A CROSS INDUSTRY EVALUATION OF CRITICAL SUCCESS
FACTORS FOR ALIGNMENT OF STRATEGY AND BUSINESS
PROCESSES
A Case Study of SMEs in the Region of Jönköping in Sweden
Marie Noel Eyenga Ondoa, Farnaz Ansari Djafari
Department of Information Engineering, Jönköping University, Jönköping, Sweden
Ulf Seigerroth
Department of Information Engineering, Jönköping University, Jönköping, Sweden
Keywords: Strategy and IT alignment, Business processes, Strategy, Information technology, Business Process
Management, SME.
Abstract: The challenges in the global economy have forced companies to rethink the way they operate and their
relations with both customers and subcontractors. To remain competitive, companies need to align their
business processes with the firm’s strategy and make a strategic use of information technology. This paper
addresses one of the important issues in business process management field as well as strategic alignment
that is, how do we create and sustain alignment between business processes and strategy? The authors have
performed a literature review in order to analyse the challenges and critical success factors in process
management and business and IT alignment. The results of that investigation are the basis for developing
the approach that is advocated in this paper. Four case studies have been conducted in the area of Jönköping
in order to test the validity of the approach in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). The results show that
SMEs continuously put efforts to maintain alignment between their business processes and strategy by
means of Information Technology. They usually consider people, management, IT/IS and organisational
culture as most important in order to create alignment between strategy and business processes.
Organisational structure and performance measurement tend to be less important.
1 INTRODUCTION
To remain competitive in today’s economy and
society enterprises need to align their business
processes with strategies and use the leverage
potential in information technology. Enterprises are
operating in an imbalanced and conflicting
environment. Competition within and between
industries is threatening previously well-established
market segments. The risk that customers substitute
former well-established products is higher than ever
before (Vernadat, 2002). Information technology has
also evolved and new technologies like Internet
provide new market places and new opportunities to
reach customers. Moreover, customers are now
aware of the quality and the price of goods
(Vernadat, 2002). It is vital for enterprises to deliver
the right product to the right customer at the right
time. In addition, companies must reduce their time-
to-market in order to remain competitive.
One way of surviving in this situation (illustrated
by the “Quality-Cost-Delay” paradigm (Vernadat,
2002)) is to better manage business processes
(Business Process Management) and make a
strategic use of Information Technology (Harmon,
2009). To ensure good performance, business
processes need to be aligned with business
strategies. The rationale behind this idea is that
business processes can help an organization to
achieve efficiency and effectiveness in its business
operations, when properly designed (Grover &
Otim, 2009).
Although the strategic impact of business process
has been widely discussed, most reviews of business
338
Noel Eyenga Ondoa M., Ansari Djafari F. and Seigerroth U..
A CROSS INDUSTRY EVALUATION OF CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS FOR ALIGNMENT OF STRATEGY AND BUSINESS PROCESSES - A Case
Study of SMEs in the Region of Jönköping in Sweden.
DOI: 10.5220/0003468303380347
In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS-2011), pages 338-347
ISBN: 978-989-8425-56-0
Copyright
c
 2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

process related projects indicate that as many as 60
to 80% of those initiatives have resulted in
breakdown (Kettinger & Teng, 1998; Abdolvand,
Albadvi, & Ferdowsi, 2008; Karim, Somers, &
Bhattacherjee, 2007; Macintosh & Maclean, 1999).
Besides, there is no approved strategic oriented
approach that explicitly links business strategy with
business process (Trienekens, Bouman &
VanDerZwan, 2004). This is the main opening in
this paper in terms of aspects that need to be
addressed for aligning business processes with
strategy.
The main research question in this paper is, what
are the critical success factors for alignment
between business process and strategy?
The purpose of this paper is to present a
framework with a number of critical success factors
that can be used as support during development and
alignment work.
