Digital transformation of the enterprise: key definitions, principles and approaches

The article critically analyses the approaches to understanding the essential characteristics and principles of digital transformation of modern enterprises. The study aims to consider the existing points of view on the essence and content of digital transformation and digitalization, to identify the features of digital transformation depending on the type of business processes of the organization. The key hypothesis of the study is that there are different types of digital transformation, the efficient implementation of which significantly depends on the specifics of the business processes, the correct choice of the type and strategy of digital transformation. The article analyzes the views of domestic and foreign researchers on the relationship between such definitions as: digitalization and digital transformation. The analysis results in the grouping of the existing points of view into 3 basic approaches: process, aggregation and identity, and the authors identified the distinctions between digitalisation and digital transformation. The authors specify the differences between the “digitalization” and “digital transformation” and identify 2 enlarged types of digital transformation: the first type has a hallmark - “change design vector”, and the second type has a set of features including “scale of change” and “radicality of change”. The classification of digital transformation types expands theoretical knowledge in the field of digital transformation management of enterprises and contributes to the development of practically-oriented methods and models of effective digital transformation in domestic enterprises. The authors justify the relationship between the types of business processes of the enterprise in terms of digital transformation type: the first type of digital transformation is most typical for the main business processes with high capital intensity and low flexibility, and the second is typical for auxiliary and managerial business processes with low capital intensity and greater flexibility. The model of classification of digital transformation projects allows us to diversify strategies, minimize costs and increase the efficiency of digitalisation of business processes.