In the past few years, e-commerce -trading and selling products via the Internet -has mainly been about physical goods, being things that can be dropped onto the floor. Nevertheless in most countries, services form a significant part of total economic activity. Services are deeds and performances of a mostly intangible nature [3]. A specific kind of services is e-services. They rely on a substantial amount of IT for production and provisioning. e-Services are seldom offered fully by one enterprise. Rather, they are often offered by networked value constellations [5], formed by organizations that jointly work on the satisfaction of a complex customer need. For instance, a managed domestic home network including Internet access requires among others an ISP; a company that installs the hardware and repairs it if it is broken and a company that manages and monitors the correct functioning of the domestic network.
Designing a networked value constellation offering e-services, e.g. for a managed domestic network or a streaming music service is not an easy task. One of the reasons for this is that many different perspectives (e.g. IT and business processes) of the participating enterprises have to be internally properly aligned with each other, as well as between organization themselves.
In this paper we propose a conceptual framework of alignment issues and problems. Ultimately, this framework should assist in designing networked value constellations for e-services, with automated tool support.
In this paper, section 2 introduces a case study that we use to explore and explain our framework. In section 3, we present our framework. We illustrate the framework using the case study (section 4). In section 5, we present our conclusions and discuss potential directions of future research.
Suppose a hotel would like to offer wireless connectivity to businessmen as an additional service. Such a service can be provided as a joint service offering of the hotel and of a Telecommunication Company (Telco). The hotel allows the Telco to place WiFi access points (equipment used by the traveler to connect its laptop to), and to place a router that connects the access points to the Internet. Alternatively, the hotel can also buy and place WiFi access points itself, and obtain commodity Internet access from an Internet Service Provider (ISP). How we can reason about these alternatives from an alignment point of view?
A networked value constellation offering e-services requires (1) alignment of the participating organizations (e.g. enterprises and customers, or partners), and (2) alignment of at least four separate perspectives (see Figure 1). The first perspective is about understanding strategic business goals and objectives of the various enterprises involved. We have proposed in [3] an approach for stating such goals, based on notions as i* [4].The purpose of this strategy viewpoint is to arrive at a coherent goal set of actors that can be used to motivate the value proposition perspective. This perspective is used to represent what enterprises offer of economic value to each other and what they request in return. Thus, partnering can be also shown. This perspective can be modeled using e 3 -value [1]. Since the value proposition perspective captures what is exchanged of value, but not how this is accomplished, we add two additional perspectives. The business process perspective presents internal-and interorganizational business processes, e.g. represented by UML activity diagrams or the BMPN (see http://www.bpmn.org/). The information system perspective represents the software & hardware components that operationalize the value proposition perspective. A broad range of modeling tools is available (e.g. UML).
Modeling the various perspectives is the necessary first step towards the design of networked value constellations. First, various case studies it was shown that many constellations are just too complex. They require thorough formal conceptualization in order to be able to create a shared understanding of the constellation at hand by all stakeholders involved. Additionally, tool support, relying on sound conceptualization, can help to detect inconsistencies between the various perspectives taken, and can provide traceability of design decisions taken.
Moreover, constellations that are formed to provide IT intensive services rely heavily on IT. The technological and commercial aggregation involves decision makers with different viewpoints from different disciplines. Business developers of value constellations who focus on more commercial issues should be able to express and explain the constellation to software engineers. On the other hand, engineers have the responsibility to address clearly technological issues that influence the successful implementation of the planned business idea. The language of modeling techniques can thus successfully support the decision making by maintaining the shared and common understanding. Since constellations have to operate in a competitive world, we first consider alignment from a profitability/economic value point of view: each enterprise in the constellation should be able to make a profit. The value proposition perspective focuses on revenues and expenses; the process and IS viewpoint cause expenses. Since an integrated view on these financials may help to reason about profitability, we propose to use the notion of value activity to bring the perspectives together from a financial point of view. Executing this activity generates revenues but also expenses.
