Dynamic Planning Models for E-Business Strategy

Much has been written about e-business and how this concept will transform industries into virtual networks of customers and suppliers working together to create value-added processes (Fahey, Srivastava, Sharon, & Smith, 2001). Typically, successful organisations will have embraced enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to integrate e-business processes within the organisation and to underpin the creation of integrated interorganisational systems. This frequently results in new business processes, organisational structures, human resource skill requirements, management roles, and knowledge management systems (Robey et al., 2002). To be successful in this new climate, however, organisations have to learn new approaches to strategy and planning for collaborative systems and to manage e-business enabled cycles of innovation (Wheeler, 2002; Zahra & George, 2002). Few studies have explored the dynamics of e-business strategic planning and little information is available on how to implement new paradigms successfully and how to ensure more effective e-business performance as a result (Damanpour, 2001; Kallio, Saarinen, & Tannila, 2002). This article reports on the findings from multiple case studies of e-business projects in ERP-enabled organisations. Each organisation was investigated in a three stage study over 4 years, using three theoretical models of e-business implementations to assess success. The key findings from each case study were captured into a staged model for e-business transformation and related to a dynamic planning model that can be applied across all stages of growth of the extended enterprise.