Bimodal IT in the age of digital transformation : implementation in practice

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Bimodal IT in the Age of Digital Transformation:

Implementation in Practice

By: Wiebe Niels Kremer Student number: 10197605

Supervised by: Prof. em. dr. ir. Hans J. Oppelland Second Reader: Currently Unknown

Master thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Business Administration – Digital Business Track at the University of Amsterdam (Amsterdam

Business school)

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Statement of originality

This document is written by Wiebe Kremer who declares to take full responsibility

for the contents of this document.

I declare that the text and the work presented in this document is original

and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references

have been used in creating it.

The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the

supervision of completion of the work, not for the content

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Abstract

The increasing dispersion of technology throughout our daily lives is changing the way consumers interact with companies. As a result, customer expectations have risen, and some companies have started using a new type of IT implementation to meet these expectations. The objective of this research was to find out when and why companies implement bimodal IT. In addition to this, this research showed how companies implement bimodal IT in practice. Finally, a link was made between the way bimodal IT is implemented and how bimodal IT determines business performance in the mind of the IT managers. Adopting an explorative single case study design, these questions are answered through a qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with IT managers actively involved in the implementation of bimodal IT at TechX. This is one the Netherlands’ largest

telecom and IT services providers. Results showed TechX started implementing bimodal IT in 2014 to react more quickly to changes in customers’ expectations, improve customer satisfaction and because there was a mismatch between the faster pace of technological advancement and the slow release cycles of traditional IT. Digital IT works in small autonomous multi-disciplinary teams with sprints of a maximum of 2 weeks. Releases of (parts of) new products are much more frequent than with traditional IT. There is increased use of open source technology and loosely-coupled systems. Interaction of Digital IT with Traditional IT is limited and this occasionally creates friction between the two modes of working. Lastly, IT managers thought that this implementation has led to higher customer satisfaction and higher firm performance. Finally, results from this research are used to formulate advice for similar firms looking to implement bimodal IT.

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1. Introduction

1.1 Background

The increased dispersion of digital technologies throughout all facets of our daily life is causing lasting effects for us as consumers (Yoo, 2013). This ‘digital transformation’ is driven by trends in information technology (IT) with technologies such as social media, mobile, analytics and cloud computing as the “nexus of forces” (Howard, 2014). The Chief Information Officers’ (CIO) agenda as described by research firm Gartner suggests that digital business will comprise 36% of a

businesses’ revenue by 2020. Additionally, this report showed that 66% of companies engaged in digital transformation expect to increase revenue from their operations (Basso, 2016). Thus, the growing digitization of nearly everything is posing a serious challenge to companies that don’t want to risk losing their competitive advantage (Horlach, Drews, & Schirmer, 2016). To keep up, firms need to engage in digital innovation, either improve or change their business models and be able to react faster than their competitors to customer expectations (Apica, 2017).

This digital disruption has far-reaching consequences for the role of IT. Value creation is done increasingly through the creation and improvement of IT services. This is especially true for companies in the ‘new economy’ such as Uber and Netflix (Horlach et al., 2016; Horlach, Drews, Schirmer, & Böhmann, 2017). As a result of these changes, today’s CIOs need to achieve a proper balance between using IT for finding new value-creating opportunities and improving customer experiences on the one hand, and the role of IT to run core systems on the other hand. Unlike these new companies, traditional companies (or ‘old economy’) face constraints in exploiting and

exploring possible new revenue streams as a result of their complicated and inflexible IT

infrastructures and organizational silos (Horlach et al., 2016). These characteristics make it difficult for them to attain the level of flexibility and agility they need to respond quickly to changes in customer expectations.

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2 As a result of the digital transformation, some firms have organized their IT activities into two different modes of speed (or ‘two-speed IT’). To enable firms to react quickly to changing customer needs, a fast customer-facing and business-oriented IT organization is created within the firm to perform digital innovation (Jöhnk, Röglinger, Thimmel, & Urbach, 2017). On the other hand, companies still run a ‘classical’ IT department with the existing IT infrastructure to run core systems which are difficult to modify or change. This department works in longer (release) cycles and at a lower speed than the new type of IT department. This division of labor has also been referred to as bimodal IT since the differences are more numerous than a difference in speed (Horlach et al., 2016). Gartner defines this concept as follows: “the practice of managing two separate, coherent modes of IT delivery, one focused on stability and the other on agility. Mode 1 is traditional and sequential, emphasizing safety and accuracy. Mode 2 is exploratory and nonlinear, emphasizing agility and speed” (Gartner, 2018a). An example of a firm using bimodal IT is VodafoneZiggo in the Netherlands, who created a “faster” Digital IT department to deal with developing their website and apps with the goal to create a seamless and optimal customer journey (VodafoneZiggo, 2018).

1.2 Research Problem

Even though this concept is being discussed increasingly in practice, very little scientific research has been done on this new implementation of IT (Gerster, 2017). Most publications available to firms today are in the form of blog posts, glossaries, news articles and white papers (Horlach et al., 2016). These types of sources typically provide general information with regards to the concept and its elements. Yet, this type of information does not provide firms with any assurances that this new type of IT implementation will improve business performance or will lead to other possible positive outcomes. This research will attempt to add knowledge to this subject by combining results from a case study with current (scientific) research with regards to bimodal IT.

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1.3 Research Objective

The objective of this research will be to research when and why companies implement bimodal information technology (IT). In addition to this, this research will show how bimodal IT is

implemented in practice. Finally, a link is made between the way bimodal IT is implemented within a firm and how bimodal IT determines business performance in the mind of the IT managers.

The reason for selecting this research objective is that there is still very little scientific research done on the topic of bimodal IT (Gerster, 2017). Therefore, more in-depth qualitative research is needed to fill this gap in knowledge. This information could potentially be useful to IT managers looking to implement bimodal IT in their firm. Due to the limited scientific literature on this topic, this research will be exploratory and inductive.

1.4 Research Methods

The design of this research will be a qualitative, explorative case study of one of the Netherlands largest telecom and IT service providers. IT managers involved in the bimodal IT implementation at this company will be interviewed on several important topics related to bimodal IT. A case study was chosen because there is still little scientific research on this topic and this research design should provide rich and detailed information about bimodal IT in a natural setting.

