MIS Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

MIS - Essay Example Each of these ERPs have their own unique infrastructure of the operating system, interfaces and databases hence making the modification of new inter-organizational systems to suit with the available ERPs expensive and time consuming. This leads to reluctance of the business partners in integrating with these inter-organizational system. (Chuo & Vincent, 2008, p.117-118) The second challenge facing inter-organizational systems is heterogeneity of the IT environments, technical skills, and financial resources of its trading partners. Most companies in an extended supply chain have the ability to some type of electronic transmission e.g. Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), file transfer etc. but with varied specific capabilities. Many small suppliers, may not have the internal infrastructure required to adopt the IOS. Therefore, each of the business partners will, have to incur cost of converting their infrastructure to comply with the new inter-organizational system. With the partners a dopting the new infrastructure, they would benefit from the ability to use the same approach to connect to any other business partner or even to disparate internal systems. However the implementation of these new architecture will require time, money, and technical knowledge that not all partners might be able or willing to commit to. (Chuo & Vincent, 2008, p.117-118) Solutions to the Challenges For the organization to succeed in encouraging its business partners for an electronic integration with its heterogeneous IT architecture, there has to be way of insulating these partners from the complexity and dynamism of its enterprise IT architecture. Therefore, the solution here is to create a reusable middle-ware platform to enable passing of standardized information between its backend systems and those of the business partners. This platform will also ensure that the initiator is also insulated from its business partners’ changing technologies which they use to connect to the initiator. (Chen &Chin, 2006, p.87) The solution to heterogeneity of the infrastructure of the business partners will be to not requiring each of the business partners’ upgrade to the new architecture but give them a range of options of electronic transmission to choose from i.e. EDI, File transfer and any other suite for web-based transactions. The development of a platform for managing these IOS will requires outsourcing so as to help in standardization on a single technology e.g. web-based service hence reducing the costs associated with developing and running the platform by themselves. (Chen &Chin, 2006, p.87) Advantages of Inter-organizational systems Adoption of IOS can create new ways of achieving vertical integration apart from merging the firms. IOS reduces the transaction cost between the buyer and the seller and when this occurs, technology could be a catalyst in altering the optimal size of the firm hence allowing it to focus on its main core business without wor ry on the high transactions costs with the partners. The IOS has advantage of promoting highly coupled relationships between the trading partners in the supply chain. This is driven by the need for total quality management where manufacturers and retailer must develop close relationships with the suppliers and realize their importance. This is necessitated by intense foreign competition that has resulted in a shrinking market hence need for close relationshi