The paper proceeds as follows. First we will
present the research method detailing how the
framework was developed, validated, and refined. In
the next section we will present related research
together with the initial version of the framework. In
the following section we present the empirical
validation of the framework. Based on this the next
section elaborates on refinements of the framework
with adherent critical success factors. In the final
section we draw some conclusions based on this
work and also give an outlook for the future.
2 RESEARCH METHOD
With regards to the wide area of business and IT
alignment, we put emphasis on building up our mind
and restrict our scope to the strategic alignment of
business processes with strategy. Attention here has
been to get a broader understanding of strategic
alignment of business processes and strategy. The
main challenge in this chapter is to formalise the
following salient points, which summarise
information gathered from literature review:
• The importance of business processes in
business and IT alignment.
• The developments in strategic management
research which address aligning strategy
and its execution
• The challenges and critical success factors
in business and IT alignment, process ma-
nagement (business process management
(BPM), business process improvement
(BPI), business process reengineering
(BPR)).
This means firstly that the problem will be
positioned and motivated within the framework of
business and IT alignment. Secondly, developments
in strategy as well as business process will be
investigated under the alignment scope.
Basically the research method is divided in three
main stages. These stages consist of 1) development
of an initial framework, 2) collection and
documentation of empirical data, and finally 3)
validation and discussion about the suggested
framework.
2.1 Development of the Initial
Framework
This research is the result of a qualitative and
exploratory analysis. Since this paper tries to answer
“WHAT” questions it therefore adopts an
exploratory approach in order to detect critical
success factors (CSF) for alignment of business
process and strategy (Ghauri & Gronhaug, 2005). As
this research build on existing knowledge (all
information from literature review which help to
narrow down to specific part of conclusion to
represent an approach for aligning strategy with
business process) we have applied deductive
reasoning. Principally, literature review helps to
examine the challenges and critical success factors
in BPM and business and IT alignment.
Examining and summarizing successful BPM
cases and the factors for strategic BPM have been
discussed in various papers by scholars, which are
the basic of this approach. Al-Mashari & Zairi
(1999) in the paper “BPR implementation process”,
Kettinger & Teng (1998) in “Aligning BPR to
Strategy: a Framework for Analysis”, Kettinger &
Grover (1995) in “Towards a Theory of Business
Process Change Management”, Cheng and Chiu
(2008), Trkman (2010), and Luftman, Papp & Brier
(1999) in “Enablers and Inhibitors of business-IT
alignment” have discussed and analysed key factors
for success and failure.
2.2 Collection and Documentation of
Empirical Data
The goal of the empirical case study is to validate
the theoretical approach for CSF in SMEs.
According to Yin (1988), evidence for case study
may come from different sources such as
documents, archive records, interviews, direct
observation or physical artefacts. Focused interview
as an essential source of case study evidence, has
been selected for this research.
A CROSS INDUSTRY EVALUATION OF CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS FOR ALIGNMENT OF STRATEGY AND
BUSINESS PROCESSES - A Case Study of SMEs in the Region of Jönköping in Sweden
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The wide area of business process alignments does
not allow generalizing the results based on one type
of industry. Consequently the companies that are
subjects of this report have evolved in different
industries ranging from banking, retailing,
production and engineering. Reader can find the four
studies (interviews) of process and strategy
alignment in SMEs that are analysed in this report.
The most important criteria to select the cases were:
• They belong to various industries; the idea
is to widen the extent of generalisation
• They have an experience in process
improvement.
• They make use of information technology
to manage their business activities.
• The interviewee must have a position in the
organization, which involves them in both
business strategy formulation and business
process improvement
2.3 Validation and Discussion about
the Framework
Scholars state that a proposition is a theoretical
guide for case study analysis (Yin, 1988). In this
report the theoretical proposition, which is “all
aspects in our methodological approach shall be
addressed to create alignment between business
processes and strategy”, has shaped the data
collection plan. Yin (1988) advocates that analysis
must follow cross-experiment rather than within-
experiment design and logic. Therefore this paper
performed a cross-case analysis in which the
relevance of each alignment factor is discussed.
