Michael Bloch & Yves Pigneur
Ecole des HEC
University of Lausanne
CH - 1015 Lausanne
Tel. +41.21.692.3416
Fax +41.21.692.3405
E-mail michael.bloch@unil.ch, yves.pigneur@unil.ch
Paper submitted for publication in the Journal for Strategic Information Systems
Information gathering, in-the-field working, virtual corporation, close links with customers and suppliers, extension of distribution and marketing channels, electronic markets, information malls, ... Inter-organisational systems are numerous and multi-form.
This paper adopts and refines a framework to classify and analyse these forms of inter-organisational systems. It mainly distinguishes what happens (1) at the boundary of the firms, (2) in their relations with their customers and suppliers and (3) on the markets they reach. This paper shows how information and communication technologies (ICT) can change the art of possible for the so-called extended enterprises.
Two of such technologies, well adapted for inter-enterprise and extra-enterprise systems building are briefly reviewed: Lotus Notes and the Internet. Finally, cases are exposed illustrating inter-enterprise systems using Lotus Notes, based on information gathering systems, IT-enabled partnerships for a cross-organisational project team, a customer support service and an electronic catalogue.
electronic commerce, extended enterprise, information and communication technologies, inter-organisational systems, IT-enabled partnerships
Why talk about this subject ?
According to a Forrester Research report [], by the year 2002, companies will spend 45% of their IS/IT budget on extended enterprise applications, i.e. applications spanning company boundaries, to include a complex web of relationships between a company, its partners, customers, suppliers and its markets. Therefore, it is critical for companies to understand these issues now and begin planning and experimenting with such systems.
We believe usage of inter-organisational systems (IOS) will grow because of the need to integrate disparate organisations or individuals in the same IT-enabled processes, independently of formal boundaries. In the same way process management methodologies look at a process as a set of related activities, independently of functional boundaries, information technology now allows us to consider and integrate whole value chains, independently of geographical or organisational boundaries.
In most companies, the traditional IS/IT spending has been focused up till now on intra-enterprise projects, but a new source of added value can be derived from extending the scope of the IT projects. This is called IT-enabling the extended enterprise.
Introduction
What is this paper all about ?
Inter-organisational information systems (IOS) have been the subject of much literature and case studies (Konsynski has studied about 40 such systems []). Widely published success stories such as SABRE [], Baxter Healthcare [], Quick response [], Singapore TradeNet [] and others have helped define IOS as a new source of added value that Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) can add to a business. The idea here is the extension of a company’s information systems outside its traditional organisational boundaries.
Traditionnaly, these extensions required high-end, specific and often proprietary technologies (such as EDI systems, Value-Added Network and specific in-house developments.) We see now new technologies lowering the cost of entry to build such inter-organisation systems, therefore providing smaller companies with the opportunity to derive large business benefits from crossing organisational boundaries to include their customers, suppliers or partners in their processes. These new technologies are less complex to understand and use, therefore decreasing the know-how necessary to master them. The cost of ownership of these systems is also decreasing, thanks to standard-based client-server technology and open networks replacing mainframe-based, often proprietary technology, formerly available.
We also see a move from systems supporting structured data exchange (e.g. an EDI system transferring orders or payment confirmations) to systems allowing the sharing of various kind of information (data, text, pictures, sounds, video, etc.) This extends the type of activities which can be supported by these systems. Moreover, the larger availability of new communication technologies (ISDN, public wide-area networks) and the increasing support of standards will considerably increase the use of such systems by the public consumers.
We believe the issues related to interorganisational information systems should be on every manager’s agenda as we are now witnessing the convergence of clear business needs and an increased availability of technology to support these needs.
Therefore, the objectives of this paper are
what are the business drivers for the IT-enabled extended enterprises ?
what are the business benefits to be derived ?
why should you investigate ?
This section describes different ways Information and Communication Technologies support more integrated links between companies. We’ll present seven examples, to show the wide scope of projects, but will focus some more on inter-enterprise IT-enabled relationships. The section 4 will then classify these examples in a more general framework.
Information gathering
The first type of activities extending the use of information systems outside a company boundaries are the various information collecting and analysis tools, assisting in outside information scanning. Intelligence is an activity performed by any company, to get information about its competitors, new products and technologies, its potential new customers or markets, etc. These activities can be greatly enhanced using CD-ROMs, added-value databases or information servers. The increased availability of Internet connections will also ease the access to this kind of information.
