A Framework for Performance and Value Assessment of E-business Systems in Corporate Travel Distribution

This chapter proposes and illustrates a framework that the authors call the value life cycle for e-commerce systems. Based on recent research results that relate to technology investments in the corporate travel industry and related theoretical and empirical perspectives, the authors lay out the corporate travel ecommerce system solutions value life cycle. The perspective involves estimating the maximum value that that an organization can obtain by implementing an e-commerce system in a specific industry and competitive environment. It also considers multiple factors that act as value contingencies for the implementation process. These create barriers to value accrual and to the post-implementation performance assessment. The analytical perspective emphasizes the importance of comparing the expected value from the evaluation stage with the realized value from actual system usage. The authors highly a key finding for corporate travel procurement specialists: the value of e-commerce systems infrastructure is surprisingly dependent a variety of factors in the implementation environment of the organization, and as a result, the authors suggest that investments in this kind of technology be made with considerable caution and a clear sense of the potential pitfalls that may lead to insufficient value accrual. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Note: The findings that are presented in this chapter are based on a large corporate travel industry research project conducted through the MIS Research Center at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota. A presentation related to this research was given by Robert J. Kauffman at Abteilung für Wirtschaftsinformatik, Wirtschaftuniversitaet Wien, Vienna, Austria, May 15, 2000. We thank the participants of that seminar for comments and suggestions on the specifics of that research. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Alina M. Chircu is a Doctoral Candidate in Information and Decision Sciences, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota. Her research interests focus on the IT business value, market structure and intermediation in e-commerce, and IT adoption. Her dissertation explores these issues in the corporate travel industry in the context of a long-term sponsored research project. The related work is published in the International Journal of Electronic Commerce, Electronic Markets and the Journal of Management Information Systems. Robert J. Kauffman is Associate Professor and Department Chair, Information and Decision Sciences, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota. His doctorate is from the Graduate School of Administration, Carnegie Mellon University. He worked in international banking, and was a faculty member at NYU and University of Rochester. His current research emphasizes e-commerce, economic analysis of IS problems, and applications of technology in the financial services, travel and hospitality industries. He has published this work in Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly , the International Journal of Electronic Commerce, Organization Science and elsewhere.