ABSTRACT
In today’s digital economy, it is well accepted that, to stay competitive, it is critical for business organizations to be lean and responsive. This implies tight integration across different components of business processes both internal and external to the organization. Because all business processes have accompanying information flows, a necessary step for this integration to occur is the implementation of appropriate information systems. The distinguishing characteristic of such systems, often called e-business systems, is that they need to seamlessly bridge different business functions and provide consistent and integrated information related to business activities. In other words, e-business systems are enterprise systems geared to meet strategic business objectives. We suggest that traditional systems development approaches are inadequate to develop and implement e-business systems. This chapter first presents the reasons for making such a claim and then goes on to suggest the framework for an alternate approach that explicitly recognizes the technical and organizational
barriers to implementing e-business systems, and that embraces the trend toward off-the-shelf technical components.
