Overall, the evaluation results of both ADR Cycles provide evidence for the utility of the design artifact and the underlying design principles. The design significantly increases efficiency, by reducing the time needed to perform key tasks by supply network professionals, while keeping at least similar quality of outcomes. It also reduces cognitive load in terms of mental effort necessary by professionals to perform critical supply network tasks. Derived from the evaluation quotes of the business user, this is primarily due fewer document versions and exchanges being needed, a more harmonized information basis, timely and better transparency on status and required action, easier communication and collaboration in the supply network, and extended process coverage for supply network use cases. These explanations were found during the ADR Cycle I, with a focus on a more structured quote-to-invoice use case as well in ADR Cycle II, with a focus on a more unstructured, interactive use case of supplier qualification.
In addition to the proven advantages for these important supply network use cases, the discussion of extending the application of the design principles to further important use cases beyond supply management demonstrates that it is highly probable that the design can be deployed for example in master data, project and transportation management as well. There is as good chance that the potentials of the design in terms of performance increase and cognitive load decrease can also be obtained in other business areas. This would most likely be in agreement, request/commit and collaboration centered use cases, which are quite numerous in business management that have potential for the application of the design principles. This needs further research and practical evidence, though the reasoning provided in this chapter is already promising.
In terms of scientific generalizability, the design proposals of this research work fulfill the requirements of a design theory according to Gregor and Jones (2007). The research elements and results can therefore be applied as ‘supply network design theory’ (SNDT), for instance informing further research as justificatory knowledge in IS.
seriously. This is especially so in the case of legality, as more and more business transactions will be executed in cloud-based collaboration environment like the proposed B-Zone artifact, and the jurisdiction of the respective countries and overarching organizations (e.g., the European Union) will most likely provide further clarifications and regulations in executing business in these environments. These include ownership of business objects and business contacts, and the principles of orderly bookkeeping for cross referencing financial bookings in on-premise ERP systems to supply network transactions in cloud-based environments.
Regarding data privacy, multi-level data protection capabilities like the one provided in B-Zone are essential, where certain information is public to the complete supply network (general business partner or company information), restricted to one-to-one relationships (business partner data only visible to the business partners in a dyad), or restricted to specific one-to-many and many-to-many relationships (business partner data only shared in collaborative project rooms to invited participants). Important in this regard is also the transparency in terms of who can access which data and with which individuals certain information is actually shared. Otherwise the necessary level of trust and therefore the required volume of business partners in this kind of professional supply network platform are hard to achieve.
Beside multi-level data protection, sophisticated authorization management needs to be provided. This would include general platform administration and company administration roles for defining and maintain usage roles and user authorizations. Another interesting aspect is the question of platform ownership, basically who is technically providing the platform and who drives for its utilization. Of course, this goes back to the introduction of Collaborative Networked Organizations (CNOs). In extended enterprises (EE) the dominant player in the supply network will most likely provide and regulate the platform environment and will foster its utilization by dependent entities. This is true in particular in the case of large enterprises who want to run a platform like B-Zone in their own data center or private cloud environment. During the two evaluation cycles however, it was noted that small and medium size companies in particular would prefer to - or would have no objection to - in using an on- demand cloud environment offered by an independent platform provider. The latter model would apply for example for ‘virtual breeding environments’ (VBEs), ‘professional virtual communities’ (VCs) and ‘virtual teams’ (VTs). In the final version of the design product, both possibilities will most likely be applied to serve large enterprises in their wish to foster the supply network, in particular for critical supply relationships (direct material, investment goods, critical services) according to their supply management strategies. But also to be offered to medium-size to small companies, who are striving for low total cost of ownership (TCO) to have access to an advanced supply network system like B-Zone and with it to a large audience of potential business partners. For both models, the trust level, security standards,
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capabilities, and business partner and transaction volume are critical for the adoption success of supply network systems.
Putting the results in context of key challenges in supply networks, as formulated for example by the network management framework described above (Möller and Halinen, 1999), the artifact design supports network visioning (level 1) and net management (level 2) by providing capabilities to digest, explore, evaluate supply network business professionals or companies how they are operating in the network. It also provides the ability to efficiently and effectively establish and maintain network relationships and to better understand the value of the network and their own contribution and value positioning. This is supported for example in particular by the design decisions of supplier qualification business templates for embedding of structured data and processes (DD3), contact recommendation, ad-hoc and advanced search (DD4), asynchronous and synchronous (instant) Messages (DD5), news feeds and watch-list alerts (DD6) and social connections between business partners with various stages (DD7). Examples of related features which utilize the network effects and are planned in the B-Zone artifact as design product are ongoing supplier evaluations, ratings and rankings within the supply network and a ‘network browser’. This functionality makes it possible to navigate visually both through the company’s own and through related supply networks for the publicly shared relationships of business individuals and companies. It will also be possible to browse through the bill of material dependencies of supply goods and services to find out for example where the supply parts of an actual product originate from, spanning multiple supply tiers, or how high the current carbon footprint of the product of interest is. Figure A4 in Appendix A shows an early B-Zone wireframe of the ‘supply network browser’.
