DEVELOPING AN e-BUSINESS STRATEGY

FOR LESS-MATURE ORGANIZATIONS

A Design Research Approach

Tanai Charinsarn

University of New South Wales, Canberra, Australia

Keywords: e-Business, Strategic Planning, Design Research, EBSPS.

Abstract: This research applies a Design Research lens in developing a generic, yet customizable, set of tools to guide

less-mature organizations to start their transformation into e-Business: so called e-Business Strategic

Planning System (EBSPS). The EBSPS was developed through an extensive review of the e-Business and

strategic planning literature that established the parameters for the design of the system specifically for less-

mature organizations. The paper describes the use of the EBSPS in developing an e-Business strategy for a

large Thai commercial printer. The result was successful, with some improvements suggested for the next

round of EBSPS.

1 INTRODUCTION

e-Business is a term developed by IBM in 1990’s for

commercial purposes (Li, 2007). Despite many

definitions of e-Business, it can be simply described

as "all electronically mediated information

exchanges, both within an organization and with

external stakeholders supporting the range of

business processes" (Chaffey, 2002). While interest

in e-Business wound down during the ‘dot-com

crash’ because of the over-expectation of investors,

e-Business is still continues to grow (Li, 2007) and

becomes a way of doing business.

e-Business is a much broader concept than e-

Commerce or even Information Technology (IT)

because e-Commerce focuses only on using the

Internet to carrying out business transactions over

the Internet, and IT strategy focuses upon using IT

to support business processes, but e-Business aims

to transform business process to perform well in the

network economy. E-Business allows organization

to improve their efficiency through ‘speed of light’

value creation from collaboration both internally and

externally to reach potential customers globally at

low cost (Leibold et al, 2005). Also, a new Internet-

based business model could generate additional

revenue (Farhoomand, 2005). New demand can also

be created using a Value Innovation process (Kim et

al, 2005) in which e-Business could be an enabler.

Therefore, the potential for e-Business to generate

business value is huge.

As more people and businesses are connected to

the Internet, the potential of e-Business will be

significant. The survey conducted by

Internetworldstat.com (2008) confirmed that the

Internet population has grown substantially applies a

Design Research lens in developing a generic, yet

customizable, set of tools to guide less-mature

organizations to start their transformation into e-

Business: so called e-Business Strategic Planning

System (EBSPS). The EBSPS was developed

through an extensive review of the e-Business and

strategic planning literature that established the

parameters for the design of the system specifically

for less-mature organizations. The paper describes

the use of the EBSPS in developing an e-Business

strategy for a large Thai commercial printer. The

result was successful, with some improvements

suggested for the next round of EBSPS

.since the

start of the millennium. A similar trend is seen on

the value of e-Commerce not only in the U.S. but

worldwide (UNCTAD, 2002). The future of

business is moving away from the traditional off-line

mode. However, in the Internet world, early adopters

of e-Business, for example, Yahoo!, eBay, and

Google, usually gain a long-term advantage from

brand awareness and a leading position in the early

development of innovation. Therefore, there can be

pressure to become an e-Business quickly and

correctly the first time.

Although e-Business is seen in many

organizations, the development of e-Business

215

Charinsarn T. (2009).

DEVELOPING AN e-BUSINESS STRATEGY FOR LESS-MATURE ORGANIZATIONS - A Design Research Approach.

In Proceedings of the International Conference on e-Business, pages 215-222

DOI: 10.5220/0002190902150222

 SciTePress

strategy is still far from standard. With the rising

cost of mistake made in a highly competitive

business environment, there is a need to develop a

systematic approach to e-Business strategic

planning. Furthermore, as e-Business is indeed a

business transformation exercise, using strategic

planning framework is one approach that could lead

the more successful development of e-Business.

Strategic planning has been a much-interested

management tool since 1950s. While the interest

seemed to decline in the late 1980s because of the

disappointment with the business result (Marx,

1991), its benefits from the ‘strategic thinking’

exercise were clear. Whilst the business landscape is

changing more rapidly, the need for such a planning

exercise to avoid the cost of failure is increasing as

well. As a result, the Bain & Company survey

(2007) found that strategic planning has consistently

been the most used management tool since 1996.

