It’s been over a year since I’ve started working on analyzing the situation of large corporations, like banks and insurances, that have difficulties in identifying the impact that changes on business processes have on their enterprise systems. The main difference in my PhD strategy is that we take the user interface perspective. One of the questions I answer is: Which user interfaces of these enterprise systems should be updated after changes are done on their business processes?

Why adopt this perspective, when there are already several solutions for Business-IT alignment? There has been a new wave in business models that value innovation as a driver for business growth. For that to be achieved, one of the pillars of innovation in business is to consider one consumer experience at a time. And where is most of that “consumer experience” taking place nowadays? It happens online, such as when we consult our account balance in our Internet banking.

So, I sustain that user interaction represents a rich source for business value! That’s why I support business alignment with user interfaces. There is a long way to go to make this perspective part of the executive agenda.

To learn more about what I mean by that, you can access Wikipedia, which already has an entry on this new and exciting subject with a link to one of our major publications, related to the subject Process-centered design.