The steps in analysis could be formalized as
follows:
1. The cases descriptions are grounded in the
theoretical approach. This means that the cases are
described under the frame of the approach.
2. There is a need to examine each factor in
order to see how important it is for SMEs.
3 TOWARDS A FRAMEWORK
WITH CRITICAL SUCCESS
FACTORS
Strategic alignment of business processes refers to
the idea that the organisation should create
consistency between strategy and business
processes. Hence a strategic alignment of business
processes provides the company with four specific
advantages: (1) a shorter time-to-market, (2) lower
cost advantage, (3) high quality product, and (4)
improved customer satisfaction (Cleveland, 2006;
Kettinger & Teng, 1998; Garvin, 1995).
In this section we first discuss the need for
aligning business processes with strategy. Then we
define a theoretical framework based on proposed
critical success factors for aligning business
processes with strategy.
3.1 The Need for an Approach for
Strategic Alignment of Business
Processes
The need to create a link between business processes
and strategy has been widely discussed in the
research literature (Trienekens et al., 2004). Most
reviews of business process related projects say that
as many as 60 to 80% of those initiatives have failed
(Kettinger & Teng, 1998; Abdolvand, Albadvi, &
Ferdowsi, 2008; Karim et al., 2007; Macintosh and
Maclean, 1999).
And when analysing success factors of those
business process initiatives, it appears that keys
factors for a successful process change program are
the effort range in depth and more importantly, the
strategic impact. The lack of connectivity between
business strategy and business processes endeavours
is the main reason for failure (Trkman, 2010; Lee &
Dale, 1998).
In fact, alignment of business processes with
strategy is double-edge sword, on one hand business
strategy can be the anchor for aligning business
processes (the strategy execution perspective of
Strategic Alignment Model (Henderson &
Venkatraman, 1993)), and on the other business
processes can serve as base for a new strategy. For
instance, the organization cannot focus on
everything; otherwise it will be stuck in the middle
(Porter, 1980). Thus, it is important for the
organization to align the day-to-day activities it
performs (business processes) with its strategy in
order to stay competitive. Besides, “by significantly
improving a firm’s operating capabilities, Business
Process Reengineering allows the implementation of
new strategies and, even more importantly, leads to
envisioning of entire new strategy options”
(Kettinger & Teng, 1998). Since awareness of the
strategic impact of business process change is a
critical success factor, business processes need to be
aligned with strategy.
Unless researchers agree on the alignment
requirement, there are not enough approaches
aiming at clarifying how to achieve it in an
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organization. Approaches for process improvement
usually lack business orientation (Trienekens et al.,
2004). Indeed Trienekens et al. (2004) argues
“although Capability Maturity Model (CMM)
prescribes different types of processes and the
application of metrics in process improvement, it
lacks well-defined improvement goals at a business
level”. Besides, the approach designed by Neiger &
Churilov (2003) is powerful in identifying and
decomposing different types of organization
objectives; respectively fundamental objectives,
process objectives and functional objectives
(Trienekens et al., 2004). Nevertheless, “a direct link
of business goals with business processes is not
elaborated” (Trienekens et al., 2004).
Business improvement approaches, like Six-
sigma and the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) from
Kaplan and Norton, provide a path for
organizational enhancement “starting from business
strategy, predefined types of business goals and
predefined types of metrics. However, the link with
operational process is missing” (Trienekens et al.,
2004).
Based on those evidences, we can conclude that
a strategic oriented approach that explicitly link
business strategy with business process is still a gap
in the research area. The problem has been studied
by Trienekens et al. (2004) in the case study at
“Thales Naval the Netherland” (TNNL); but
alternative approaches need to be investigated and
defined.