There are different approaches to strategic

planning, such as vision-focused approach (Kaplan

and Norton, 2008), stakeholders-focused approach

(Poister and Streib, 2005; Kenny, 2005; Lewis,

2004), organization-focused approach (Rigsby and

Greco, 2003), fit-focused approach (Thompson et al,

2008), analytical-focused approach (American

Management Association 1995; Lake, 2006;

Wootton et al, 2001), alignment-focused approach

(Reading, 2002). Different approaches can be used

appropriately in different organizations and

situations.

Despite the long development of strategic

planning concept, there is a lack of a unified and

systematic process for developing an e-Business

strategy (Barua et al, 2008) in particular for a less

mature organization (Czuchry and Yasin, 2003).

The following parts of this paper will discuss the

special characteristics of less mature organizations.

Then the Design Research methodology will be

explained and linked into how e-Business Strategic

Planning System (EBSPS) is designed. Each element

of EBSPS will be discussed. A demonstration of

EBSPS in a less mature organization will be

elaborated. The result will be discussed and

compared against suggested Design Research

evaluation criteria. Lastly, conclusion will be drawn.

2 e-BUSINESS IN LESS MATUAL

ORGANIZATIONS

Because of these benefits of e-Business, global trend

of e-Business and relatively low cost of entry, e-

Business has the potential to level the competitive

landscape between large and small players. Despite

the fact that e-Business does not require many

financial resources, it requires e-Business

knowledge, and e-Business strategic planning in

particular, which is still not an established discipline

as there is no unified textbook on this discipline.

Less-mature organizations seem to be at

disadvantage because of their lack of experiences in

e-Business planning. Also, they usually face mixed

recommendations from e-Business vendors that have

biases towards the solutions. Even though they seek

advice from e-Business consulting firms, which is

usually costly, based on author’s years of consulting

experience, they still receive a generic roadmap not

tailor-made to their situation and needs.

3 USE OF DESIGN RESEARCH

Formally known as Design Science, the Design

Research methodology is chosen to develop EBSPS.

As a new discipline in the academic community, the

design research first appeared in ‘The Science of the

Artificial’ by Simon (1996) is providing a new

research perspective complementing positivist and

interpretive perspectives (Vaishnavi and Kuechler,

2004/5).

The design research aims to develop theoretical

knowledge from the action of designing and field

testing an artifact (Hevner et al, 2004; Van Aken,

2005). Artifacts consist of construct, model, method,

instantiation, or better theories (Vaishnavi and

Kuechler, 2004/5). While the discipline of the design

research is young and its community is still small,

design research has been well accepted in the

Information System community, such as Association

of Information System (AIS).

However, there is less interest in design research

in the management discipline (Gregor and Jones,

2007), despite the potential to solve utility problems

of the management system as design research aims

at application of artifact to solve real-world problem.

While most prominent ideas on Design Research are

similar, some would put more emphasis on artifact

and its utility (Hevner et al, 2004) and believe that

the knowledge will be create as a result. Another

would put more emphasis on the research process to

justify the created knowledge is justifiable (Gregor

and Jones, 2007) which can be seen in their

proposed Design Research evaluation guideline. In

this research, the two viewpoints were combined to

satisfy both goals of Design Research.

ICE-B 2009 - International Conference on E-business

216

Table 1: Philosophical Assumptions of Three Research Perspectives.

Source: Vaishnavi, V. S., & Kuechler, W. (2008). Design Science Research Methods and Patterns: Innovation Information and

Communication Technology. Boca Raton, FL: Auerbach Publication.

Table 2: Design Research Rigor Guideline Comparison.

Next, the e-Business strategic planning process was

designed to be appropriate for these parameters. The

tools and techniques were selected according to the

issues and power structure.

Finally, some participants were interviewed after

the workshop to evaluate the EBSPS in the area of

usability, usefulness, and acceptability.

4 DESIGN OF e-BUSINESS

STRATEGIC PLANNING

SYSTEM

EBSPS is designed with the belief that there is no

standard planning system for every organization

under any circumstances. Therefore, the EBSPS

must start by assessing design parameters which is

collected based on the literature review in the area of

strategic planning and e-Business. As design is a

search process (Hevner et al, 2004), design

parameters are selected based on relevance and

importance in the eyes of the designer.