1.5 Research Structure

In the following text, some of the publications about bimodal IT with an academic background will be discussed and linked with related theoretical concepts already explored more thoroughly in the scientific literature. These theoretical concepts will then be used to formulate several propositions based on the literature review. The methodology of this research will then be discussed in detail. Next, the results from the case study will be reviewed. Conclusions from these results will then be explained and be used to formulate advice to other firms potentially interested in

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4 implementing bimodal IT. Finally, the implications and limitations of this research will be

discussed.

2. State of the Art

2.1 Bimodal IT

One of the first publications on the subject of bimodal IT was by Bygstad (2015), and it describes a study of how “heavyweight’ IT (also known as ‘classic’ IT) and ‘lightweight’ IT (also known as ‘fast IT’) are used by organizations in the health sector. The purpose of this research is to

investigate how this IT implementation facilitates innovation and to what extent the two different approaches should be integrated. Results showed that heavyweight IT and lightweight IT should only be loosely integrated to function successfully. This integration should be loose in terms of technology, standardization, and organization. Even though this research provides some initial insight into how bimodal IT should be implemented, it also leaves a lot of questions unanswered. For example, no definition is given for bimodal IT; no comprehensive suggestions are given as to how to implement bimodal IT and implications for Business-IT alignment are not considered (Henderson & Venkatraman, 1993).

Subsequent research attempted to answer some of these questions by identifying

characteristics of both traditional and digital IT and by examining dominant implementations of bimodal IT in practice. Horlach et al. (2016) conducted an extensive literature review of both available academic sources and archival data to identify the characteristics of each mode and the differences between them. Main differences between the two modes are that digital IT is more business-centric (vs. IT-centric) and mainly aimed at agility & speed (vs. stability). Another important difference between the two modes is that Traditional IT is positioned remote to the customer. Meaning, they little to no contact with customers and their opinion about the company’s products or services. On the other hand, Digital IT is positioned close to the customers and

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5 frequently receives large amounts of feedback about the company’s products or services. This might result in higher customer satisfaction for firms using bimodal IT when compared with firms only using Traditional IT. The rest of the important findings are shown in Table 1 (Horlach et al., 2016).

Traditional IT (mode 1, industrial / core IT)

Digital IT (mode 2, agile IT)

Stability Goal Agility & speed

IT-centric Culture Business-centric

Remote from customer Customer proximity Close to customer

Performance and security

improvement Trigger Short term market trends

Performance of services Value Business moments, customer

branding

Security & reliability Focus of services Innovation

Waterfall development Approach Iterative, agile development

Systems of records Applications Systems of engagement

Slow Speed of service delivery Fast

Table 1: Characteristics of Traditional and Digital IT (Horlach et al., 2016, p. 1421)

Additionally, research by Horlach et al. (2017) attempted to gain a better understanding of how bimodal IT is realized in practice. They used qualitative semi-structured interviews with IT management representatives from different service-related industries. Results showed five different types of bimodal implementations: traditional IT with bimodal development processes, traditional IT with Agile outsourcing, bimodal sourcing IT, bimodal IT and Agile IT. Even though this research provides some preliminary information on possible implementation methods, possible conclusions are limited. This is mainly due to the small sample size and the fact that only service-related firms were interviewed.

Even though bimodal IT is starting to receive some attention from the academic community, many questions remain. This research will seek to answer the following questions: (1) When and under what circumstances do companies consider implementing a bimodal IT design? (2) How are these implementations realized in practice? Advantages, disadvantages, and challenges in

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6 is implemented within a firm and how it determines business performance in the mind of the IT managers.

2.2 Related research: Organizational Ambidexterity

Even though research directly related to bimodal IT is limited, some related concepts have been explored more thoroughly in the academic literature. One of these topics is organizational ambidexterity which O’Reilly and Tushman (2013, p. 2) define as: “the ability of an organization to both explore and exploit—with the aim of competing in mature technologies and markets where efficiency, control, and incremental improvement are prized and to also compete in new

technologies and markets where flexibility, autonomy, and experimentation are needed”. Previous research has shown organizational ambidexterity to be positively associated with sales growth, subjective ratings of performance, innovation, market valuation and lastly with firm survival (O’Reilly & Tushman, 2013).

The main importance for an organization to be ambidextrous is summarized clearly by March: “The basic problem confronting an organization is to engage in sufficient exploitation to ensure its current viability and, at the same time, devote enough energy to exploration to

exploration to ensure its future viability (1991, p. 105).” Balancing exploration and exploitation is a challenge since there is a bias in favor of exploitation because of its ability to produce short-term success with a higher degree of certainty (O’Reilly & Tushman, 2013). However, if a firm does not use exploration sufficiently, it risks being rendered irrelevant by changes in markets and

technologies (such as the digital transformation). This naturally raises the question: how much exploration is sufficient? Previous research has shown that this depends on a number of factors (O’Reilly & Tushman, 2013). Several studies exploring these relevant factors in more detail will be discussed below. Additionally, studies, which looked into how firms should implement exploitation and exploration within the firm will be discussed.

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7 Caspin-Wagner, Ellis & Tishler (2012) examined the choices firms make in allocating resources to exploration and exploitation activities with the aim of offering a methodology of how to balance these resources. Based on longitudinal financial panel data they concluded that the effects of investment in exploration and exploitation on firm performance are curvilinear (inverted U-shaped relationship). In other words, exploration and exploitation efforts are positively associated with performance up to some optimal level at which a firm’s performance is the highest. Beyond this level, these efforts will be negatively associated with firm performance. Additionally, Caspin-Wagner and colleagues (2012) found this relationship to be moderated by environmental conditions. These conditions are dynamism and competitive intensity of the firm’s market. Environmental dynamism is defined as the rate and instability of environmental change and refers to the extent of unpredictable change in the organization’s environment (Caspin-Wagner et al., 2012). For example, they showed that under highly dynamic environmental conditions firms are limited in their

opportunities to benefit from their exploitation strategy. All these findings together suggest that ambidextrous firms will be more effective under uncertain conditions. Even though this research has provided some useful insights into how firms should balance exploration and exploitation efforts, there was no consideration for firm size. The next study will address this.