3.2 Critical Success Factors for
Aligning Business Process with
Strategy
A mean of understanding how organizations can
achieve successful alignment between business
processes and strategy is to identify the constituents
of alignment. Using an analysis of relevant literature
in Business Processes Management (BPM) (which
includes BPM, Business Process Re-engineering,
Business Process Redesign, and Business Process
Improvement, Business Process Change), eight
factors have been proposed namely, 1) Strategy, 2)
Business processes, 3) Management commitment
and support, 4) People or human factors, 5)
Organisational culture, 6) Organisational structure,
7) Information technology, 8) Performance
measurement (Al-Mashari & Zairi, 1999; Cheng &
Chiu, 2008; Trkman, 2010; Armistead, Pritchard, &
Machin, Armistead et al., 1999 ; Kettinger & Teng,
1998; Trienekens et al., 2004; Kettinger & Grover,
1995; Garvin, 1995). These factors have been
discussed by scholars who have identified the
barriers and consequently also the factors of success
and failures in BPR initiatives. So then, the eight
factors create our research model and each of them
is discussed below.
3.2.1 Strategy
Strategy is the basis for business process alignment
under which all alignment aspects shall be viewed.
In fact strategy should be used to select the
processes that an organisation will improve
(Kettinger & Teng, 1998; Garvin, 1995). Garvin
(1995) argues, “You cannot redesign processes
unless you know what you are trying to do”. You
should “review strategic direction by looking at the
competition, then figure out how to organize in order
to achieve the new goals”. Thus, the activities in the
company’s value chain should be tailored to the
organisational strategy so that the company will
obtain a competitive advantage (Porter, 1985).
Strategy should also drive performance
measurement (Garvin, 1995). It should support
selecting which parts of the business processes need
to be automated, in which activities Information
Technology could have the most important value,
and how the organisation structure should evolve, to
what extent management system, values, should be
improved to fit business processes.
3.2.2 Business Processes
Business processes are the crystal, which links
together people, management, IT, organisational
culture, and organisational structure. Business
processes ensure that people are working together to
meet company’s goals (Garvin, 1995). When the
processes are reliable, repeatable, and in control
(Garvin, 1995), they also provide requirement for an
effective and efficient IT/IS. In order to keep
alignment with strategy, well-defined processes
should be customer-focused (Porter, 1985; Cheng &
Chiu, 2008). Therefore process redesign must have a
direct impact on customer value and cost (Cheng
and Chiu, 2008). Basically processes should have
“measurement and feedback controls close to the
points at which the activities are performed” (Cheng
& Chiu, 2008).
3.2.3 Management Support and
Commitment
Kettinger & Teng (1998) argue that management
systems, styles, values and measurements should
support the improvement of process efficiency
A CROSS INDUSTRY EVALUATION OF CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS FOR ALIGNMENT OF STRATEGY AND
BUSINESS PROCESSES - A Case Study of SMEs in the Region of Jönköping in Sweden
341

(minimizing the resource needed) and effectiveness
(producing the desire results). Effective business
process implementation requires top management’s
support and commitment (Harrington, 1991; Diaz &
Sligo, 1997). Top management should have strong
leadership that will enable to diagnose and influence
organisational culture (Kettinger & Grover, 1995),
in order to break resistance and status quo. Process
management requires more soft skills and
communication skills (Garvin, 1995) than
bureaucratic management. Many scholars strongly
advocate the need to create a balance between
functional and cross-functional teams. Indeed, well-
managed business processes have a process owner -
someone who is held accountable for how well the
processes perform (Harrington, 1991; Garvin, 1995).
3.2.4 People or Human Factors
People or human factors are important in business
processes, since they perform the activities in the
processes. People have various assets like
knowledge, skills, jobs, behaviour, and culture,
which are needed in order to improve process
efficiency and effectiveness (Kettinger & Teng,
1998). Besides people possess loyalty, commitment
to customers and understanding of firm’s culture,
which are fundamental and valuable when an
organisation shifts to new processes (Garvin, 1995).
The shift to new processes may infer job
redefinition. Thus people may need re-skilling,
training (Garvin, 1995). In short people development
is important for alignment. But people could be
resistant to changes in the way they were used to
work.