EBSPS design parameters can be divided into

Macro and Micro levels. Macro-design parameters

are factors that describe the environment of the

organization, such as Information and

Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure,

government policy towards e-Business, and national

culture. Micro-design parameters are factors that

describe the organization, such as organization

maxim, current issues, vision, organization culture,

organization and power structure, organization

readiness for strategic planning, organization

readiness for e-Business, and organization readiness

for changes. Macro-design parameters are used for

designing EBSPS while micro-design parameters are

used for customizing the EBSPS for each

organization.

The architecture of the EBSPS is shown in figure

1 with the following explanation.

Define participants: It is important to identify the

right people who craft strategy as well as execution

people (Reid, 1980; Nagel, 1984). The group size

between five to ten people tends to be effective

(Andrews and Johnson, 2002).

Organizational assessment provides Micro-

parameters for designing EBSPS for each

organization.

Organization Power: It is necessary to

understand the structure and its six basic

components (Mintzberg, 2003), four dimensions of

Research Perspective

Basic

Belief Positivist Interpretive Design

Ontology

A single reality Knowable,

probabilistic

Multiple realities, socially

constructed

Multiple, contextually situated alternative

world-states

Socio-technologically enabled

Epistemology

Objective;dispassionate

Detached observer of truth

Subjective (i.e., values and

knowledge emerge from the

researcher- participant interaction)

Knowing through making: objectively

constrained construction within a context

Iterative circumscription reveals meaning

Methodology

Observation;quantitative,

statistical

Participation; qualitative.

Hermeneutical, dialectical

Understanding:

situated and description

Developmental

Measure artifactual impacts on the

composite system

Axiology

what is

Of value

Truth:

universal and beautiful;

prediction

Understanding:

situated and description

Control; creation;

progress (i.e;

improvement); Understanding

Hevner et al. (2004)

Gregor and Jones (2007)

1. Design as an artifact 1. Purpose and scope

2. Problem Relevance

2. Constructs

3. Design Evaluation 3. Principle of form and

4. Research Contributions function

5. Research Rigor 4. Artifact mutability

6. Design as a Search 5. Testable propositions

Process 6. Justificatory knowledge

7. Communication of (Additional components)

Research 7. Principles of

Implementation

8. Expository instantiation

DEVELOPING AN e-BUSINESS STRATEGY FOR LESS-MATURE ORGANIZATIONS - A Design Research Approach

217

cooperation (Bai et al, 2003) and determine where

the power in the organization is.

Pressure: Organization always faces various

forces, both externally and internally, that would

drive the action (Lewis, 2004). Pressure can also be

described in term of Maxim which is a “short simple

statements of the business’s positions” (Broadbent

and Weill, 1997)

Figure 1: Architecture of EBSPS.

Readiness: Organizations have different level of

readiness. Therefore, the crafted strategy should be

different. Readiness can be viewed as capability to

perform or resistance. Organizational readiness in

aspects related to e-Business strategy will determine

the right strategy which is executable. Three areas

are considered in this research: Strategic Planning

readiness (Russell et al, 2005; Napier et al, 1998), e-

Business readiness (Czuchry and Yasin, 2003;

Ravichandran and Lertwongsatien, 2005), and

Change readiness (Hackbarth and Kettinger, 2000)

Macro parameters are those related to the

environment of the country. It is not company-

specific parameters. While there is an extensive list

of environmental factors to consider, three are

selected: ICT infrastructure, Government policy

(Chen, 2005) and Culture (Aladwani, 2001;

Holdstede, 1980; Komin, 1990)

Planning approach: Planning is one of many

ways to craft strategy (Mintzberg, 1998). Though

most planning approaches would fit into POWER

planning framework (Lewis, 2004), there are distinct

variation in focus and sequence of planning

activities. They can be categorized into six

approaches as mentioned earlier and one approach

will be selected.

Planning tools: Planning tools are used to frame

the content of discussion on certain areas. Extensive

list of planning tools was established as a toolbox to

choose from. Examples of planning tools are SWOT

analysis, Vision development, Corporate governance

model, Strategic issues, Strategic risk, Industry

analysis, Benchmarking, Gap analysis, etc.