Research by Cao, Gedajlovic & Zhang (2009) examined two different dimensions of ambidexterity: the balance dimension of ambidexterity (BD) and the combined

dimension of ambidexterity (CD). BD is defined as follows: “BD corresponds to a firm’s

orientation to maintain a close relative balance between exploratory and exploitative activities (Cao et al., 2009).” CD is defined as: “the combined magnitude of both exploratory and exploitative activities (Cao et al., 2009).” Cao and colleagues (2009) collected data through surveys from both the CEO and CTO from 122 firms in three high-tech parks in China in the middle of 2006. Their results showed that concurrent high levels of BD and CD yielded synergistic benefits. Additionally, they find that BD is more beneficial to resource-constrained firms, whereas CD is more beneficial

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8 to firms having greater access to internal and/or external resources. Implications based on these results are as follows: managers in resource-constrained firms may benefit by focusing on managing trade-offs between exploration and exploitation demands. On the other hand, for firms that have access to sufficient resources, the simultaneous pursuit of exploration and exploitation is both possible and desirable.

Based on the studies discussed above we can come to the following conclusions: (1) ambidexterity is positively associated with firm performance (O’Reilly & Tushman, 2013); (2) these effects can be contingent on the firm’s environment where ambidexterity is more beneficial under uncertain conditions and when sufficient resources are available, which occurs more often in larger firms rather than smaller firms (Cao et al., 2009; Caspin-Wagner et al., 2012); (3) the under- or over-use of ambidexterity can have negative effects on firms performance (Caspin-Wagner et al., 2012). If a firms’ implementation of bimodal IT matches these criteria, it is expected that this will be beneficial to firm performance.

3. Research Concept

3.1 Conceptual Model

Figure 1: Conceptual Model

Based on the conclusions from previous research on bimodal IT and organizational ambidexterity discussed in the previous chapter, a conceptual model was made. The goal of this model is to offer a possible explanation as to why firms choose to implement bimodal IT. Additionally, this model

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9 attempts to predict what possible effects this implementation will have for the business. Each of the relationships described by the model will be explained in the following section. It should also be noted here that since this will be qualitative research, not all variables in this model can be expressed quantitatively. These relationships with other variables should, therefore, be merely be viewed as an attempt to describe the actual situation in practice (Yin, 2014).

As has been described previously, customer expectations have been rising in recent times (Apica, 2017). With the internet at almost every customers’ fingertips, they have access to an enormous amount of options when picking a product or a service (Jeffries, 2015). In addition, they have access to much information when it comes to other customers’ their satisfaction with a company’s product or service. This information can be accessed through for example review

websites like Yelp or in the customer review section of websites like Amazon (Ante, 2009). For this reason, companies need to make sure they are meeting their customers’ expectations or risk losing their competitive advantage to firms providing a better customer experience to keep their customers loyal (Apica, 2017). To achieve this goal, companies need to make sure that they are close to their customers. Meaning, they need to receive feedback from customers on current products frequently (Voss, Roth, Rosenzweig, Blackmon, & Chase, 2004). However, asking for feedback about possible future products or services could also be very useful in making sure the customers’ expectations are met as well as possibly can. This way companies can make sure they stay relevant to their

customers. Unfortunately, traditional IT implementations are usually very far removed from

customers’ their feedback and software involved in the customer interaction is infrequently released (Horlach et al., 2016). The latter makes it particularly difficult to adjust to customers’ their

expectations in a timely fashion. Digital IT, on the other hand, is quite the opposite in this regard. Digital IT is much closer to the customer than traditional IT in the sense that they frequently receive customer feedback. Also, software is released far more frequently to deal with the changes in customer expectations, as observed through the feedback digital IT receives. Therefore, for

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10 companies to respond to their customers’ expectations appropriately and in a timely fashion, they will be more likely to choose to implement bimodal IT. Since customer expectations have risen in recent times, this, in turn, makes it more likely that more companies will choose to implement bimodal IT as a way of working to meet these expectations (Apica, 2017).

Advancements in information technology are driving the 'digital transformation'. Examples of these new types of technologies are social media, mobile, analytics and cloud computing. Together, they are also referred to as the ‘nexus of forces.’ This term is used to describe how the convergence and mutual reinforcement of these technologies are driving new business opportunities (Gartner, 2018b). In fact, more and more value creation is done by companies through the creation and improvement of IT services (Horlach et al., 2016). Gartner even predicts that digital business will comprise 36% of a business’ revenue by 2020 (Basso, 2016). Even more importantly, the speed of technology advancement has sped up in recent years, and this has resulted in changes to the life cycle of software (Dybå & Dingsøyr, 2008). This life cycle of software is now shorter than it was before (Rongala, 2015). To keep up with the technological changes of software, the development of it should also be made faster. With traditional IT, a waterfall approach is usually taken to develop a new piece of software. Due to this, companies using traditional IT have a slow speed of service delivery (Horlach et al., 2016). They release new software or software updates infrequently and are unable to respond quickly to customer feedback about software (Horlach et al., 2016). To keep up with technological changes, software will have to be released more frequently to match with what customers expect from modern software and to keep up with direct competitors. Digital IT focuses on a fast speed of service delivery by using Agile development processes (Horlach et al., 2016). This enables companies using Digital IT to react quickly and appropriately to new technologies or changes in current technology. Additionally, companies implementing Digital IT can respond more quickly to customer feedback. Therefore, companies trying to keep up with the higher speed of technology advancements will be more likely to implement bimodal IT within their organization.

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11 Another factor that might influence firms in deciding to implement bimodal IT is the

number of competitors who are already using it. As mentioned before, value creation is done more frequently through the creation and improvement of IT services. This particularly holds true for companies such as Spotify and Netflix who are part of the ‘new economy’ (Horlach et al., 2016). These companies have generally used forms of digital IT for a while already. Companies like for example Spotify are usually seen as early adopters of this type of technology (Kniberg & Ivarsson, 2012). However, it is no longer simply the early adopters who are employing this kind of IT implementation. Companies seen as the early majority are now also starting to use bimodal IT in increasing numbers (Horlach et al., 2017). This will likely add pressure to other similar companies to also start using this type of IT implementation (VodafoneZiggo, 2018). Otherwise, they may fear to stay behind their competition and risk losing customers to them in the future. In other words, as the number of competitors using bimodal IT rises, it will become more likely for other companies to also choose to implement bimodal IT.

In addition to identifying some factors that might lead some companies to implement bimodal IT, this conceptual model also attempts to predict what outcomes are likely when they do decide to implement it. In the following section, two of those possible outcomes will be discussed as well as, two possible moderators of one of these relationships.

