SCA through Business Entity analysis. Business entity-centric modeling has been a successful approach in rethinking and revolutionizing business operations, in a number of engagements. Our method provides a path from SCAgenerating strategies to Business Operations and Business Entities. Our approach leverages key constructs from OMG's Business Motivation Model (BMM) and emphasizes the analysis of Influencers - factors that have the capability to impact an enterprise's strategies that generate SCA. Further, these strategies are used to formulate Business Operations that can be defined by Business Entities. IT applications can be generated from the Business Entities using Model-Driven Architecture. Therefore, these discovered Business Entities actually provide a valid scope for innovating Business Operations and developing IT applications that result in SCA for the business.