3.2.5 Organisational Culture
Shifting from a functional orientation to a process
orientation is a difficult cultural change (Harrington,
1991). “Changes in the process implicitly change
company’s culture and behaviour patterns” (Garvin,
1995). It makes the shift to processes so difficult
(Garvin, 1995) since “culture cannot be mandated;
instead, it has to be formed over time through
continual reinforcement” (Garvin, 1995). Finally,
the culture of experimentation is an essential part of
a successful process-oriented organisation. Thus all
participants should be prepared to cope with
mistakes and errors during the process (Armistead et
al., 1999).
3.2.6 Organisational Structure
An organisational structure that provides
mechanisms for accountability and ownership of
strategy formulation is critical for successful
alignment (Broadbent & Weil, 1993; Henderson &
Venkatraman, 1993; Luftman, Papp and Brier,
1999). Furthermore, a formal and clear definition of
jobs and responsibilities is required (Talwar, 1993;
Al-Mashari & Zairi, 1999; Davenport and Short,
1990) because BPM results in a major structural
change in the way people work in the organization.
Cross-functional teams are critical components of
successful alignment of Business Processes with
strategy (Al-Mashari & Zairi, 1999) because
linkages need to be kept among activities in several
functions.
3.2.7 Information Technology
As a process enabler, the information technology is
pervading business processes, thus enabling process
efficiency and effectiveness (Porter, 1985). Indeed,
IT holds information, fastens communication,
provides new ways of making business (Porter,
1985) and helps rethinking how and where processes
intersect (Garvin, 1995). As such IT has a support
function for business processes. The critical aspects
here are: Alignment of IT infrastructure and BPR
strategies, Building effective IT infrastructure,
Adequate IT investment and sourcing decisions,
Increasing IT function competency, Proper
information system integration (Al-Mashari & Zairi,
1999).
3.2.8 Performance Measurement
Henderson and Venkatraman (1993) argue that
strategic alignment is dynamic and “not an event but
a process of continuous adaptation and change”. In
this light the alignment of business processes with
strategy need to be maintained over time by
measuring performance at different levels of the
organization, and for all alignment factors.
Performance measures should be tied to strategy –
measures on strategy, processes and people (Norton
& Kaplan, 1996). Indeed, new Business Processes
must be measured for factors such as time, costs,
productivity, quality and capital, and then compared
to the processes they replaced (Guha & Kettinger,
1993; Armistead et al., 1999).
4 VALIDATION OF SUCCESS
FACTORS
In order to validate the success factors, and to give a
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practical view of business process and strategy in
SMEs we will present four case studies. The earlier
presented alignment factors are elaborated these four
case studies.
4.1 ARKITEKTKOPIA AB
ARKITEKTKOPIA AB is a franchise of the group
ARKITEKTKOPIA. The group was founded in
1951 and has its head office in Stockholm. The two
owners created ARKITEKTKOPIA AB in 1989.
The company is specialized in printing building
drawings for its customer. ARKITEKTKOPIA AB
has widely introduced digital technology in its
business processes around 10 to 15 years ago. A
Customer Relationship Management System helps to
share information about the customers among the 35
franchises in Sweden. ARKITEKTKOPIA AB has
been continuously using information technology to
transform the way the activities are performed in the
organization. Meeting the customer needs is a credo
for ARKITEKTKOPIA AB; the owner argues “We
follow what the customer wants; we listen to our
customers”.
It is very important to ARKITEKTKOPIA AB to
keep the fit between strategy and business processes.
By doing so they improved customer satisfaction,
“customers can go one step further”. Alignment
between strategy and business processes is reducing
costs and the delivery times to customer in
ARKITEKTKOPIA AB. Moreover alignment makes
the quality higher than before.
4.2 Intersport Jönköping-AREA
Intersport Jönköping-AREA is an entrepreneurial
company created in 1988. Intersport Jönköping-A6
has a local vision or strategy adapted to its market.
However the Headquarter in Gothenburg provides
the local store with marketing support. The
information system is not modern and the
Headquarter had planned to launch a new one in
October 2010.