As mentioned before in this section, an increasing number of firms is implementing bimodal IT as a way to appropriately deal with rising customer expectations (Apica, 2017). The digital IT mode of this implementation is positioned close to the customer and frequently receives feedback from them on products and services. Their Agile approach to development allows them to

implement useful suggestions from this type of feedback quickly (Horlach et al., 2016). This way of asking and dealing with customer feedback might result in higher customer satisfaction (Voss et al., 2004). In other words, companies that have chosen to implement bimodal IT will be more likely to

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12 have a higher customer satisfaction when compared with companies simply employing traditional IT. Next, the possible effects of bimodal IT on overall firm performance will be examined.

Previous research on the related topic of organizational ambidexterity will be linked to bimodal IT here. Organizational ambidexterity is described as the ability of an organization to both explore and exploit at the same time. This will help them compete in markets with mature

technologies. In these types of markets, security and reliability are valued highly. On the other hand, these companies explore new technologies in markets where flexibility, autonomy, and experimentation are needed (O’Reilly & Tushman, 2013). This type of firm strategy is very similar to the bimodal IT implementation. On the one hand, traditional IT can be used to exploit markets with mature technologies. On the other hand, digital IT can be used to explore new possibilities in markets with new technologies. Therefore, results from previous research on organizational ambidexterity will be used here to make predictions about possible outcomes when a company decides to implement bimodal IT. Previous research on the topic of organizational ambidexterity has shown this concept to be positively associated with sales growth, innovation, subjective ratings of performance and lastly with firm survival. Even though this research did not directly measure firm performance, it does show the effect of organizational ambidexterity on multiple outcomes directly related to firm performance. It is also a good illustration of other possible positive outcomes of making an organization ambidextrous. Further research examined to which degree companies should explore and exploit simultaneously and how balanced the two should be to provide the company with positive outcomes (Caspin-Wagner et al., 2012). They found the relationship between firm performance and organization ambidexterity to be curvilinear. In other words, they found the relationship to have the shape of an inverted U. According to their results, exploration and exploitation should be balanced to have the most optimal effect on the company’s performance. Therefore, a firm’s performance will be likely to increase up to some optimal level as the firm invests more money into exploration and exploitation. However, after reaching this optimal level,

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13 investing more money to explore new technologies is expected to have a negative effect on a firm’s performance. Putting this into terms of bimodal IT, firms should not invest too much money in Digital IT alone. However, investments in digital IT are expected to have a positive effect on a firm’s performance up to some optimal level. In the next section, we will discuss two possible moderators of the relationship between bimodal IT and firm performance.

In addition to researching the effect of organizational ambidexterity, Caspin-Wagner et al. (2012) found two variables that moderate the relationship between organizational ambidexterity and a firm’s performance. The first variable is environmental dynamism, which refers to the extent of unpredictable change in a firm’s environment. The digital transformation has caused an increased dispersion of digital technologies throughout all facets of our daily life. These changes are likely to cause lasting effects for businesses. However, what type of changes these will be and what type of effect they will have on a firm’s business is still unclear. Thus, firms are currently operating in an environment of unpredictable change. According to the research by Caspin et al. (2012), firms that simultaneously exploit and explore mature and new technologies are more likely to perform better in situations of environmental dynamism than firms that are not engaged in both activities. It would, therefore, be likely that firms operating in situations of environmental dynamism are more likely to experience a stronger effect of implementing bimodal IT (and thus exploring and exploiting

simultaneously) on their performance. The other moderator will be discussed in the next paragraph. In addition, Caspin et al. (2012) found another variable that moderates the relationship between organizational ambidexterity and firm performance. This variable is competitive intensity, which describes the degree to which a company’s market is competitive. Some factors that

determine this variable are costs of doing business and number of firms active in the company’s market (Kokemuller, 2018). With the entrance of many ‘new economy’ companies like Airbnb and Uber entering the market, the competitive intensity has increased in recent years. These firms generally use Agile IT implementations and can, therefore, develop new products or services more

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14 quickly than large firms using traditional IT (Kniberg & Ivarsson, 2012). This new competition entering the market could be seen as an increase in competitive intensity. According to the research by Caspin et al. (2012), an increase in competitive intensity makes it more likely for firms to

experience positive effects of bimodal IT on their performance. In the next section, the relationships described in the conceptual model will be used to formulate several propositions.

3.2 Propositions

Based on the conclusions from previous research and the conceptual model on the topic of bimodal IT and organizational ambidexterity discussed above, several propositions will be formulated here. These will be compared with the results produced by the interviews conducted for this research. This will enable a comparison between scientific theory and current business practices. This way we can see whether predictions based on scientific literature are in line with why businesses implement this new form of IT and what the business outcomes are of this implementation.

Proposition 1: An increase in customer expectations will make it more likely for firms to implement

bimodal IT within their organization.

Proposition 2: As the speed of technology advancement increases, this will make it more likely for

firms to implement bimodal IT within their organization.

Proposition 3: As the number of competitors using bimodal IT increases, the likelihood of other

firms choosing to implement bimodal IT also increases.

Proposition 4: As firms implement bimodal IT within their organization, the likelihood of a higher

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Proposition 5: As firms implement bimodal IT within their organization, the likelihood of higher

firm performance increases.

Proposition 6: Environmental dynamism moderates the effect that bimodal IT implementations have

on firm performance.

Proposition 7: Competitive Intensity moderates the effect that bimodal IT implementations have on

firm performance.

4. Methodology

4.1 Research Design

The design of this research was a qualitative single case study based on interviews with IT

management representatives from a firm in the service industry. Since the only source of data used is interviews, this was mono-method research (Glaser, Strauss, & Strauss, 2017). The reason for conducting this research in the service industry is that these type of firms frequently deal with the changing customer expectations (Ismail, Khater, & Zaki, 2017). Implementing bimodal IT in such a setting could, therefore, be very helpful in responding to these changing expectations quickly (Horlach et al., 2016).

This research aimed to gather data from four IT managers at TechX (name anonymized) involved in bimodal IT. This is the largest telecom & IT services provider in the Netherlands

(TechX, 2012). The reason for selecting this firm was that this was a good common example of how bimodal IT could be implemented in practice. Another reason for selecting a common case is “to capture the circumstances and conditions of everyday situation – again because of the lessons it might provide about the social processes related to some theoretical interest” (Yin, 2014, p.52). Each IT management representative was actively involved in the bimodal IT implementation at

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16 TechX. The set of interviewees was gathered through the author’s network by sending out of e-mails internally at TechX. The reason that this form of convenience sampling was used is simply that of the limited time-span available to complete this research.

