“Digital maturity variables and their impact on the enterprise architecture layers”

This study examines the variables of digital maturity of companies. The framework for enterprise architectures Archimate 3.0 is used to compare the variables. The variables are assigned to the six layers of architecture: Strategy, Business Environment, Applications, Technology, Physical and Implementation and Migration. On the basis of a literature overview, 15 “digital maturity models” with a total of 147 variables are analyzed. The databases Scopus, EBSCO – Business Source Premier and ProQuest are used for this purpose. The results of the work will help researchers and managers to identify which digitization variables affect the different layers of the company. This enables researchers or managers to use the right model for a specific purpose or to create a new model from a combination of existing models for the entire company or just one architectural layer. On the basis of a more precise assessment of the digital maturity of a company, better actions can be derived. This work is important for companies, as the digitization of enterprises and markets changed similarly to the invention of the steam engine did. Websites, sensors, mobile devices, apps, etc. are combined into new digital products and services. The competitors in the market have to adapt. If this is not done, they will increasingly disappear. Finally, the authors suggests a conclusion about the current situation regarding the measurement of digital maturity in companies and show in which areas further studies could be carried out.


INTRODUCTION
According to a survey by the magazine "MIT Sloan Management Review", 90% of the managers surveyed expect digitalization to play a major or very major role for their company (Kiron, Kane, Palmer, Phillips, & Buckley, 2016).The degree of penetration of the Internet and communication systems plays a major role in the development of national economic growth (Xu, 2014).
Digitization is a crucial part of daily life (Xu, 2014).In the last few years, digitization has led to several dramatic changes (Xu, 2014).The last time technological developments led to similarly enormous changes in the business world was at the time of the first industrial revolution (Westermann, Bonnet, & McAfee, 2014).
In order to react optimally to these changes, companies need leadership and the ability to deal with constant changes (Summa, 2016).In principle, the faster companies are able to adapt, the more likely they are to achieve advantages over their competitors (Summa, 2016).
For this reason, it is essential to know different digitization factors and to find out to what extent they affect the company or the layers of an enterprise architecture.
According to Berman and Bell (2011), the following questions are suitable for finding out whether the company is ready for digital transformation.This is illustrated by the two perspectives: redesign of the customer promise and the optimization of operations completed.In the area of customer promise, the following questions arise (Berman & Bell, 2011): 1. Will the customer value proposition be redesigned?
2. How is it ensured that the changing needs and expectations of customers in the digital environment are understood?
3. How do mobile and online technologies change the way customers are communicating with the supplier and how the supplier is generating value for the customer?
4. How is the digital transformation being driven by the company in the industry or is the progress in a digital transformation in the industry driven by advanced competitors?
In the area of operational optimization, the following questions are useful (Berman & Bell, 2011): 1. Will the operations part of a company be optimized?
2. How are online and social media touchpoints and customer information used across the enterprise?
3. How is it achieved that the customer is the focus of supply chain planning?
4. How is it achieved that there is an open cooperation within the company, with customers and partners?
5. How will the digital and physical components of the operating model be optimized?
Based on a study conducted by Capgemini Consulting and MIT Sloan Management Review, in which 1,559 executives and managers were interviewed, 63% mentioned that the pace of technological change in their companies is too slow (Xu, 2014).Furthermore, 75% of respondents mentioned the lack of experience with new digital technologies in their company.The poor definition of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in the area of digital transformation was also underestimated by 50% (Xu, 2014).
Another study called "The IBM 2010 Global CEO study" found that technology was the second most important driver of digital change aftermarket factors (Berman & Bell, 2011).A distinction in the development of digital transformation is made between three different stages (Berman & Bell, 2011): • phase 1 (end 1990's): digital products (e.g.music and entertainment) and infrastructure (e.g.software, information systems); • phase 2 (approx.2000): digital sales and web strategy (e.g.e-commerce and online services); • phase 3 (around 2010): mobile revolution, social media, hyper-digitization, and power of analysis.
In addition, the study reports that decisions today (the year 2010) are made with the help of mobile devices and interactive tools (Berman & Bell, 2011).The ability and convenience to access information anytime, anywhere have dramatically increased expectations in the digital transformation (Berman & Bell, 2011).These mobile devices and interactive tools form the primary force behind the digital transformation across different industries (Berman & Bell, 2011).
Based on these findings, this study aims to use a literature review to identify various digitization factors and assign them to the enterprise architecture layers according to the Archimate architecture framework.