In this field, electronic communication and information processing tools are quickly supplanting manual databases of articles and newspapers, through new storage technologies, document image processing, quick search and retrieval techniques and the ability to index massive amounts of information (independently of the current need for such information.)
In-the-field work
There is a clear tendency today to go away from the traditional workplace (one office in one location) towards a more liberal work model (work anytime, anywhere). This requires some technological support so that remote users can still be connected to their traditional computing environment, get access to their traditional applications and be integrated in their usual business processes. Technologies such as laptop computing, wireless networks and ISDN at home definitely help people compute where their work happens to be instead of forcing them to work where their computers are.
Some companies have totally embraced this approach and use it to deliver increasing levels of customer service. Progressive Insurance [] introduced five years ago its Immediate Response Program, where a specialist rushes to the scene of a car accident to assist the victims and advise them on medical procedures, repair shops and legal formalities. The specialist also inspects the accident scene, the damaged vehicles and enters this information in an automated claims management system. This allows him to determine on the spot the settlement amount and in some cases to write a check directly. Increased customer satisfaction and retention (in a volatile market) is one of the reasons Progressive Insurance is performing exceedingly well in a difficult insurance industry.
In this case, the technology is used to allow a remote worker the same kind of access to company systems that an office worker has. This allows execution of his job where it matters most, close to the customer.
Virtual corporations
We can observe nowadays in companies around the world an increasing number of multi-organisation work teams []. For example, a car producer will team with his main part suppliers during the design the next model of a new car to speed up the development process, while simultaneously sharing the progress of his work with his public relations agency.
Some of the main drivers for the increase in cross-organisation work are:
An increased sophistication amongst customers (both for industrial customers and personal consumers) induce a need for many companies to informate their product or services offering. This means that companies not only deliver a product or a service but also information on the delivery or use of a service or information to help facilitate the use of the product.
For instance, the international express mail and freight carriers (Federal Express, DHL, UPS, TNT, ...) all provide detailed tracking information to their customers. Through major investments in IT (scanning systems, wireless communication networks, tracking systems, etc.), these companies are able to know the exact location of any package, anywhere in the world, in real-time; an impressive achievement knowing that Federal Express, for example, delivers around two million packages every day !
For a major customer of these carriers, knowing the exact location and delivery time of a package is extremely valuable. Some industrial car manufacturers, for instance, use an express carrier to move parts between suppliers and their assembly lines. In some cases, the only stock of these just-in-time systems is on the lorries transporting the parts. It is therefore of vital importance to know the exact time of delivery in order to plan accurately the assembly process. To answer this need, carrier companies provide their customers with software to track their packages, in direct connections with the carrier’s systems. These are usually PC-based software, but can also be integrated directly in the customer’s information systems. Federal Express even recently began to provide a tracking system directly on the World-Wide-Web [].
In other examples, we see retailers providing detailed sales data to their suppliers in order to help these plan their production. In some cases, the availability of such information and its instant transmission allows the supplier to automatically replenishes the stocks of its customer, sometimes even placing goods in the shelves, with no human intervention to re-order goods or giving directions (e.g. Frito-Lay [].)
An extension of distribution and marketing channels
New communication technologies also offer new channels for a company to market and sell goods to its customers. For example:
Some of these new electronic sales and distribution channels gave birth to new kinds of marketplaces, where suppliers and customers can join to do business (e.g. Barternet, TradeNet [5], AucNet [], CommerceNet []). These markets can be operated by a third-party organisation (an operator) or simply self-regulated, through some well-known market rules.
Aucnet is a good example of an operator-managed electronic market, used in Japan to sell cars. Each week, sellers call AucNet with a list of the cars they offer, which are then evaluated on-site by an inspector who also collects photographs of the cars. These photographs are then grouped on a laser disc with the detailed descriptions of the cars and shipped to subscribing dealers around the country. An on-line auction takes then place and cars are finally shipped to the buyer. Such an electronic platform gives sellers access to a much larger number of potential buyers and increases the buyers range of choice. Moreover, it greatly increases operational efficiencies (with no more need to move cars from one site to another) and increases buying convenience. Since 1989, AucNet’s net margin (through fees charged to buyers and sellers) has averaged more than 20%.