To increase reliability, the interviews were conducted using a semi-structured format for open questions (Myers & Newman, 2007). This way, participants should feel free to talk about their personal experiences with the implementation of bimodal IT without straying too far from the subject of interest.

The reason for choosing this explorative qualitative research design is that this method provides richer and more in-depth information about the subject being studied (Eisenhardt, 1989). This way all relevant information with regards to bimodal IT can be studied and underlying reasons for choosing this implementation can be uncovered. On the other hand, a downside of this research design is that it makes it hard to establish causal relationships and it is usually more

time-consuming to execute than quantitative design. It could, however, enable future researchers in developing theoretical propositions based on empirical evidence (Eisenhardt, 1989).

4.2 Research Instruments and Procedures

Firstly, the interview guide was reviewed and commented on by an IT manager of TechX not interviewed for this research. This was done to eliminate any possible ambiguities in the interview or add questions that might be missing. This way, any flaws in the interview guide were removed before the case study was started. As stated before, semi-structured interviews were conducted to increase reliability and to give participants enough space to talk about what they deem important. These interviews were designed using the interview guide written by Patton (2002, p. 344-347). Themes that were discussed during this interview are: location of digital IT, reach of digital IT, control of digital IT, role of outsourcing of digital IT, alignment between traditional IT & digital IT and alignment between (digital) IT and business strategies. An overview of the interview guide can be found in Appendix A.

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4.3 Data Collection

To provide answers to the research objective, a single case study was conducted at one the

Netherlands largest telecom and IT service provider (TechX, 2012). Four IT managers involved in the implementation of bimodal IT at TechX were interviewed to present their vision on this subject. An overview of these participants and their position at TechX can be found in table 2. To increase the transparency of this research, all of the interviews were recorded with permission (Shenton, 2004). These four interviews were conducted in person and took approximately one hour to conduct. The goal of interviewing these four managers from different parts of the company was to gain a thorough understanding of how and why bimodal IT was implemented at different

departments.

Position at TechX Department of Interviewee Interview Date Manager Cloud

Infrastructure-as-a-Service

TechX Business 2nd of May, 2018 Product Manager

Application Cloud & Product Owner

TechX Business 9th of May, 2018

Director of Internal IT All of TechX 15th of May, 2018 Principal Consultant TechX Business Operations 17th of May, 2018

Table 2: Overview of interviewees at TechX

4.4 Data Analysis

Once all interviews were conducted, they were transcribed verbatim to be able to analyze and categorize the dataset. Two of these transcripts are included in Appendix D & E. Saldana (2015) defines a code as follows: “qualitative inquiry is most often a word or short phrase that symbolically assigns a summative, salient, essence-capturing, and/or evocative attribute for a portion of

language-based or visual data.” QRS NVivo 12, a computerized data processing tool designed specifically for qualitative research, was used to assign codes to the interview transcriptions (Welsh, 2002). Additionally, this software was used to categorize the assigned codes thematically. By

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18 organizing the data in themes, a thematic analysis can be performed to identify emerging patterns between constructs in the dataset (Braun & Clarke, 2006).

Using an inductive approach, the data analysis was performed with the assistance of NVivo 12 and consisted of several steps. No codes were designed ahead of time to go through the

transcripts with an open mindset (Saldaña, 2015). Firstly, all interviews were read, and important segments were labeled with open codes (Saldaña, 2015). These segments varied from a single sentence to about a paragraph of text. After assigning these open codes to all interviews, some of the initial codes were removed or merged due to redundancies. Next, axial coding was performed. Using a combination of inductive and deductive thinking, connections were made between

categories and subcategories and reduced to the following 7 themes: Timing of digitalization, reason for implementing digital IT, digital IT working approach, implementing digital IT in a large firm, governance of digital IT, digital IT in consumer vs. enterprise market & the future of digital IT (Saldaña, 2015). An overview of all codes is provided in Appendix B.

5. Results

5.1 Interview Findings

After transcribing all interviews verbatim and coding all data, the important findings were organized in an overview table to bring together all necessary facts for the single case study of TechX. Organizing the results in such a manner can help reveal systematic patterns and

relationships between constructs within the case (Miles & Huberman, 1994). The most important findings and quotations will be discussed here. The overview table of all the quotations can be found in Appendix C.

However, before discussing these findings, a simple explanation of the corporate structure and services TechX offers to their customers is warranted. TechX is a leading ICT services provider in the Netherlands, founded in 1989 as a public telecommunications company (TechX,

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19 2018b). They employ about 13,000 people in the Netherlands (TechX, 2018a). They provide a range of services to the consumer market as well as to the enterprise market. Within the consumer market, a range of services is offered by TechX Private in the area of communication, information, entertainment and commercial services via single play and multi-play packages. Examples of these services are fixed and mobile telephony, mobile data, internet and TV (TechX, 2018b). Within the enterprise market, TechX Business serves businesses from small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), large enterprises and corporates. These businesses are offered a full range of services, from fixed and mobile telephony and internet to a number of end-to-end solutions in the area of IT

infrastructure, workplace management, the cloud, safety, data networks and data centers (TechX, 2018b). An example of one of these services is the App Factory, This is a safe cloud-based platform that enables enterprises to speed up their app development and has been designed with Digital IT in mind. IT managers from both of these branches of TechX were interviewed to get a complete overview of how the company is implementing bimodal IT.

The results from these two branches will be discussed separately in order to prevent any unnecessary loss of information (Yin, 1994). For each of the branches, the results will be discussed in order of the themes identified during the coding process. These themes are: Timing of

digitalization, reason for implementing digital IT, digital IT working approach, implementing digital IT in a large firm, governance of digital IT & the future of digital IT. Finally, results from both these branches will be used to answer questions formulated in the research objective.

5.1.1 TechX Private

The timing of the digitalization at TechX was the first topic of discussion during the interviews that were conducted for this research. For TechX Private this process was started in 2014 when TechX Digital was formed. The reason given by one of the IT managers for this timing is as follows:

“We had to do something when it comes to digitalization. We have the ambition to be or become the best service provider of the Netherlands. That was the plan of our CEO at that time. But if you look

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in practice at the customer interaction and the kind of companies that are good examples in dealing

with that. I am talking about companies like Airbnb and Uber. They have one thing in common.