Although the information system is quite old and
not integrated to all business activities, IT is very
important to the organization. By integrating a
completely new system, the intention is to higher
efficiency and effectiveness in business operations.
The main goal is to make customers satisfied, they
should get “first class experience” when they leave
the store. The ambition is for the customer to have a
positive experience, with both counselling and sales.
The challenge is now to keep a horizontal structure
wile coping with flexibility, speed, and closeness to
customers. The shift to a horizontal structure, has
also affected the management system. It is very
important to Intersport Jönköping-AREA to sustain
a fit between strategy and business processes
because it ensures a first class service quality to the
customer. The alignment between business process
and strategy is a goal that has not been completely
achieved by the unit. With a customer focus,
Intersport Jönköping-AREA has improved customer
orientation, increased profits, reduced the delivery
time of products and improved the quality of service.
But however the big issue in Intersport is the lack of
good information system to support all business
activities.
4.3 Handelsbanken
Handelsbanken is an international group founded in
1871.The primary goal of the group is to “have
better yield on its own capital”. The groups focus on
continuously improving customers’ satisfaction and
lowering costs. Handelsbanken has had higher
profitability than its competitors over the past 38
years. The bank office strongly focuses on corporate
policy, culture and an effective financial system.
Each bank office is responsible for its own capital,
profits and customers. Aligning business processes
with strategy is very important to Handelsbanken.
This alignment process has provided the bank office
with all BPM advantages. Handelsbanken Jönköping
has improved customers’ satisfaction and reduced
costs. IT investment and support roles are
highlighted. IT accuracy and speed in information
processing enhances service quality and profits.
4.4 Flintab AB
Flintab AB is a company established in 1981.
Flintab AB is specialized in weighing systems for
industrial applications. One important feature in
Flintab AB is its internal core competences in
Information Engineering. This means the company
is able to develop and maintain business
applications. It becomes less costly to Flintab AB to
improve its IT/IS but the employees tend to forget
the costs, profits and internal revenues.
Flintab AB has been a precursor in the use of
information technology. IT is a support asset that
enables business processes. IT is very mature and
integrated, workforce, product development,
financial are all integrated in the same system. As
far as users have more knowledge about the
requirements of the product. Flintab has changed
their system to user-driven (individual user of the
A CROSS INDUSTRY EVALUATION OF CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS FOR ALIGNMENT OF STRATEGY AND
BUSINESS PROCESSES - A Case Study of SMEs in the Region of Jönköping in Sweden
343

product). The goal has mostly been to achieve higher
performance in the business operations, to reduce
costs, to leverage the user of technology in support
of the transportation system, the reporting system,
the development and the sales systems.
It is very important to Flintab AB to maintain an
alignment between business processes and strategy.
This is mostly achieved by the integration of all
business applications into the same system. There is
a strong focus in converging all the business
applications and the CRM system. Sales and
development processes are integrated and the
processes are quite cross-functional. By aligning the
process with strategy Flintab has improved customer
satisfaction, increased profits by 113% in helpdesk
for example. The quality of service has been
enhanced with a better response time as a result of
the use of mobile technologies such as PDA,
introduction of a scan system, and a First-in First-out
(FIFO) system in warehouse management. The
alignment has proven to increase the return on IT
investment, indeed it improved the use of IT in
support of business processes. Thus further
development will be to introduce a CRM system and
provide a SAAS capability to the customers.
4.5 The Differences and Similarities of
Alignment Factors in Four
Companies
SMEs have been asked to estimate the importance of
each alignment to their organization, and how
successful they were in addressing them, according
to their experience in managing business processes.
The table below summarizes the answers given by
each company.
5 DISCUSSION – REFINEMENT
OF FRAMEWORK
In this chapter, we discuss and analyze the
framework with critical factors developed in section
3 and the empirical findings in section 4. We first
discuss how SMEs manage to keep fit between
business process and strategy over time. Then we
explain why some factors are more important than
others to SMEs investigated.
5.1 The Nature of Business Process and
Strategy Alignment in SMEs
Alignment of business processes with strategy refers
Table 1.