Virtual places
The last type of activities taking place outside a company’s boundary, thanks to new ICTs, is the virtual mall []. It is a package of virtual services, using the metaphor of a shopping mall, and giving access to shops, museums, libraries, etc. Moreover, there are some services useful to everyone (such as directories, banks, etc.) Downtown Anywhere is a nice example of such a place on the Internet []. It will give customers a way to access a packaged set of services, matching his interests. For the service provider, it is a great way to provide customised service to auto-selected customers.
The added value of extended enterprise projects
We’ve seen above examples of the use of technology to support the sharing and exchange of information across individuals and organisations. The added value of these projects come from two sources: the facilitation of existing activities and the creation of new sources of value. Let’s discuss these in some more detail.
The first source of added value comes from the improvement of existing activities. In these cases, technology simply facilitates the current way of working, by speeding up processes, reducing cost, reducing potential for errors or adding flexibility by allowing quick changes. In the case of extended enterprises, the focus on the whole value chain, independently of organisational boundaries, is one of the major impacts. By reducing costs of coordination, inter-organisational technologies allow a firm to choose a distributed structure without incurring cost penalties, thus providing a maximum flexibility in terms of geographical locations or number of partners. By providing new channels for commercial activities, technology supports the core processes of any company, allowing it to extend its reach, and providing a maximum amount of information on each customer.
The second source of added value comes from the creation of new services, often in addition to the traditional offering of a company. These examples are more difficult to find, but usually provide the most competitive advantage, redefining the competitive position of each actor. SABRE is one of the most often-cited examples. In another industry, new technologies such as massively-parallel computers have given some credit-card companies the opportunity to quickly and timely analyse the spending records of their customers and use that information to target specific offers, based on the purchasing habits of these cardholders. In some cases, the value derived from the information about the service is more valuable than the service itself (in the case of a credit card company, we could imagine them giving a card to the cardholder for free, as long as he lets the company sell the information about his spending patterns.) []
A framework
how can we classify the various forms of IT-enabled extended enterprises ?
In the previous section, we’ve presented examples of extended enterprises. We want here to present a general framework to classify all of these boundary-crossing activities. This framework is based on two previously proposed classifications, one from Benn Konsynski [1] the other from Lotus Development []
This framework should be useful to understand, classify and compare various types of ICT use in support of extended enterprises. It should also allow to discover potential uses in a particular situation or industry.
The first framework that can be used has been proposed by Konsynski, in order to analyse IT systems crossing the organisational boundaries of a firm. This framework can be represented by the following picture:
Figure : Konsynski’s framework
This framework splits boundary-crossing activities in three groups:
groups of relations are described here:
Each company should customise this framework in its particular case and analyse the added value it can derive from IT-enabling particular cross-organisational activity. Different types of companies will have different maps, with the emphasis on different types of activities.
The BRM+ framework defined
This section defines the 9 types of systems classified by the BRM+ framework.
| Type | Definition | Examples | |
Intelligence | the collection of information coming from outside the corporate boundaries in order to better understand the environment | on-line databases, information servers | |
| Boundary | Forums | the discussion of a particular problem, through connections with experts or discussion forums, in order to solve a particular issue | Usenet |
Mobile | the use of IT systems outside the geographical boundaries of a firm, to get closer to its customers, markets or to support mobile workers | laptops, wireless connections, mobile phones | |
Inter-enterprise | the exchange of information amongst a (relatively) small group of partners, known in advance, reflecting a business relation | EDI, multi-organisation project management | |
| Relations | Multi-enterprise | the exchange of information amongst partners, according to well-defined protocols (both business and technical), in order to work on a common project or build a product. | agile corporations |
Extra-enterprise | the publication of information, broadcasted to a large number of persons, unknown in advance, to market, distribute or support products | WWW servers on the Internet | |
Platforms | electronic marketplace, often created by a trade group, to facilitate coordination and get scale economies profitable to a whole industry | TransNet, IVANS | |
| Markets | Electronic markets | electronic places where buyers and sellers meet to trade a particular type of product or service, most often managed by an operator, which facilitates the matching of partners and sometimes provides side services, like negotiation or financing | stock exchanges, SABRE, Reuters Instinet |
Information malls | the extension of commercial malls, in a virtual world. An exchange infrastructure to facilitate transactions, including not only virtual shops (selling all kind of products), but also virtual libraries, museums, discussion areas, etc. | Downtown Anywhere, Compuserve | |
what are the enabling technologies for the extended enterprise ?
This section describes two sets of technologies to support the extended enterprise. We also relate these technologies and their inherent characteristics to the framework we proposed in the previous section.