Planning techniques: Planning techniques are

used to guide the discussion of the planning tools.

Similar to planning tools, extensive list of planning

techniques with description was established as a

toolbox. Examples of planning techniques are

Brainstorming, Buzz group, Case study (Russell et al

2005), Affinity diagram, and Las Vegas voting

(Napier et al, 1998).

In the cases where the tools and techniques

required pre-work - for example, data gathering - to

improve process efficiency and effectiveness, a pre-

work request was sent to the participants well ahead

of time. Then an agenda for a planning workshop,

built around the chosen techniques, was developed.

Evaluation reflects the performance of the

design, leading to the discovery of knowledge from

the design, and can be used to improve the artifact.

EBSPS, as an artifact, was evaluated on three

dimensions: Usability (Ramanujam et al, 1986),

Usefulness (Grover and Segar, 2003; Wang and Tai,

2003), and Acceptability (Lewis, 2004). The

learning from evaluation was collected and analyzed

in order to improve the EBSPS.

EBSPS would be beneficial to less-mature

organizations in e-Business which are defined as

organizations that have no process to handle e-

Business strategic planning. They may or may not

already have some e-Business applications in their

organizations already, but usually not the process.

EBSPS provides simple guideline to follow with a

small set of only important design parameters, yet

powerful result. It would help a less-mature

organization to start thinking about e-Business in a

systematic way. Even when used by an outside

consultant, EBSPS provides a guideline to tailor-

made the process to each customer easily.

5 A FIELD EXPERIMENT IN A

LARGE THAI COMMERCIAL

PRINTER

A field experiment is an essential part in Design

Research. Not only has it provided a test for

usability of the artifact, but also a feedback for

improvement which will continue to fine-tune the

artifact when many rounds of field experiments are

conducted. Therefore, it is important to expect that

the first field experiment would result in no perfect

result but plenty of areas for improvement.

The first field experiment was conducted on

ICE-B 2009 - International Conference on E-business

218

“Alpha”, which is a large Thai commercial printer

with a reputable brand name in the Thai market.

Alpha was established many decades ago when Thai

printing industry was just started by focusing on

textbook printing. It has grown continuously since

then. Currently, Alpha provides high quality printing

services for major domestic and international clients.

As a second generation organization, Alpha

possessed many old people who do not realize a

need to change. It business started to face quality

problem as well as losing its competitiveness. On e-

Business, Alpha has a limited Information System

(IS) capability as well as supporting financial

resources. However, the Managing Director has a

strong commitment to transform the organization by

applying modern management concepts.

After a series of interview with seven executives

which last between 30-60 minutes, the result

provided the big picture of the organization and the

EBSPS design parameters as follows.

Power structure: The power is centralized at the

Managing Director who is also the owner. The board

of director is his family members who do not have

involvement.

Maxim: Unclear. Its vision of ‘to be one of the

top five most profitable printing companies in

Thailand’ is vague with no specific directions on

how to achieve it. It was also found that determining

a maxim was hard to do by the management team.

Pressure: Organization always faces various

forces, both externally and internally, that would

drive the action (Lewis, 2004)

Organization readiness for strategic planning

Organization readiness Organization readiness

for change for e-Business

Figure 2: Organization readiness for Alpha.

Alpha has low Organization readiness for

strategic planning. It has never done a proper

strategic planning. While it has documented vision,

mission, and strategies, they are formulated from

group discussions among Top Management Teams

(TMT) without strategic analysis. Moreover, most

TMT members have no business management

educational background.

Alpha has low Organization readiness for e-

Business. The Management Information Systems

(MIS) department consists of three people and

mainly supports day-to-day operation of IT

equipment and the printing software. They are not

familiar with IS development work since they hardly

have anything beyond the Alpha website which was

developed by an outsider. Alpha has no experience

in IT outsourcing at all. The MIS team can only

support the existing system. Alpha’s IS

infrastructure is quite old, especially the system that

run the printing software because the version that

Alpha uses requires Window 98, which new

hardware does not support.

