Digitization is a topic frequently discussed in the public both from a technological and societal perspective. The term digitization as such describes the massive use of latest development in ICT, such as Internet-of-Things, mobile communication, sensors, machine learning, self-organizing systems and big data for a fusion of real-world objects and processes, and their virtual representation. This is supposed to lead to new products and services, new business models and more efficient operations in enterprises and organizations.

The current dilemma of digitization is that there are no proven methods and approach in what situations with what procedure and resources to perform digitization. The success stories and best practices reported in the media and case study books often either are from large enterprise and start-ups and cannot be transferred to the average small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) or across domains.

Based on the experiences from a number of industrial digitization projects the chair business information systems developed a digital transformation approach dedicated to SME which is based on the principles of digital architectures. Business, technologies used for digitization and integration into the enterprise should happen in an integrated way.