Digitalization
Digitalization, also called digital transformation, is an important topic for companies in all industries.The transformation creates risks for existing companies through disruptive companies in the market.In addition, there are new opportunities for these companies that are willing to take a certain risk and have the skills to use new technologies efficiently and effectively through digitization (Xu, 2014).
A digitized enterprise is characterized by the use of digital technologies and networks to carry out activities.These include the purchase and sale of products and services, interactions with customers and partner companies, as well as the execution of transactions and communication within the company (Xu, 2014).
For Kagermann (2015), it is clear that digitization and its factors will be the driving force for innovation and change in all industries due to the resulting continuous convergence between the real and virtual worlds.The exponentially growing data volumes, as well as the convergence of different, affordable technologies with the accompanying establishment of these technologies additionally, leads to transformations in all areas of the economy (Kagermann, 2015).
In summary, this means that digitization has a disruptive influence on the world of work, markets and social structures.This influence can also be observed in the emergence of new enterprises and the disappearance of established enterprises ( According to Keuper, Hamidian, Verwaayen, Kalinowski, and Kraijo (2013), the concept of digitization has changed dramatically in the last ten years.
The focus is no longer on the transmission of analogue information to digital information processing, but rather on transferring people and their living and working environments to a digital level (Keuper, Hamidian, Verwaayen, Kalinowski, & Kraijo, 2013).
Since digitization affects all areas of the company, it is complex to define an optimal digitization strategy.To facilitate this, models for determining the digital maturity level of an enterprise can help.Their use not only provides an overview, but also identifies specific areas with potential for optimization with regard to digitization issues.These maturity models can be very different in terms of their structure, scope and industry focus.

Archimate
Archimate 3.0 is a standard for modelling enterprise architectures.Basically, Archimate makes it possible to discover or describe any problems in the enterprise architecture.Archimate provides a series of notation forms (elements) for each layer of an enterprise architecture (The Open Group, 2016).Archimate 3.0 differentiates between the core framework and the full framework (The Open Group, 2016).The core framework contains only the three layers: Business, Application and Technology.In addition, the full framework contains the layers: Strategy, Physical and Implementation and Migration.

Strategy layer
The Strategy layer describes resources, capabilities and the focus on defined strategic goals (The Open Group, 2016).Furthermore, the Strategy layer sets the scope for action within the Business layer.

Business layer
The Business layer deals with the business services that the company provides to its customers.This is done by visualizing business actors through business processes (The Open Group, 2016).

Application layer
The Application layer describes application services that support the business.In addition, applications that provide services are also presented here (The Open Group, 2016).

Technology layer
At the Technology layer, systems and software for calculation, storage of data or communication are described, which are required by the applications (The Open Group, 2016).

Physical layer
The Physical layer is based on the technology level and describes physical facilities and objects, distributed systems and networks, as well as materials (The Open Group, 2016).

Implementation and Migration layer
As part of the Implementation and Migration layer, work steps, states and work results of an enterprise architecture modelled using Archimate are described (The Open Group, 2016).

RESEARCH QUESTIONS
This work aims to determine maturity models with variables of digitization.These variables are then individually assigned to the different enterprise architecture layers.This makes it transparent which variables can be used to measure digital performance each at company layer.In order to achieve this goal, the following research questions were defined: FF1: What are the variables of digital maturity and how do they affect the different layers of corporate architecture?FF2: Which maturity models are available?
FF3: What insights result from the analysis of the respective maturity models?
The research questions can be answered as follows: Research question FF1: What are the variables of digital maturity and to what extent do they affect the different layers of corporate architecture? Answer: The study has identified a total of 147 variables of digital maturity.These include, for example, the existence of not only a vision to be achieved through digitization and its possibilities, but also a strategy to what extent the company must transform itself in order to exploit possible competitive advantages.Leadership and its ability to define the role of the enterprise in the age of digitization is seen by many maturity models as an important digitization factor.For a complete overview of the determined variables of digital maturity and the analyzed sources, have a look at the detailed tables "Variables of digital maturity" and "Overview of the analyzed literature".
Basically, the majority of digitization factors affect the corporate architecture Strategy Business and Application layers.In contrast, less attention is paid to the corporate architecture layers of Technology, Physical and Implementation and Migration.