We try to explicit here the different technology requirements for the relations systems we identified earlier. We focus specifically on the inter- and extra-enterprise systems, and separate the characteristics of the exchange between actors and the functionalities of the applications.
Inter-enterprise systems requirements
As a general rule, we won’t only consider here EDI-type systems (i.e. structured data, strong compliance with standards, long set-up time, etc.) but will expand the scope towards more tactically-oriented systems (sharing of unstructured data, through company-to-company arrangements.)
The characteristics of inter-enterprise exchanges are the (relatively) few numbers of partners involved, but the high importance of the information exchanged. The required reliability and security of the link is proportional to the importance of the link to both partner’s businesses. As a general rule, one should consider the security and reliability requirements of the cross-organisational IT systems equal to those of internal operational systems. This means the IT architecture supporting the IOS should offer
The characteristics of these systems is the very large number of (potential) customers who will access the service. Therefore, the underlying architecture should
In this paper, we will focus on two sets of technologies, embodied in applications, that we believe are uniquely qualified to answer the requirements outlined above. The first set of technologies is centered around the Lotus Notes environment, the second around the Internet and its applications. We believe Lotus Notes supports very well inter-enterprise applications and that the Internet (and its related applications) is one of the main drivers behind extra-enterprise applications.
Lotus Notes
Lotus Notes [] has been widely considered as the application which helped defined the term groupware, i.e. computer tools helping people work together and communicate effectively across time or space boundaries. Although competitors are beginning to emerge, it is still the primary and leading tool in this area, and will help serve to illustrate the inter-enterprise support technologies.
There are two possible descriptions of Lotus Notes, a business-oriented and a technically-oriented. Business people usually consider Lotus Notes to be a groupware environment, improving access to information (through shared replicated databases) and enhancing coordination (through communication features and workflow.)
For the more technical people, Lotus Notes can be described in terms of its fundamental constituents:
In a formal sense, the Internet is not a set of technologies, but a wide-area network linking thousands of sites around the world. Nevertheless some technologies were created especially for the Internet and are mainly used in that environment today. They will serve to illustrate the extra-enterprise support technologies.
Technologies in use on the Internet include communication, resource sharing and navigation tools. Communication tools are mainly electronic mail and discussion forums (Usenet news); resource sharing include file transfer (FTP) and remote terminal emulation (Telnet) and navigation tools include Gopher (a text-based hypertext system) and the World-Wide Web (WWW), a graphic-oriented hyper-media system. WWW has been a main driving force behind the explosive increase of use of the Internet.
A few more words on WWW may be helpful, as this system will probably become the primary front-end tool used by Internet and on-line-service users in the coming months, integrating all other tools under a common umbrella. WWW appears to the user a graphical front-end viewer, allowing to consult multimedia documents stored on servers around the world. These documents can include hypertext links pointing to other documents on the same servers, or on other servers. Popular servers on the Web include presentations of companies, electronic catalogues, information database services and gateways to existing services.
Open technologies and convergence
A main difference between the two sets of technologies presented above are the openness of each environment. Lotus Notes can be considered a proprietary albeit open environment (i.e. it is the exclusive property of one company, although it offers various ways to integrate with its data and services). The technologies related to the Internet are most often non-proprietary (having usually been built by volunteers, and placed in the public domain), although commercial providers are now gradually taking over.
In the context of fast-evolving technologies, being proprietary is sometimes an advantage, as it allows a company to impose standards and offer upfront advanced functionality. This is the case in regard to the security and reliability of the Lotus Notes environment, compared to Internet technologies. As such, it perfectly serves the need of inter-enterprise systems, who require the level of security and monitoring Lotus Notes currently provides. Moreover, the workflow, shared databases and structuring facilities provided by Lotus Notes are currently unmatched in the Internet world.
Extra-applications require other types of functionalities, as we’ve seen above. In this case, Internet-related technologies offer the massive amount of potential customers, the standards-compliance and the flexibility required by the providers of most-often information & marketing applications. This insures a maximum number of people are able to connect to these systems and offer maximum flexibility to innovate in this fast-paced world.
We’ll finish this section by outlining that we’ll quickly see these technologies converge, and become even more complementary. Lotus recently announced a product line called InterNotes, which aims to leverage the strengths of Lotus Notes, while opening it to the Internet. The most interesting product, called InterNotes Web Publisher will allow any Notes database to be converted dynamically and thus be accessible to any Web browser. This will allow companies to manage information in a Notes world, while publishing it to a maximum amount of users through the Internet.