They are working with open source technology, and they are able to react to changes in customer

expectations quickly to improve or develop services.” (LB). At the time of setting up TechX Digital,

Uber had recently entered the market in the Netherlands (RTL Z, 2015). The plan of how this implementation would be performed was not fully developed at this time. “The way we

implemented it [bimodal IT] was really a process that was created along the way. You need to

experiment. You have to try new things to see if they work or they do not. […] This way bimodal IT

was implemented in a very organic way. There was never an exact strategic plan ahead of time

(LB)”. In the following section, we will dive further into why TechX implemented bimodal IT in

the first place.

When it comes to the reasoning behind the decision to implement bimodal IT at TechX, multiple factors played a significant role. One of the factors involved in making the decision was the changes to customer expectations with regards to the service they receive. The same IT manager explains: “The bar to become the best service provider of the Netherland keeps being raised by

companies like Uber and Airbnb. The reason for this is that these types of companies are currently

better at providing good customer service than traditional firms” (LB). The rising customer

expectations were perhaps the most significant factor in deciding to implement bimodal IT at TechX. The managers said they thought at that time that using bimodal IT would enable them to meet their customer expectations better to increase customer satisfaction and keep up with other companies. According to them: “In the end, you are doing it for the customer, that is the most

important part of it. That then goes two ways; firstly you do it to become a better service provider.

Secondly, you do it because customer expectations are growing quickly based on what customers

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21 expectations contributing to companies choosing to implement bimodal IT (displayed below in figure 2).

Figure 2: Customer expectations contributing to the choice to implement bimodal IT

In addition to rising customer expectations, other reasons for making this decision were also discussed. Another important factor for making this decision given by the IT managers was the speed of technology advancement. To illustrate: “If you look at software development and the

technology behind it. New software will last you about a year. In other words, the life cycle of

software is about a year. After that, you can throw it away and develop new software. That gives

you an indication of the speed of technology advancement. (LB)”. However, the traditional process

of developing new software was not quick enough to match with the speed of technology advancement. According to one of the interviewees, this process of developing a new piece of software the traditional way could take around five years from start to finish. In other words, by the time that the end product would be finished, the software probably wouldn’t be very relevant anymore. By implementing digital IT, TechX enabled themselves to start working in short cycles while using open source technologies. One good example to illustrate this point is this: “You used

to have about one year of supplier selection. Then, implementation of the software in practice

usually took around 3 or 4 years. […] However, there you have a mismatch with the life cycle of software. By working in short cycles and using open source technology, we can produce software

within the life cycle of software” (LB). In order to match the time to market with the speed of

technology advancement, TechX decided to implement bimodal IT. This predicted relationship from the conceptual model is displayed below in figure 3 and is in line with proposition 2.

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22 Figure 3: Speed of technology advancement contributing to the choice to implement bimodal IT.

The last factor discussed during these interviews concerning the reasoning behind implementing bimodal IT, was the fact that an increasing number of competitors was starting to use it as well. In order to keep up with their competition, TechX decided they also needed to start using bimodal IT. To illustrate: “And they [the competition] have one thing in common, they are all working with

open source technology. Which is part of the reason why they are able to adjust and develop based

on changing customer needs quickly. In other words, you can be much more proactive towards your

customer. If you want to stay on par or at least close to what those companies are doing, then you

also have to make an important move forward and start to implement those types of technologies

(LB)”. In conclusion, TechX feared they would stay behind their competitors if they did not decide

to implement bimodal IT. This relationship from the conceptual model is displayed below in figure 4 and is in line with proposition 3.

Figure 4: Number of competitors using bimodal IT contributing to the choice to implement bimodal IT

Now that we have discussed all the reasons behind the choice to implement bimodal IT, we will move on to how this implementation took shape at TechX. Firstly, the tasks performed by digital IT were discussed. At TechX, this mode deals with all IT related to the customer interaction. Examples of this are the call centers, the TechX mobile app, the website and the physical TechX stores. Digital IT is involved in the business vision, strategy, architecture, development, operations, and infrastructure of these products. Teams consist of around eight team members, which include a

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product owner, a scrum master, front and back-end developers and occasionally a consultant or Agile coach. These teams work in short cycles of 2 weeks, and they can deploy new software every day or sometimes even every couple of hours. Open source technology is used, which further helps reducing costs since this type of software is freely available. One of the most important factors in the implementation at TechX is the amount of autonomy that the teams get. As one of the IT managers describes: “You have to imagine, you can only achieve a higher speed if you give the

people a lot of autonomy in their work. So, choices for technology, choices for solutions, setting priorities, if you were to do this via traditional governance models, with steering committees and such, would never work. One of the first things we had to take care of was that the responsibility to make choices got pushed down in our organization and was given to the teams as much as possible (LB)”. To make interaction more seamless between traditional and digital IT, traditional IT

interfaces were made to be loosely coupled. This way they were able to develop a web application programming interface (API), where developers from digital IT could easily access what they needed from traditional IT without interfering with them. A reason given by one of the IT managers for this was: “By doing that, we were able to get the flexibility we needed for digital IT and the

ability to keep everything secure in the back-end (LB).” Now that we know the most important

characteristics of the bimodal IT implementation at TechX, we will move on to challenges associated with implementing bimodal IT at a large firm.

One of the main challenges identified in the interview findings was that enacting any type of change within a large organization requires a change of culture and mindset. For this reason, a large amount of money has been invested in trying to change the culture and mindset of employees working in the digital IT teams. One of the IT managers explains this choice: “We needed to invest

in culture and mindset change since those are the only factors that really need to change. Without that, it will never work (LB)”. In addition to this, the results showed that it is very important for

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employee that fits well with the culture of digital IT: “They are intrinsically motivated. They are

not coming to work for a high salary or lease car. That is really very different from employees whom we have had for over 20 years. The new employees are here actively developing themselves and their skills. […] When they first come in, they will not ask many questions. They will just sit down and start working (LB)”. An advantage of hiring these types of employees is that they also

help other employees see what working with digital IT is all about and this culture could potentially “rub off” on one another. These new employees could be particularly helpful for people who have been working at TechX for a long time already and who might be relatively stuck in their ways of doing things.