Research question FF2:
Which maturity models are available? Answer: 15 different maturity models could be determined, which offer the possibility to measure the digital maturity of an enterprise.Some of the models analyzed differ greatly in their areas of application.

Research question FF3:
What insights result from the analysis of the respective maturity models? Answer: None of the 15 maturity models considered offers an opportunity to fully evaluate a company's digital maturity.This is because none of the models includes all layers of corporate architecture in the evaluation.Thus, no final statement on digital maturity can be made.The majority of the models focus on the corporate architecture Strategy, Business and Application layers and only partially include the technical layers (Technology, Physical and Implementation and Migration).
The reader learns which digitization variables have an influence on the different layers of corporate architecture.This then allows the selection of an appropriate maturity model for each company to perform a precise analysis for the measurement of digital maturity.This is essential, as digitization changes companies and they have to adapt, otherwise, there is a risk that companies will disappear.

METHODS
A transparent, comprehensible literature research approach according to Fink (2014) was developed to determine different variables from digital maturity models.
This approach consists of 7 steps: 1) define the research question; 2) select scientific databases; 3) define search terms; After the research questions were defined (section 3), it was decided to use three different databases, namely the databases ProQuest, EBSCOhost and Scopus.The keyword "digital maturity" was used as a search term (see also Table 1).The database queries were carried out on January 15, 2018.To make the search and selection process as comprehensive as possible, no specific search criteria or restrictions were made.For this reason, these articles had no relevance to the present work and were not considered further.Furthermore, several articles were excluded, which dealt in detail with the subject area of digitization, but did not clearly identify digitization factors.

As shown in
In the third step of the selection process (see Table 1, Step 3), 66 further results could be excluded, as the publications could not be considered relevant for the subject area based on a thorough examination.Based on this procedure, 11 different maturity models with a total of 58 associated digitization factors could be identified.
Based on findings from previously conducted studies, 4 further maturity models for measuring the digital maturity of an enterprise could be determined in a final step.This corresponds to another 22 digitization factors.A total of 15 different maturity models with 85 associated digitization factors could thus be identified.In certain models, these digitization factors are divided into more specific variables of digital maturity, so based on an analysis at the lowest level of granularity, another 62 factors of digitization or a total of 147 digitization factors result.
A large number of variables found provide a good picture of which aspects of digitization can be measured at the different layers of the enterprise architecture.

GENERALIZATION AND DISCUSSION
As can be seen in Table 2, the literature review has shown that there are a large number of maturity models that can be used to measure the digital maturity of companies.The maturity models analyzed differ enormously in terms of their areas of application.
In principle, the focus of the maturity models is on the business side.There are variables for the technical layers only in six models (see In 14 out of 15 models, the strategy level plays a decisive role and is analyzed in detail (see Table 2).
The models considered assigning a total of 85 digitization factors to the strategy level.These include topics such as vision for the company in connection with digitization topics: digitization strategy, culture and experience in dealing with digitisation, and the ability to innovate.
The business level is considered by approximately 93% of the determined maturity models and therefore plays an enormous role in measuring the digital maturity of an enterprise, only one maturity model, namely the model of Kiron et al. (2016) called "Aligning the Organization for its Digital Future", focuses exclusively on the strategic level (see Table 2).Digitization factors such as the IT business relationship, the customer experience or the business models are considered decisive here.In total, 70 variables of digitization have been assigned to this level.
Furthermore, 14 out of 15 maturity models include the application level in determining the maturity level of a company.In total, 61 variables of digitization were assigned to this level.This includes the use of dynamic and efficient processes through digitization, the promotion of collaboration through the use of digital means, aligning processes in different areas with digital structures and, if possible, automating them, and an improved understanding of customers through the use of big data analyses.
The technology level is considered by six maturity models.Only 17 digitization factors have been assigned to this level (see Table 2).These are factors such as the company-wide use of promising technologies, the evaluation of disruptive technologies and trends or the consistent use or provision of data.
The Physical and Implementation and Migration layers are not taken into account by any of the identified maturity models (see Table 2).
From these findings, it can be concluded that the focus of the identified maturity models is clearly on the business side (Strategy, Business and Application layer) and that these only deal with the technical side (Technology, Physical and Implementation and Migration layer) to a limited extent.This approach is questionable, since all digitization projects originate in technology and digitization is additionally driven by developments in the technology sector.
As can be seen in As a result, digital maturity can only be measured at specific corporate architectural layers up to now.Because digitization is driven by technical aspects, it would be useful to be able to measure digital maturity with variables at all layers of a company.