In the following sections, we exemplify a few of the fore mentioned types of alignment decisions. Additionally, we show how these can be integrated from a financial point of view. We start with the value proposition viewpoint, and work our way down to the information system viewpoint.
The value proposition perspective is about understanding what organizations in a value constellation offer each other of economic value. To do so, we use e 3 -value (please consult [1] for more information). For the case at hand, there exist at least two alternatives to arrive at a wireless access service: (1) the hotel offers the wireless Internet access by itself (Figure 2) or (2) the hotel offers the wireless access jointly with a Telco (Figure 3). If the hotel offers wireless connectivity by itself, it operates the required WiFi access points by itself and uses an ISP to have Internet connectivity. A traveler pays the hotel for both the room and the wireless access service and the hotel determines the fee for the wireless service. Alternatively, the hotel is only responsible for room renting; the wireless access provision is completely done by a Telco. The traveler pays separately to the hotel and to the Telco for their services. Additionally, the hotel pays the Telco a small fee for having a WiFi service available for the traveler. Profitability sheets can be constructed, showing the net value flow, for each actor and value activity involved. Since this construction process has been explained in detail in [1], we only show a sample sheet in Table 1. This sheet shows (if attributed with the right numbers) the net money flow for a specific value activity as performed by a business actor. However, this sheet does not take into account additional money out-flows, such as for IT-investments or operations to be performed. For that purpose, we need to explore the other perspectives. The alignment activity from the value proposition perspective triggers the following questions that influence partnering decisions: − Which actors execute which value activities (e.g. the WiFi access activity is differently assigned in the two alternatives)?
− Which value exchanges exist between actors (in the first alternative the traveler pays to hotel, in the second alternative to the Telco)?
− How are expenses and revenues divided over actors (if the e 3 -value model is quantified using profitability sheets (e.g. a result of who pays to whom and thus can set prices))?
To be able to provide acceptable answers further investigation of perspectives is needed.
We now focus on WiFi access provisioning activity only. The value proposition already takes into account revenues and expenses but does not consider expenses for business processes and IT yet. Tables 2 & 3 show for a value activity of the value proposition perspective, the required operational activities on the business process perspective 1 , as well as expenses that go with it. As such, a value activity forms the linking pin to operational activities generating expenses and IT investments. Note that this perspective shows some revenues that can not directly be quantified directly in terms of monetary units (e.g. 'responsibility'). How to involve such effects in the decision making needs to be further researched.
The distribution of such expenses and benefits triggers for inter-organizational alignment between value proposition and business process perspectives.
We also can relate value activities to the required investments and expenses in IT. Table 4 and Table 5 show expenses and revenues for IT. Expenses can be quantified, and there are intangible revenues (ownership). Between the value proposition and information system perspective we have found the following factors that indicate alignment activities: − Value activities (value proposition viewpoint) require information system components (both application and infrastructural driven) as indicated for the WiFi access provisioning activity, − These information system components involve expenses for a specific organization that are not visible yet on the value proposition activity (namely investment costs and reoccurring expenses, e.g. for maintenance), and − The distribution of such expenses and benefits triggers for inter-organizational alignment between value proposition and information system perspectives.
In this paper, we have proposed a four-perspective (ranging from strategic goals to IT) framework for discussing business/IT alignment in networked value constellations. Alignment can be between perspectives within a same enterprise but can also be between various enterprises in case of networked value constellations. Moreover, as a third dimension, alignment can be between perspectives spanning multiple enterprises. As a first criterion to align goals, value propositions, processes and IT, we propose to use profitability for each actor involved in the constellation. To that end, we need to collect financials (revenues and expenses) from each perspective, to make a first assessment whether each actor can be profitable. In next steps, other alignment criteria then can be considered. We will continue our research by exploring an industrial strength case study in the field of energy supply. Here, we will study the mentioned perspectives and use financial data to address alignment decisions.