Alpha has low Organization readiness for

change. Half of Alpha’s staff are old and have a

tendency to resist change. With a current financial

liquidity issue, which causes a decline in staff

morale, it is hard to provide any incentive for

change. Besides, a cross-functional team to lead

change is not a part of the current work practice.

Based on these input parameters, the EBSPS was

designed for Alpha to use the vision-focused

approach for these three main reasons. First, Alpha’s

vision needs to be clarified before translating into e-

Business strategies. Secondly, as Alpha is a family

business with centralized power, it grows from the

vision of the leader. Once the vision is established,

the alignment should not be a problem. Lastly,

Alpha is not familiar with information gathering for

strategy formulation and not focusing on

competition.

In the workshop design, tools and techniques

were selected to fit with the planning approach and

duration, also considering Alpha strategic planning

readiness and e-Business readiness. For Alpha, five

tools are selected: SWOT analysis, vision

development, e-Business initiative menu,

prioritization, and road mapping. The proposed

again was the first application on EBSPS which

needs to be improved in further rounds of

application in the future.

These tools were used in a workshop with eight

participants and one observer participant for one full

day.

Evaluation was conducted one week after the

workshop by interviewing four selected people,

including the managing director. List of questions

were asked to assess usability, usefulness, and

acceptability. The overall result was satisfactory, as

shown in figure 3.

EBSPS has performed well in the area of

usability and acceptability, while has lower score in

the area of usefulness. Minor concerns, such as lack

LOW

DEVELOPING AN e-BUSINESS STRATEGY FOR LESS-MATURE ORGANIZATIONS - A Design Research Approach

219

of action planning and short working time on each

session, were mentioned and would be taken into

account into the next round of field experiment.

Table 3: Alpha’s EBSPS agenda.

Start Topic Duration Finish

8:30 Prep session for MD

on opening

9:00 MD opening 0:10 9:10

9:10 Agenda 0:10 9:20

9:20 SWOT discussion –

post it & round table

0:50 10:10

10:10 SWOT summary 0:10 10:20

10:20 Break 0:15 10:35

10:35 Vision 0:15 10:50

10:50 Vision drawing at

corporate level

0:15 11:05

11:05 Vision sharing and

identify keywords

0:30 11:35

11:35 Craft vision statement 0:25 12:00

12:00 Lunch 1:00 13:00

13:00 Printing industry

situation update

0:15 13:15

13:15 E-business

knowledge sharing

1:00 14:15

14:15 Additional

brainstorming on e-

Business initiatives

0:15 14:30

14:30 Break 0:15 14:45

14:45 Prioritization 0:20 15:05

15:05 Conclude

prioritization

0:10 15:15

15:15 Sequence initiatives 0:20 15:35

15:35 Conclude roadmap 0:10 15:45

15:45 Q & A 0:15 16:00

Figure 3: Results of the evaluation of the EBSPS for

Alpha.

6 CONCLUSIONS

In this research, the EBSPS was developed to assist

less-mature organizations in developing an e-

Business strategy. A simple yet powerful set of

design parameters was used to assess the

organization, so guiding the development of a

suitable process to develop the e-Business strategy.

They were pressures, organizational power, and

readiness. The review of strategic management

tools and techniques also provided a toolbox for

practitioners.

The evaluation of the first organization suggested

that the EBSPS was successful. The success was a

result of excellent corporation from all participants.

Since this project was valued by the Managing

Director and he was the person arranging interviews

and workshop by himself, it shows the important of

top management support in strategic consulting

work.

According to the evaluation criteria, EBSPS was

rated very high in all subcategories within Usability

and Acceptability. However, its Usefulness only was

rated between medium to high. Interview with

selected participants revealed that they preferred to

see Action Plan being developed in the workshop to

enhance confidence and commitment of execution –

hence usefulness of EBSPS. From Design Research,

the design of EBSPS has met research rigor criteria

as well.

Another lesson-learned from the organizational

assessment is that Maxim is not easy to describe

while Current Issues have been very useful in both

selection of strategic planning approach as well as

tools and techniques to be used in the workshop.

The learning at Alpha was used to improve the

EBSPS. While this paper being written, the

workshop for the second company, Beta – a large

Thai asset management company and Gamma – a

small Thai engineering consulting firm are

completed and being documented.

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