The advantages and disadvantages of working with bimodal IT were also discussed. One of the IT managers responsible for implementing bimodal IT describes some of the advantages as follows: “Speed. You are very close to your customers with the digital IT team, so you can very

quickly do something with the feedback they receive. Reliability. Performance. You could say that we have made a big step forward in many different areas. If you look internally, a lot of our costs are greatly reduced. So, if you look at the implementation, we have now. We are doing a lot of the same work with about a third of the costs and a third of the people if you compare it with where we started about three years ago. It really makes a big difference. So, the main advantages are cheaper and more effective. You can see that if you look at data with regards to customer satisfaction, net promoter score and a reduction of customer calls (LB)”. Additionally, some disadvantages of this

implementation were also discussed. The same IT manager considered the changes needed to organizational culture to be the biggest disadvantage of implementing bimodal IT. “The most

important disadvantage is the difficulty of changing organizational culture. Like the prevailing culture at the start of TechX and the culture you need to retain good software developers. The moment that we get a disconnect between them, it could all go wrong. Good developers could potentially leave the company. If that happens, our entire implementation fails. I think that that is

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probably the biggest risk of our bimodal IT implementation (LB)”. Some of the advantages

described by this IT manager were also part of possible outcomes in the conceptual model made at the start of this research and can be seen below in figure 5. These results are in line with the propositions 4 & 5 that were based on this conceptual model.

Figure 5: The predicted contribution of Bimodal IT to customer satisfaction & firm performance

Implementing bimodal IT at a large organization also gives managers new challenges with regards to the governance of such teams. Within TechX they tried to minimize the number of managers dealing with bimodal IT as much as possible to make sure the teams remain autonomous and flexible. The director of internal IT describes it as follows: “I have a team with three other people.

One of those people is responsible for the employees, the other for the finances and the last one for the technological vision. That is actually the team with whom I lead the entire organization (LB)”.

Furthermore, to ensure good alignment between the business vision and IT, a product owner in each team is responsible for aligning these two perspectives. This has essentially solved many problems of the past and makes business IT alignment easier than before.

To conclude the interviews, each IT manager was asked their perspective with regards to the future of bimodal IT. The IT manager responsible for the entire transformation for TechX Private said the following: “I think that eventually, everything within our company will be done the way

Digital IT works (LB).” In the next chapter, we will discuss the interview findings with regards to

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5.1.2 TechX Business

The first topic of discussion was the timing of the bimodal IT implementation. At this branch of TechX, the IT managers indicated that this process started somewhere in 2016. At the time TechX

“directly started acquiring (new) customers. In the past, that was only done once a product was finished and fully featured. This way a way for us to see whether the early majority was interested

in these new types of products (JB)”. In the next section, the reason behind choosing to implement

bimodal IT will be discussed.

As mentioned in the previous chapter about TechX Private, customer expectations have been rising in recent years (Apica, 2017). According to one of the IT managers, this also has its effect on the enterprise market for TechX business. To illustrate: “There has always been a certain tension

between the consumer and enterprise market. If you look at services available to consumers at

home. About three years ago you had people at home using services such as Outlook and Gmail.

These are services where the customer is completely in control of a lot of their own settings and

configuration. These types of services naturally add pressure to the enterprise market to provide

products with similar capabilities. So, you get [enterprise] customers who are saying: why can I

configure my mail at home almost any way I want, but when I am at work it does not allow me to

change anything myself? These types of questions are the result of rising customer expectations in

the consumer market trickling down into the enterprise market (HS)”. This implies that the reason

for TechX Business to implement bimodal IT was (partially) similar to TechX Consumer, namely rising customer expectations. Another reason given by the IT managers was that the time to market for new products developed using traditional IT was too long to be able to match demand. By the time the product could be released, the early majority was already using competitors’ their products and the market would be saturated already. This is also related to the higher speed of technology advancement as discussed in the previous section. In order to deal with this TechX now takes the following approach: “We start developing new products quickly but on a small scale. If the demand

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for the product gains traction, we always have the ability to scale up our operations to fit that need

(JB).” One final reason given by IT managers for implementing bimodal IT was very simple. They

were getting requests from customers for certain services that could be developed more easily with the help of Digital IT. To summarize, both the rising customer expectations and higher speed of technology advancement contributed to TechX’s choice to implement bimodal IT, as can be seen below in figure 6. These results are line with both propositions 1 & 2, formulated based on this conceptual model.

Figure 6: The predicted contribution of customer expectation & speed of technology advancement to the choice to implement bimodal IT

Another reason that contributed to the decision to implement bimodal IT at TechX was the increasing number of competitors that were starting to use it. An example given by one of the IT managers is: “Look for example at what is now called [other large telecom provider, name

removed], which positioned itself opposite of TechX […] as a serious competitor of TechX. This

helped further helped trigger TechX to offer similar solutions [digital IT solutions] as a service,

instead of as a couple of different products. (MB)”. This result is in line with the findings described

for the TechX consumer market. This proposed relationship can be seen below in figure 7 and is in line with proposition 3.

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28 When it comes to the working approach of digital IT, the results for TechX Business are very

similar to those for TechX Private. Digital IT multidisciplinary autonomous teams generally consist of 8 people, which includes a product owner, a scrum master, front and back-end developers and occasionally an Agile coach. These teams work in short cycles of 2 or 4 weeks (also called sprints) and are usually in direct contact with the customer at multiple moments in the development process. One of the IT managers explains: “We want to do the development in an interactive way with our

customer. First, we will make an initial plan and show that to our customer. Based on the feedback

from the customer, changes will be made in the next sprints. In the next phase, the customer will

have the chance to provide feedback again, which will then be implemented again. (HS)”. This

process repeats itself a number of times until the product is finished and delivered to the customer. At TechX business, digital IT teams are also concerned with the business vision, strategy,

architecture, development, operations, and infrastructure of new or existing products. They have a high degree of autonomy, which allows them to make most important decisions themselves without having to consult someone outside of their team. One other important factor addressed by the IT managers was the fact that this implementation can on occasion cause friction between traditional IT and digital IT teams. To illustrate: “At the moment these two modes are living in separate worlds

at TechX. People who are part of the digital IT teams might feel better than people who are still working in traditional. This is probably because working in an Agile way is hip, modern and fast. These people do not really understand why traditional IT is so slow. While on the other side, people working in traditional IT are proud of the fact that they provide secure and reliable software. They

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think, these new fast boys will probably just mess up. So yes, there is some friction between the two different modes of working (HS)”. How TechX plans to deal with this friction is still being figured

out. In the next section, the challenges, advantages, and disadvantages of implementing bimodal IT in a large firm will be discussed.

