Evaluation of enterprise information technologies: a decision model for high-level consideration of strategic and operational issues

Abstract

Despite the possibility of short-term financial losses and concerns by executive management of potential failure, enterprise information technologies (EITs) are being implemented by a growing number of Fortune 100 and midsize corporations in the hope of acquiring long-term benefits. EITs, expensive and risky information technology assets, must be evaluated on the basis of both their productivity gains and their support for corporate reengineering through integration of business processes. In this paper, we propose a two-stage methodology (involving a combination of the analytical network process and integer programming) to conduct a high-level evaluation of an interdependent set of tangible, intangible, strategic and operational factors that should be considered in EIT evaluation. We perform sensitivity analyses and conduct tests with real-world data to show the robustness of our methodology and the resulting managerial implications.