Exploring the Business Case Development Process in Inter-Organizational Enterprise System Implementations

Theoretical Background

This section summarizes the findings of the current state of the literature as well as of the available empirical studies. For clarification purposes and to position our line of reasoning we start defining what we mean by the concept of “Business Case.”

We use the definition of a Business Case as an artifact (possibly a document accompanied by designs or models, etc.) that specifies the main rationale and expected value for the ES-adopting organization. The BC evaluates the different implementation options, based on the expected costs, benefits and risks of each option during the entire implementation process (Schubert & William, 2009; Shang & Seddon, 2002; Ward & Daniel, 2006). Ideally it contains more than just a financial analysis. The (non-) financial benefits, business alignment, costs and risks, should be complemented with information on the methods and rationale that were used to quantify the benefits and costs (Schmidt, 2003b). The BC is the result of a BCD process that is deployed between consultants and stakeholders from the ES-adopting organization. The BCD is an iterative, tool-supported process that relies on stakeholders from different parts of the organization with different business knowledge.