One of the main challenges of implementing bimodal IT in a large firm that came forward during multiple interviews with IT managers at TechX, was the importance of employee-fit with the culture and mindset associated with digital IT. This can be especially difficult for older employees of the company who have been working a certain way for a long period. To help improve the culture fit of the employees working with digital IT, much money is invested into culture and mindset training. Additionally, new employees are hired that have experience with working in an Agile way. These employees could potentially serve as an example to the old employees. This way their Agile way of working could potentially “rub off” on the old employees.

The advantages of working with bimodal IT according to the IT managers are as follows:

“You can see the effect very clearly when you look our customer satisfaction. This has really increased by a lot. We had a long way to go [from when bimodal IT was implemented], but we really improved quite a lot. In addition, our profitability has increased. I think because we are using IT in smarter and more cost-efficient way (MB)”. Another important advantage of this way of

working is the flexibility it offers regarding changing goals. Even if goals changes while developing the product, this usually doesn’t produce any big problems when working with digital IT. These advantages are in line with propositions 4 & 5 formulated based on the conceptual model, as can be

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seen in figure 8 below. However, working with a bimodal IT method also has its disadvantages. One of these disadvantages is the cooperation between digital IT and other parts of the company still working in a traditional way, which can be difficult at times because the styles of working are very different. One of the interviewed IT managers gives an example of this: “If you look for

example at the procurement department. They generally only purchase in large volumes from certain large suppliers, which allows them to get the best and lowest price. Because of this they generally only work with a small number of large suppliers. However, companies that we [digital IT] want to purchase from, generally do not allow for such deals. […] If that is the environment in which you are trying to innovate that can occasionally cause problems between the two styles of working”. In addition to this, one of the other disadvantages is the governance of the different

teams. Some teams are dedicated to working on only one task, which makes the governance

relatively easy. However, as soon as digital IT teams are working on parts of a product, this creates dependencies and possible interferences between the different teams working on it. If teams do not finish their parts of the product on time, this could potentially cause a delay for another team dependent on the other team to continue working. The details of how TechX deals with this challenge will be discussed in the next paragraph.

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31 As mentioned before, the governance of Digital IT teams can be a challenge. One of the IT managers interviewed for this research receives a sprint planning of all digital IT teams (around 20 at the time of writing) within the TechX Business branch. This document is usually around 50 pages and contains much information. According to this manager: “If you just look at what you as a

human can identify in such a huge pile of information, it quickly becomes tricky. Trying to figure

out where all the dependencies between teams are and finding all possible bottlenecks can be very

difficult […] As we are starting to get more teams that are going to work with this method, this will only get more difficult. That is really where technology such as artificial intelligence could

potentially help us manage these teams in the future. (HS)”. In other words, TechX is still

experimenting with what type of governance they will need in the future. However, at the time of writing this research, there is a specific team in place to manage and coordinate all the digital IT team. They have to help identify dependencies, possible bottlenecks and how the goals of multiple teams can be aligned.

Finally, the IT managers at this branch were asked their opinion about the future of bimodal IT. Here opinions differed somewhat from what this research found at the TechX Consumer branch. The IT managers in this branch thought that it would still take a long time before tasks currently done by traditional IT would be performed in an Agile way. One of the IT managers explains: “The

systems of records, about 30 to 40% of the systems we have running, is not going to change in the

next ten years. The fact that we are changing all the front-ends via systems of engagement in order

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monetary systems, those will keep working in mode 1 for a while. When it comes to those types of

things you do not want something unpredictable to happen because if it does, we as a company

could potentially have big problems (HS)”.

In the next section, all the findings presented here will be integrated to answer the research objective set at the start of this research.

5.2 Integration of the Results

Since there is much overlap between the answers from interviews from both branches, these results will be discussed together in this section. However, wherever differences exist with the enterprise branch, these will be pointed out.

Forms of bimodal IT were first implemented at TechX in 2014. At this time, early adopters of technology were already using this form of IT implementation. A good example of one of these companies is Spotify (Kniberg & Ivarsson, 2012). By implementing this model, TechX was better able to respond to their customers’ needs and expectations and could react quickly to changes in these factors. Since more and more companies started working this way, customers’ expectations have risen in recent years (Horlach et al., 2016). These increasing expectations from the consumer market have started to trickle down into the enterprise market. People from the enterprise market got used to the quality of service as a regular customer and expected the same standards of service in the enterprise market. In 2016 this led to TechX implementing bimodal IT in more departments within the enterprise branch, and this process is still on-going.

These findings also partially explain why TechX decided to implement bimodal IT. Reasons that the interviewed IT managers gave for implementing bimodal IT at TechX are as follows: make TechX able to react quickly to customer needs, speed of development mismatched with the life cycle of software (about 1 year), direct competition was also starting to implement bimodal IT and lastly, and perhaps most importantly, to increase customer satisfaction. With

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33 regards to the enterprise market, TechX saw the early adopters using it and started getting requests from the early majority, who they see as important customers, to provide digital IT types of

services. This led to them implementing services such as the App Factory.

How TechX went about implementing bimodal IT was also discussed with the IT managers. Each team within Digital IT is responsible for a (part of) a product. Each product team consists of about 8 to 10 members, and this includes a product owner, scrum master, front-end and back-end developers. Some teams are assigned an Agile coach. These teams work in sprints of a maximum of two weeks. Each team operates autonomously and releases parts of a project frequently. There is increased use of open source technology and systems within TechX have been made loosely-coupled. These digital IT teams operate separately from the traditional IT department. Also, they have their own office spaces. Therefore, there is currently limited interaction between traditional & digital IT. Because of the big differences in ways of working and limited interaction, friction between the two modes of working occasionally occurs.

Since bimodal IT has been implemented at TechX for a couple of years now, the IT managers were also asked about what they thought are advantages and disadvantages of working with this method. Advantages are more flexibility, faster speed to release, better able to match customer needs and expectations and higher customer satisfaction. The latter could also be seen through the net promoter score that improved every year since implementing bimodal IT (TechX, 2018a). On the other hand, they also gave their opinion of disadvantages of this implementation. Disadvantages given by the IT managers are: bimodal IT produces friction between Traditional & Digital IT, organizational culture is difficult to change to fit this way of working, governance of all teams is difficult and still being figured out, and lastly, this implementation is very much dependent on having employees with the right mindset for the job since without them the entire model fails.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, IT managers gave their vision of how they thought bimodal IT has affected business performance within TechX. According to them, contributions of

Bimodal IT in the age of digital transformation : implementation in practice