Enterprise integration is considered to be of great strategic significance in the support of organisations to achieve a competitive advantage. Traditional approaches to integration such as electronic data interchange (EDI) have provided a wide range of benefits but have not managed to fully automate and integrate business processes and applications. In addressing many of the limitations of EDI to piece together disparate systems, enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions introduced an alternative approach to integration. Although ERP systems overcome significant integration problems, they have failed to adequately support intra and inter‐organisational integration. There has been a great demand by organisations to overcome integration problems and become more competitive. In this respect, enterprise application integration (EAI) has emerged to address intra and inter‐organisational integration in a more flexible and maintainable way. The normative literature remains limited regarding this emerging area and there is consequently a need for further research and contribution in identifying influential factors for EAI adoption. In addressing this relative void in the literature, this paper proposes a model for the justification and evaluation of EAI adoptions. The proposed model can be used by organisations as a tool for decision making when considering the adoption of EAI.

Part of the remit of public sector management includes planning and reflecting on capital expenditure on new technology. With this in mind, the role that information systems play in supporting improvements in e-government service delivery to stakeholder groups continues to attract much attention. The authors of this paper seek to define the scope and role that information systems evaluation plays within the public sector. In particular, the authors assess whether public sector organizations might benefit from the use of established ex-ante evaluation techniques, when applied to analyse the impact of e-government information systems. Following a comprehensive review of the normative literature, an initial conceptual framework for public sector information systems evaluation is proposed, which is then empirically explored within two local government authorities. The conceptual framework is then revised by using the structured case approach, which is dependent on an iterative research cycle where triangulated data are elicited. This then supports the emergence of new concepts during each research cycle that leads to the view that information systems evaluation in the public sector is a process of experiential and subjective judgement, which is grounded in opinion and world views. This leads the authors to challenge the appropriateness of traditional modes of investment appraisal when applied in the public sector. The finalized framework embraces investment decisions, evaluation methods, culture and structure, as well as post hoc evaluation. It emphasizes the importance of situated, interpretive user assessments in evaluating e-government investments.

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Supply chain management (SCM) is the integrated management of business links, information flows and people. It is with this frame of reference that information systems integration from both intra-and inter-organisational levels becomes significant. Enterprise application integration (EAI) has emerged as software technologies to address the issue of integrating the portfolio of SCM components both within organisations and through cross-enterprises. EAI is based on a diversity of integration technologies (e.g. message brokers, ebXML) that differ in the type and level of integration they offer. However, none of these technologies claim to be a panacea to overcoming all integration problems but rather, need to be pieced together to support the linking of diverse applications that often exist within supply chains. In exploring the evaluation of supply chain integration, the authors propose a framework for evaluating the portfolio of integration technologies that are used to unify inter-organisational and intra-organisational information systems. The authors define and classify the permutations of information systems available according to their characteristics and integration requirements. These, classifications of system types are then adopted as part of the evaluation framework and empirically tested within a case study.