ARKITEKTKO
PIA AB
Intersport Jönköping-
AREA
Handelsbanken
Flintab
People
Communication, behaviour, competence development,
resistance to change, involvement
Very important Very important Very important
Very
important
Information Technology
Building an effective IT infrastructure, Adequate IT
investment and sourcing decisions, Increasing IT
function competency to your organisation
Very important Important Important Important
Performance measurement
Strategic measures on different perspectives (customer,
financial, process, people), qualitative and quantitative
measures, continuous improvement through measures
Neutral
Neutral
Not a reality
Important
Only on
financial and
customer
perspectives
Important
Management
Commitment, sponsorship, and management system and
values development
Very important Very important Neutral Important
Organizational culture
The shift to a culture of experimentation
Important Very important Very important Important
Organizational structure
Definition of jobs and responsibilities, definition of
cross functional teams
neutral Important Neutral
Not
important
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to the extent to which business processes are
supporting the organisation strategy. Venkatraman
(1993) argues that “alignment of business and IT is a
process and not an event”. Our study shows that
process and strategy alignment is not a one-time
endeavour; it is rather a process of continuous and
incremental match of the execution of day-to-day
activities to strategy. For instance, Flintab AB is
continuously improving its transportation system, its
sales system with the introduction of a CRM tool
and its procurement process with a real assessment
of storage value. Handelsbanken Jönköping, despite
its integrated system and an execution of business
processes that serves business strategy, has launched
a dematerialization project to speed up the financial
operations and achieve higher performance.
Besides, the alignment of business processes
with strategy is sometimes technology-driven. IT
opportunities enforce managers to rethink the way
they operate and their relations to their customers
(the technology potential perspective in SAM). For
example ARKITEKTKOPIA continuously
introduces new technologic channels, like iphone
applications and facebook applications, to market
their products. The introduction of those new
channels alters some parts of business processes
since there is a need for technology integration and
organisational integration through reorganisation of
business processes.
5.2 The Most Important Alignment
Factors
5.2.1 Human Factor
People are important for process effectiveness, not
only because they perform business activities, but
also because they come with assets such as jobs,
skills, knowledge, behaviour, and culture which are
needed to improve process efficiency. So then, all
SMEs investigated agree on the fact that people are
very important; they even come to be the most
important alignment factor.
With the shift to a new process-oriented
organization, there is a need to re-skill and train staff
so that they get a good knowledge of the new
working procedures. Besides, communication about
company’s goals, “why” and “how” things need to
be done in another way, has proven to be crucial in
all SMEs investigated in order to get people
involvement. Nevertheless it is tricky to deal with
people’s job and behaviour especially because
“People are not programmable”. Thus
brainstorming process improvement alternatives and
recruiting new people help to get global agreement
and then avoid resistance.
5.2.2 Information Technology
In our study, IT should be a process enabler. IT
supports the execution of business operations; thus it
is located at the highest level of importance in the
organization in order to align process with strategy.
A key for operational effectiveness and service level
(quality of service and product quality) improvement
is proper system integration. Integrating the quality
system, the customer relationship management
system and the enterprise system (ERP) improves
customer service (Flintab AB).
However all SMEs are not successful in
addressing IT factors, for instance because it
requires headquarters’ decision and approval
(Intersport Jönköping). Besides, addressing IT
investment and sourcing decisions is challenging
because technology is evolving very fast
(ARKITEKTKOPIA AB). Some technologies
become obsolete before the return on investment is
achieved; thus increasing IT costs. IT is then
viewed as a source of costs despite its undeniable
importance in business processes. Therefore
strategy-driven sourcing decisions are important. A
SAAS model can be used when few people are
concerned with a new feature (the CRM system in
Flintab) or to reduce IT investments costs
(Handelsbanken sourcing model).
5.2.3 Organisational Culture
Culture is very important to SMEs even though it is
sometimes a barrier to change. In fact culture is
implicit and in the head of people. Therefore it is
powerful to achieve small successful results. This is
an excellent way to deal with cultural barriers
(Flintab CEO).
