TY - JOUR
T1 - Understanding the IT/business partnership - a business process perspective
AU - Siurdyban, Artur
PY - 2014
Y1 - 2014
N2 - From a business process perspective, the business value of information technologies (IT) stems from how they improve or enable business processes. At the same time, in the field of strategic IT/business alignment, the locus of discussion has been how IT/business partnerships enhance the value of IT. Despite this apparent relationship, the business process perspective has been absent from the IT/business alignment discussion. In this paper, we use the case of an industrial company to develop a model for understanding IT/business partnerships in business process terms. Based on our findings, we define these partnerships by allocating responsibilities between central IT and the local business during two stages of a process lifecycle: formation and standardization. The significance of the findings lies in how the model’s configuration leads to different types of IT units’ process centricity. This in turn affects the ability of the company as a whole to transform its operations with IT.
AB - From a business process perspective, the business value of information technologies (IT) stems from how they improve or enable business processes. At the same time, in the field of strategic IT/business alignment, the locus of discussion has been how IT/business partnerships enhance the value of IT. Despite this apparent relationship, the business process perspective has been absent from the IT/business alignment discussion. In this paper, we use the case of an industrial company to develop a model for understanding IT/business partnerships in business process terms. Based on our findings, we define these partnerships by allocating responsibilities between central IT and the local business during two stages of a process lifecycle: formation and standardization. The significance of the findings lies in how the model’s configuration leads to different types of IT units’ process centricity. This in turn affects the ability of the company as a whole to transform its operations with IT.
KW - IT/business alignment
KW - strategic use of IT
KW - business process management
KW - case study
U2 - 10.1007/s10796-012-9388-3
DO - 10.1007/s10796-012-9388-3
M3 - Journal article
SN - 1387-3326
VL - 16
SP - 909
EP - 922
JO - Information Systems Frontiers
JF - Information Systems Frontiers
IS - 5
M1 - SI
ER -