AMCIS 2014 CFP Mini-Track: Enterprise System Adoption and Business Models

Track: Enterprise Systems (SIGEntSys)

Savannah, Georgia, USA, August 7-10, 2014

Deadline for submissions: March 1, 2014

Enterprise systems (ES) are extremely complex software packages designed for integrating data flow across an entire company, emerged from earlier MRP, MRP II and ERP systems. Over time, ES have expanded to include more and more areas of an organization’s operations, and have extended organizational boundaries and support interorganizational activities. Today’s enterprise systems are expected to support modern organizations that operate in dynamic and turbulent business environments, compete in global markets, face mergers and takeovers, and participate in business alliances and joint ventures.

Frequently, the adoption of an ES is an enormous challenge for an organization, due to system complexity, organizational context and the people involved in the implementation project. Usually, ES adoption is a long and multi-stage process during which various problems and complications may occur. Moreover, ES adoption projects typically involve a large number of stakeholders representing different departments, various organizational hierarchies, and often external companies operating in various industries. These stakeholders may have conflicting interests, and their own definitions of project success. Overall, ES implementation projects tend to be very unique and challenging endeavors.

Providers of enterprise systems have traditionally relied on strong revenues from maintenance fees, in addition to license revenue. Nowadays, shorter product lifecycles, rising consulting revenues, Open Source Software and SaaS are impacting their business models. ES providers have the challenge of delivering systems which are highly customizable software products, able to fit the needs of a variety of adopters. This might be important since, as prior research suggests, the issue of alignment between ES and adopting organizations is one of the determinants of successful enterprise system implementation.

This mini-track invites papers that examine various aspects related to the determinants of ES success and business models. Both empirical and theoretical papers are invited. The general research questions addressed in this mini-track can be formulated as follows: What are the mechanisms determining successful ES adoption? What are the underlying business models of companies delivering successfully adaptable ES? What kind of business models exist?

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
•    motivation and justification for ES adoption,
•    alignment between ES and adopting organization,
•    barriers and impediments to ES adoption success,
•    risk factors in ES adoption,
•    critical failure factors for ES adoption,
•    critical success factors for ES adoption,
•    understanding of ES adoption success,
•    evaluation and benchmarking of ES projects,
•    multi-cultural and multi-national issues,
•    multiple stakeholder perspective in ES adoption and use,
•    business model frameworks for ES providers,
•    impact of new trends within the software industry on business models,
•    business model innovation for standard software companies,
•    implications of shorter product lifecycles on business models,
•    SaaS related business models,
•    open source software related business models.

Important dates:
March 1, 2014    Deadline for paper submissions
April 4, 2014       Authors notification date
April 18, 2014     Authors revision due date
April 25, 2014     Authors final, camera-ready date

Instructions for authors:
The entire paper should be no more than 5,000 words, including all materials and sections such as figures, tables, and references. All conference submissions will be double-blind, peer reviewed, and must be submitted using the online submission system at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/amcis2014. For complete instructions for authors and information about the conference, visit the AMCIS 2014 website at http://amcis2014.aisnet.org/.

Mini-Track Co-Chairs:
Carsten Brockmann, University of Potsdam, carsten.brockmann @wi.uni-potsdam.de
Piotr Soja, Cracow University of Economics, eisoja@cyf-kr.edu.pl
Katja Andresen, Beuth University of Applied Sciences, andresen@beuth-hochschule.de
J.P. Allen, University of San Francisco, jpallen@usfca.edu