Nevertheless culture is also a facilitator in
process and strategy alignment. An emphasis on
“team orientation” with keys words like teamwork,
passion and respect (Handelsbanken Jönköping,
Intersport Jönköping-AREA) enables collaboration.
It is a weapon to keep processes working in a good
way. However the challenge remains to stay
offensive and creative since each improvement is in
the pin of the group.
5.2.4 Management Commitment and
Support
The four cases show that management is important
for successful alignment. SMEs highly value soft
A CROSS INDUSTRY EVALUATION OF CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS FOR ALIGNMENT OF STRATEGY AND
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skills, thus we can claim that they are “soft
companies”. They tend not to be bureaucratic, since
top management and operational employees
communicate informally. For example the
ARKITEKTKOPIA Company believes in a
management that consists of describing why and
how internal people should do their tasks. In the
Intersport, managers motivate people in their
activities so that they can work better. Also
managers communicate with operational staff during
meetings and through interpersonal communication.
In the Handelsbanken also, management
commitment is a success factor for process
effectiveness. In some organizations like Flintab AB
sponsorship is the most important management
aspect to get things done.
5.3 The Factors with Less Importance
to SMEs
5.3.1 Organisational Structure
Based on our study, Structure is not as important as
the previous factors. Of course this is one factor that
is essential for aligning process with strategy but
given the size of an organization and their processes
it is either neutral (Handelsbanken) or not important
(Flintab AB, Intersport Jönköping-AREA and
ARKITEKTKOPIA AB).
5.3.2 Performance Measurement
The empirical assessment shows that performance
measurement is not used for process improvement as
mentioned in the literature. To tie and align
measures with strategy, only Flintab AB values the
use of BSC because it is simple to update and it can
be modified with high frequency. It also helps to
align different activities in the organization.
Performance is measured on financial and
customer perspective but measures on processes are
almost not a reality. Thus performance measurement
is not a lever for process improvement for all four
cases.
6 CONCLUSIONS
The aim of this study was to come up with the
factors practitioners and researchers in the field of
Business Process Management (BPM) should pay
attention to while aligning business processes with
business strategy in SMEs. In order to sustain
alignment between business processes and strategy,
SMEs give importance to factors such as IT, people,
culture and management. In fact business processes
support a good information system that facilitates
the information flow, which enables process
automation, and increase process efficiency.
Besides, people are very important because they
make processes work. Even though culture is
generally a barrier, it can be broken through
successful improvement. Besides it can also be a
facilitator to make people work as a team. And
Management enables processes by a good
communication, especially informal communication.
On contrary, because of their small number of
employees, SMEs do not give importance to
organisational structure. And performance
measurement is not an important alignment factor to
SMEs as well. Nevertheless performance measures
are done on financial and customer perspectives.
This paper contributes to the current research in
strategic alignment by investigating the success
factors for business and process alignment in SMEs.
Because various industries are subjects of the
research, the usability of the research to other SMEs
is widened. Nevertheless, this heterogeneity is also a
limitation because the criticality of information flow
in the banking industry affects process maturity,
when a small retailing company can survive without
well defined processes. Thus the importance of
alignment may be different in those industries.
As discussed in the method chapter, the method
used (multiple case studies) is powerful to draw
generalization, by replication. The results of this
research can be then analytically generalized to
SMEs located in Jönköping. However, using
interview as a strategy for case study evidence
collection has limited the analysis. It has been
impossible to gather in-depth evidence on “how”
and “why” some alignment factors are more
important. Thus without an in-depth study more
investigation is necessary.
This study has mainly investigated the
importance of alignment factors in SMEs. Within
the limited time in companies, it was not possible to
examine the relations between alignment factors. A
further research could be performed on that matter.
This research has validated some business
processes and strategy alignment factors and their
importance. However the interrelations between
success factors and their individual impact to
successful alignment of business processes with
strategy could be issued in further research.
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346

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