Further levels of the network management framework of portfolio management (level 3) and relationship management (level 4) are supported for example by the status evolvement of n-BOs of type BUSINESS PARTNER (DD1), transparency and consistency of data for all involved business partners (DD2), and social connections between business partners with various stages (DD7).
The critical success factors for business networking based on Ghosh and Bertisen (2007) are supported in particular by the proposed artifact design for the success categories of strategic network performance (for success criteria planning/coordination, risk management, resources), network marketing (for success criteria relationship development, communication, trust and confidence), and network design (operational flexibility, contractual agreements, technical infrastructure and organizational proximity). In general, all elaborated design decisions support the corresponding success factors. Related to organizational proximity, the artifact design makes it genuinely feasible to cross organizational barriers, as no explicit separations or restrictions are deployed which would hinder interoperability between business partners within the same organization or with business partners from other organizations. By default (as long as it has not been customized by power users or administrators for
outside an organizational unit. It offers the same capabilities to both groups.
Consequently, the artifact design of B-Zone would most likely also increase network performance according to the research models defined by Huisman and Smits (2007) and Straub et al. (2004). It explicitly offers a flexible infrastructure for supply networking, supporting one-to-one to many-to-many interrelations, and supports the decrease of dependencies by capabilities to easily identify new business partner relationships, and to qualify and maintain existing ones. It increases information sharing for instance by linking structured and unstructured data and processes, for example by the design decisions of status evolvement of n-BOs (DD1), asynchronous and synchronous (instant) Messages (DD5) and news feeds and watch-list alerts (DD6). In light of Rai and Hornyak (2013) for example, the design principles and the derived design decisions provide means to increase job satisfaction and mediated individual job performance for both cases of low and high interdependence. In cases of low interdependence, like routine execution of quote-to-invoice use cases, design decisions of n-BO status evolvement (DD1), transparency and consistency of data for all involved business partners (DD2), standardized business templates (DD3) provide efficient support for supply network users, as indicated by the evaluation results in ADR Cycle I. For the increasing amount of more strategic, non-routine tasks, like quote-to-invoice use cases for cost intense investment goods or supplier qualification use cases, which are characterized by higher task interdependence, the proposed supply network system design also provides capabilities as requested by Rai and Hornyak (2013) for dynamic collaboration and interaction with rich media. This was proven in particular during ADR Cycle II, for instance by applying design decisions of transparency and consistency of data for all involved business partners (DD2), contact recommendation, ad-hoc and advanced search (DD4), asynchronous and synchronous messages (DD5), news feeds and watch-list alerts (DD6), and social connections between business partners with various stages (DD7). With this, it is believed that the proposed design principles for supply network system will most likely increase job satisfaction and thus job performance of supply network professionals according to Rai and Hornyak (2013). From the architecture and implementation model perspective, the artifact design extends, enhances and combines previous promising concepts. The collaboration infrastructure proposal of Hawryszkiewycz (2010) for example provides evidence that a workspace-centered approach might makes sense to integrate rich portal, media, collaboration and ERP capabilities. The proposed design extends this proposal by breaking down the barriers between functionalities focusing on structured and unstructured data and processes. Supply networks users are able for example to integrate ad-hoc relevant structured business data templates into their unstructured collaboration by selecting pre-defined business templates, or can use the possibility
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provided by B-Zone to collaborate on the creation of new business templates best suited to the present need of the current state of their interaction.
The e-supply chain partner relationship management layer of the VeC model frame work proposed by Manthou (2004) for example, and the shared object layer in the SLIM architecture by Thum et al. (2009) also informed the artifact design in terms of business partner status evolvement and collaboration capabilities as well as in terms of the business object sharing (n-BOS) concept articulated in DP1 and implemented in the B- Zone artifact.
7.5 Summary
In this chapter, the results of the two ADR cycles were discussed, highlighting the most important research outcomes, in particular the significant efficiency increase and mental effort decrease by applying the design principles. This has been put into additional context and has been elaborated towards impact and potential challenges of the proposed design.
Beyond supply management, the applicability of the proposed design in the important business areas of master data management, project management and transportation management has been explored, motivating further investigations in research and practice.
Finally, the applicability of the elements and results of this research towards a supply network design theory have been positively elaborated, and the overall results have been discussed, also in light of the research foundations.