On another hand, the Internet is already well on its way to acquire more secure functionalities, as encryption and authentication standards are progressively adopted by a majority of providers.
In conclusion, we believe Lotus Notes will progressively acquire network-like capabilities like the Internet and that the Internet will progressively acquire advanced front-end tools functionalities, similar to those offered today by Lotus Notes.
Lotus Notes case studies
can you describe some real-world examples of inter-organisational systems ?
Figure : Some case studies
After our description of the business drivers behind the extended enterprise, our proposition of a general framework to describe these companies and our discussion of enabling technologies, we describe here four IOS (we helped in the development of the two projects presented in section 6.2 & 6.3 .) These systems obviously fall in the three categories of our framework, the first is a boundary system, the two next are relations system and the last is an electronic market.
It is outside the scope of this paper to describe in more detail the various services, supporting extra-enterprise applications, available on Internet. The interested reader can consult [] and [] which describe a survey of Internet services related to extended enterprises, carried out in our research team. Marc-Andr Schenk also developed tools to fill some current gaps of Internet software (argumentation systems, reputation-enforcing third parties, paying consultation of documents through electronic money, voting systems, intelligent mail agents, etc.)
The first example describes technology as an additional delivery mechanism for information, the second illustrates technology as a support to manage a business process redesign project involving multiple partners, working in different cities. The third example is a customer service support system which demonstrates how technology sometimes redefines the service delivered to customers. Finally, the last system, in the context of electronic commerce, demonstrates the competitive advantage technology can bring by allowing a company to provide a superior delivery system for its services.
Distributing external information electronically
Every company has a need to distribute external information to its managers. This information is usually made of press releases, news services clippings, consulting reports, etc. In this example, we will concentrate on the delivery of Gartner Group reports through the Lotus Notes platform. Gartner Group [] is a consulting company producing reports on new technologies and the way they affect companies strategies. The reports are grouped in services, usually by theme or technology (e.g. application development, client/server, systems management, etc.) These reports are well considered in the business community and major companies around the world subscribe to these services.
this information was received by a single person in the organisation, then circulated (or copied) to interested persons through distribution lists. Major issues with such a system stem from the paper-based nature of the information distribution. As such, delay happen between the writing of the report and its reading (time to send the report by post, to copy it to interested persons, to circulate it around the organisation) and the probability of finding information published in the past is low (it relies on the right person having made a copy or on a search on the relevant paper index.)
In order to ease the access to the information it provides, Gartner Group has created new delivery vehicles for its reports, using Information and Communication Technologies. One of these systems relies on Lotus Notes. Gartner Group has created databases to act as central repositories of its reports, and customers connects to these servers to replicate the relevant reports to their systems. Information is then made available to interested persons.
This type of systems allows to transcend time and space boundaries. Information is made available virtually in real time, and can be communicated to every reader at the same time. Moreover, information manipulation is made easy, though the built-in features of Lotus Notes (e.g. it’s easy to take a report and mail it to a colleague, adding a few reflections and highlighting a piece of text.) It also suddenly becomes possible to use these reports as a knowledge library, by looking at past reports (e.g. through full-text searching) to locate information relevant to a new project.
In a world where time-based competition has become a usual way to do business, this type of system can mean the difference between acting cleverly upon information, or letting once competitor do so. Think for instance at the recent buy-out from Lotus by IBM, where IBM took only six days to complete the transaction from the day it announced it. This means that every major player in the technology business got so little time to think and build or adapt its strategies.
We should also mention that other information providers use Lotus Notes as a delivery vector, for instance Patricia Seybold Group [] and Individual also provide customised news through this platform. On-line services (such as Compuserve) usually have similar services available and all of these providers are gradually moving to the Internet as one of their main information transport mechanisms.
An interesting distinction can be made between the added value of information producers (such as Gartner Group or Patricia Seybold) and the added value of information refiners [] (such as Individual []) The producers use electronic-based systems merely as delivery mechanisms, the primary added value being the information they provide, independently of the way they deliver it. On the contrary, for information refiners, i.e. companies which filter lots of news sources (a few hundreds in the case of Individual) based on keywords or concepts provided by customers. The added value resides here in the filtering and searching mechanisms, i.e. in the customisation of the delivered information. The electronic-based system is here key in the business model of these information refiners.
