Utilizing Lean Thinking as a Means to Digital Transformation in Service Organizations

Abstract

Digital transformation (DT) is gaining interest and changing citizens’ expectations of service organizations’ ability to deliver high-value, real-time digital services. However, from an organizational perspective, DT entails a continuum of transitions that emphasize cultural, organizational, processual and relational changes. Over the past few decades, Lean thinking has been a dominant part of many organizational philosophies and proven to be an important enabler, to cater for the aforementioned changes. With its focus on reducing organizational complexity and increasing value for the end-user, it can support DT through its systematized utilization of methods and tools for improvement. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the use of Lean thinking to develop and enhance service processes and its contributing effect to enable DT in service organizations. Accordingly, a conceptual process for Lean digital transformation (LDT) is developed and discussed. In order to test the developed LDT process, action research was conducted in a sales and service organization in Norway, where an after-sales process was selected for current-state analysis. The conducted study resulted in the development and commercialization of a software system, which has been licensed and implemented by approximately 100 users within a year. The findings of this study reveal a great improvement and innovation potential in utilizing Lean thinking to enable and drive DT.