DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION OF RESEARCH PROCESS AT HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS

Digital transformation is the widest term used to describe an intensive approach to effective development of entirely new organizations, based on digital technologies, new tools, and best business practices. The primary goal of digital transformation is to reduce the workload associated with administrative activities, enabling employees to become more focused on changes crucial to overcoming obstacles to business growth, while simultaneously improving their satisfaction through better management methods, reward and recognition systems, cooperation and collaboration, knowledge-based systems, etc. Such transformation of business is a challenge today’s organizations are faced with, and higher education institutions are no exemption. Digital transformation has become imperative to their development.

Business process automation is one of the essential building blocks of digital transformation. Throughout their continuous development, new technologies, such as Big Data, Analytics, Cloud Computing, Mobile Apps, Social Networking, Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning, generate innovation, and prompt business process automation, elevating process performance within higher education institutions.

This paper presents an analysis of the Research mega business process in higher education institutions, with a particular focus on possibilities for improving its performance using aforementioned technologies. A literature review was conducted for the purpose of determining the content of the Research business process, as well as its performance attributes, which reflect Higher education institutions’ strategic objectives associated with this process. In addition to that, the paper addresses the opportunities for automation of certain activities of the selected business process using the technologies mentioned before, as well as the impact of such automation on performance improvement. In such way, the authors have provided a roadmap for performance-driven adoption of novel technologies in the Research process.