CONCLUSION
The subject of digitization is assigned an enormous role.The influence on the companies and their dayto-day business is enormous and brings with it a wide variety of challenges.In order to be able to react optimally to these, it is important to know the variables of digitization and their influence on the different layers of the company architecture and to use the variables if necessary.
For this reason, the present work has set itself the goal of eliciting different variables of digitization and analysing their influence on the corporate architecture.A total of 15 different maturity models were found and used, which in turn comprise 147 digitization factors.
Since the study is based on a recognized literature research approach, the expected transparency and reproducibility can be guaranteed.The screening of 305 different articles and the procedure in previously defined steps made it possible to eliminate non-relevant articles at an early stage.
Basically, the analysed maturity models focus on the Business, Strategy and Application layers of corporate architecture.The most models only conditionally consider the technical side of an enterprise (Technology, Physical and Implementation and Migration), although digitization is driven and supported by technological developments.
As a result, all maturity models are not suitable for the full evaluation of a company's digital maturity.
Some models are based on fundamental scientific knowledge, while at other maturity models, the importance of the defined digitization factors is difficult to understand.The Digital Maturity Model serves as the basis for an annual Digital Maturity Check, with which company can determine the position in the digital world.Based on these survey data, the different levels of maturity are determined and published using a consolidated report.

APPENDIX. OVERVIEW OF THE RELEVANT/SELECTED LITERATURE
Customer Experience: The offer and value proposition is consistently adapted to the changing customer behaviour of digital customers, where the boundaries between online and offline interaction with the company are increasingly blurred.Product Innovation: Digital technologies are to be used to generate new services and products in order to create a competitive advantage through the resulting innovative offering.Strategy: A clear objective and vision and the resulting strategy must recognize and optimally use the possibilities that arise from digital technologies.Organization: The organization must be adapted to the new challenges by carrying out cross-departmental digital projects so that digital skills are available within the company.
Process Digitization: All processes, internal and external must be simplified, unified and seamlessly integrated to enable agile action.In addition, these processes should be automated if possible.Collaboration: Due to the changed working methods in the age of digitization, are to be used to support and simplify collaboration and communication between employees.Information Technology: The development and operation of IT infrastructure and information systems are flexible and agile, enabling new digital products, services, communication and transactions.The "time to market" factor plays a decisive role here.Culture and Expertise: In order for the digital transformation to be sustainable, the company must pursue a culture of openness with regard to technologies.In addition, there should be a certain willingness to take risks and an open approach to errors.Transformation Management: Digital transformation is a change process that affects the entire company and is, therefore, to be planned, controlled and supported by the top management level.

4) select results by title and abstract; 5 )
select remaining results from the full text; 6) work up remaining results; 7) synthesize text to final results.When using the literature research method and its qualitative evaluation, the focus is on the term rigorosity(Levy & Ellis, 2006).For the literature review, the reliability and validity of the search process are important(Levy & Ellis, 2006).As such, the validity indicates the extent to which the literature search produces the sources desired by the creator (Vom Brocke, Simons, Niehaves, Riemer, Plattfaut, & Cleven, 2009).Reliability describes the replicability of the search process to any literature search (Vom Brocke, Simons, Niehaves, Riemer, Plattfaut, & Cleven, 2009).The research process was structured in detail as follows.

Table 1 .
Literature search and selection process

Table 2 .
Mapping of digital maturity models to enterprise architecture layers

Table 2
Control of the digital strategy or set of the course by means of clear rules so that the digital activities support the achievement of the set course.Commitment: Employees should be won over to the change project.IT Business Relationships: Create a common understanding between IT and business.Customer Experience: The aim is to increase customer proximity with the help of technological means in order to create a deeper understanding of customers.Operational Processes: More dynamic and efficient processes based on digitization and its possibilities.Business Models: Adapting the business model to drive digital change.