Cross-organisational project team
The context of this project is a major process redesign effort involving the call center of a large information systems outsourcer in Switzerland. This call center supported around 4500 users of mainframe based information systems, through a team of 10 persons fielding phone calls and coordinating support efforts. The process redesign effort involved organisational work and new systems development (computer-telephony integrated systems and workflow systems). The major risks involved in the project led to request the assistance of many partners having experience in the various areas involved (change management, process redesign, computer-telephony and workflow developments). A total of four companies were involved, with people working in six different cities !
In order to coordinate the work of all these partners, knowing that they would only meet once in a while, and to meet the very strict deadlines imposed on the project, project management was supported by extensive use of information and communication technologies.
major components of such a system included:
This project was started in order to create a customer support process and support tools for a major portfolio management application, in use by more than 250 portfolio managers in about 20 different banks. The software developer of the application maintained a phone hotline to field calls from customers and answer questions when possible. If the complexity of the calls was too high, they were transmitted to consultants, who sometimes escalated the hardest problems to the development team. All of these actors were geographically dispersed on different locations.
A groupware applications with two main components was created and implemented:
We want to report here on one of the first experiences done on the AT&T Network Notes system. Egghead Software Inc., a large US-based software distributor and reseller, has built an electronic system to allow its corporate customers to buy software packages and licences over the AT&T Network Notes system.
Egghead customers get a PC-based electronic product catalogue where they can search for the wanted products, selecting specific platforms, operating systems, category of products, etc. Once their shopping basket is full, the system will prepare an order, which can then be sent to Egghead main system. Orders will then be fulfilled from stock or, if necessary, be automatically sent to the suppliers, via an EDI (X.12) message. As soon as the delivery time is known, it is sent via e-mail to the customer.
This electronic market provides software product customers with many advantages: they can shop on-line anytime, anywhere, get detailed information on products and up-to-date pricing. Egghead can also provide them with detailed customised reports on their past transactions. If well implemented, such a system also improves the ordering process (for both Egghead and its customers) by integrating into the traditional IT systems (e.g. accounting system of the customer, order management system of Egghead.) Finally, it will quickly become a valuable source of information regarding its customers, allowing Egghead to accurately target special deals offerings or to propose new versions to past buyers.
Final remarks
what are some facts we should take into account before implementing such systems ?
Before concluding this paper, we’d like to draw the reader’s attention to some considerations on the implementation of these new technologies supporting extended processes. A major issue appears to be the evolution of these services once they’re first created. It is very difficult to plan from the beginning the use that will be done, therefore staying flexible is the name of the game. Both the technologies used and the mindset when discussing the service with customers, getting feedback and implementing changes should emphasise flexibility. Although these technologies can, and should, certainly serve to support a strategy, it can also be considered that the strategy will be influenced by pilot projects in these areas. This comes from the difficulty of planning the final use of very new technologies, where customers can’t clearly define what they expect.
It is also of primary importance to carefully consider the organisational impacts of such projects. It has often been said that new technology developments cannot go without thinking simultaneously to the organisational processes supported. Without changing the way people work with technology, one cannot expect to reach large business benefits. In inter-enterprise relationships, this means a mindset oriented towards cooperation more than competition, in extra-enterprise relations, this means a careful look at all the processes to circulate information, authorise it for publication and getting feedback from the consumers. A powerful lever to attain change is the metrics and reward system which is used to measure and retribute employees, which should be turned more towards external customer satisfaction than internal efficiency metrics.
Conclusion
In the course of this paper, we’ve introduced examples of extended enterprises, those forms of companies which extend the use of Information Technology, to facilitate learning about their environment, to work more closely with some of their partners or to be present on different kinds of electronic markets. We’ve then presented a framework allowing to classify these various inter-organisational systems and concluded with a few case studies of systems we helped design and implement. We hope this will be helpful in improving the analysis of new possibilities in an industry, through a structured way of learning and studying these systems.
We believe that these considerations are pertinent for a vast number of companies today, and should be part of their technology assessment processes or middle-term strategies. As often with these new technologies, it is not sufficient to consider the theoretical part, but an active participation is required. This is due to the difficulty to explicit now where these developments will lead, both because of the high rate of technology progress and because customers don’t know today what services would add more value for them (they have trouble imagining services not existing today.)
also think these new developments will lead to a profound change in some industries’ structures:
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