Reviewing the historical link between Business Process Management and IT: making the case towards digital innovation

Business Process Management (BPM) in the age of digitalization and globalization needs to become more innovative and creative. Information Technology (IT) helps to bring innovation in an organization's business processes. Our research objective is to incorporate prior studies related to the co-evolution between BPM and IT in order to explore insights and innovation trends resulting from this IT integration in the BPM discipline. We position the sampled studies against three BPM frameworks (i.e. BPM life cycle components, BPM core elements, and BPM context factors) to better incorporate their historical link with (new) IT. A Systematic Literature Review (SLR) procedure was followed, resulting in 1,198 research papers for content analysis. The review output is summarized in a BPM-IT evolution chart and an extended BPM framework. The evolution chart confirms that Industry 4.0, Blockchains, Internet of Things (IoT) and Ambidextrous BPM are the most rising trends. We conclude by digging deeper into the novel themes for researchers, BPM consultants and managers.