Despite significant progress in evaluating the productivity payoffs from information technology (IT), the inability of traditional firm-level economic analysis to fully account for the intangible impacts of IT has led to calls for a more inclusive and comprehensive approach to measuring IT business value. In response to this call, we develop a process-oriented model to assess the impacts of IT on critical business activities within the value chain. Our model incorporates corporate goals for IT and management practices as key determinants of realized IT payoffs. Using survey data from 304 business executives worldwide, we found that corporate goals for IT can be classified into one of four types: unfocused, operations-focus, market-focus and dual-focus. Our analysis confirms that these goals are a useful indicator of payoffs from IT in that executives in firms with more focused goals for IT perceive greater payoffs from IT across the value chain. In addition, we found that management practices such as strategic alignment and IT investment evaluation contribute to higher perceived levels of IT business value.- 1-

This paper aims to clarify the concept of business models, its usages, and its roles in the Information Systems domain. A review of the literature shows a broad diversity of understandings, usages, and places in the firm. The paper identifies the terminology or ontology used to describe a business model, and compares this terminology with previous work. Then the general usages, roles and potential of the concept are outlined. Finally, the connection between the business model concept and Information Systems is described in the form of eight propositions to be analyzed in future work.

Decision support systems (DSS) are becoming increasingly more critical to the daily operation of organizations. Data warehousing, an integral part of this, provides an infrastructure that enables businesses to extract, cleanse, and store vast amounts of data. The basic purpose of a data warehouse is to empower the knowledge workers with information that allows them to make decisions based on a solid foundation of fact. However, only a fraction of the needed information exists on computers; the vast majority of a firm's intellectual assets exist as knowledge in the minds of its employees. What is needed is a new generation of knowledge-enabled systems that provides the infrastructure needed to capture, cleanse, store, organize, leverage, and disseminate not only data and information but also the knowledge of the firm. The purpose of this paper is to propose, as an extension to the data warehouse model, a knowledge warehouse (KW) architecture that will not only facilitate the capturing and coding of knowledge but also enhance the retrieval and sharing of knowledge across the organization. The knowledge warehouse proposed here suggests a different direction for DSS in the next decade. This new direction is based on an expanded purpose of DSS. That is, the purpose of DSS in knowledge improvement. This expanded purpose of DSS also suggests that the effectiveness of a DSS will, in the future, be measured based on how well it promotes and enhances knowledge, how well it improves the mental model(s) and understanding of the decision maker(s) and thereby how well it improves his/her decision making. D 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

This paper proposes the Strategy-oriented Alignment in Requirements Engineering (SOARE) approach for e-business systems. The primary objective of the SOARE approach is to enable alignment between requirements for e-business systems and the business strategies they are intended to support. The SOARE approach incorporates means for analysing and decomposing business strategy, employing goal modelling both to represent business strategy in a requirements engineering context and to link high-level strategic objectives to low-level requirements through goal refinement. The SOARE approach further describes a basis for deriving and leveraging recurring requirements patterns. This paper proposes a high-level process for the SOARE approach, which is then illustrated via a proof-of-concept case study from the literature

Ensur-x that ork-MG--xwO)33 IT is in alignment with andprxGMP( suppor for anorM-3)xwO)3 #s business strness iscrP---(- to business success. WeprkG-M anintegrxwO apprgr torGPkO(xwO3M engineerO3 for orineerO3M)P IT. To help validate IT-business str-bus alignment, weprkO-O a single modelaccorGG-- to Jackson#sprk(GO diagrO frgrOxw to encompass both business strines and system remxkk3()xwO We use anorkMk--xwO((-k strxr-- analysis technique todeconstrO( business strnessx Strness is then modeled using agoal-orOPP-M ral-orOPP- engineerPP notation; a frGP(Oxw for modeling anorOG--PxwOPP businessstrne egyprxPP--- by the Business Rules Gres is used toconstr)x the goal model. We use Jackson#s context diagrtx torx--3MO3x both business and IT domain context.Our apprxt. isillustrwOO via application to anexemplar constrwOO frn avar(-P ofsour--( in the literMxwO descrMxwO Seven--Eleven Japan.

service level incident management, Openview, service desk, service level management, decision support In this paper we address the problem of ensuring business-IT alignment. We describe a method and a system for decision support in IT Service Management driven by alignment with the business objectives of the enterprise that the IT supports. Our technical proposition, called IT Management by Business Objectives (MBO) is applicable to most of the domains of IT Service Management, such as incident management, change management, and others. The technology consists of some components that are reusable across domains, together with guidelines and patterns for building complementary components in order to develop domain-specific solutions.

This paper describes an exploratory study of configurations and coordination mechanisms for IT governance in European-based transnational companies. IT governance is traditionally defined as the formal allocation of IT decision-making authority. Rooted in organisation design theory, a research framework is proposed and comparative case study research is conducted in three large financial service companies. The findings indicate that financial institutions adopt distinct hybrid configurations and coordination mechanisms contingent on their strategic context. The results suggest that whatever formal configuration is chosen for IT governance, mechanisms for lateral coordination need to be addressed, if performance targets are to be achieved. Effective mechanisms for lateral coordination move beyond the level of structure, and focus on the different stakeholders involved in the IT governance process. An organisation’s capability to deal with globalisation and IT is dependent on the complexity of both the configuration and coordination for IT governance. 1.

Abstract While on a business flight, a CEO reads in an airline magazine about an information technology innovation that promises fabulous returns to the adopting corporation. Returning home, the CEO demands immediate action from the senior information systems executive. So goes a story current among systems practitioners. This tale of ``Airline Magazine Syndrome' ' is analyzed here as an instance of narrative, through research informed by innovation theory and field interviews with business executives and systems practitioners. The analysis considers both how the story depends for its meaning on the sociotechnical context of innovation, and how that context is illuminated by the listener's engagement with the story. ``Airline Magazine Syndrome'' is a kind of moral drama, in which misdeeds portend crisis and failure. As such, there are also lessons for a happier ending, in the domain of real practice, in which organizational innovation with information technology can have better prospects for success.

Minimizing the communication difficulties and incorporating a planning view to the software development life cylce

Information technology governance is generally defined as the locus of IT decision-making authority. This paper argues that IT governance also includes the capability to integrate IT decision-making between key stakeholders. Exploratory case studies are conducted in Financial Services to develop a richer understanding of what the emerging capabilities are of IT governance. Findings indicate that IT governance capabilities-while necessary, though not sufficient-, go beyond formal-hierarchical modes, and include important lateral and socialisation mechanisms. In particular, the role of competency, credibility and coalition building are essential to IT governance. Directions for future research are discussed. 1.