MIS Quarterly, 1999, Volume 23,
Issue 3, Page 305-335.
The emerging electronic economy is bringing with it new forms of IT-enabled intermediation, virtual supply chains, rapidly changing electronic commerce technologies, increasing knowledge intensity, and unprecedented sensitivity for time-to-market by customers. Customers are demanding more value, customized to their exact needs, at less cost, and as quickly as possible. The enterprises that will survive in such a demanding environment will need to innovate and invent new ways of creating value, and will require different enterprise architectures and different IT infrastructures. This article focuses on providing a framework for guiding an enterprise as it transforms itself to function more effectively in the electronic economy. Using the distribution industry in general and Marshall Industries in particular as a context, the article draws insights for transforming an extended enterprise's architecture and its IT infrastructure to enable new ways of creating value in the electronic economy. The article provides a staged junction box model for guiding the transformation and also articulates the elements of the new value logic for enterprises in the electronic economy.
Keywords: CIO; distribution industry supply chain management; e-business; electronic commerce; electronic economy; Electronic value chains; extranet; fast response; intermediation; Internet; intranet; IT architecture; strategic information systems; systems approach; time-based competition; total quality management; value innovation