CHALLENGES IN EMBRACING CUSTOMER-CENTRICITY: THE CASE OF OUTSIDE-IN IN A SOUTH AFRICAN FINANCIAL INSTITUTION

For the financial services industry, Business Process Management (BPM) plays a crucial role in end-to-end product development, risk management, and analysis of fraud, credit, and money laundering activities. Customer-centricity, also referred to as Outside-In, is a recent BPM focus which many organisations are now adopting. However, organisations face a myriad of challenges when adopting this approach. The objective of this study was to understand the perceived challenges with Outside-In within a South African financial services organisation. This study found that many traditional BPM challenges apply when moving an organization towards customer-centricity. Yet many new challenges and challenges with methods were seen to be particularly significant. Because of the cultural changes needed, securing buy-in, training all employees and implementing the change were all significant challenges. This paper adds to empirical studies on BPM customer-centric studies and will be useful for practitioners embarking on the approach, it offers a new analysis theoretical contribution to the understudied area of customer-centricity