Is business process integration feasible?
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether business process integration is feasible.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper employs a single case study strategy to research the aforementioned research question. The case study is exploratory.
Findings
Based on the findings and within the context of the case organisation, it appears that enterprise application integration (EAI) technology can integrate business processes. However, since it is not possible to generalize from a single case study, further research is suggested to investigate this area. From the case study, it appears that EAI can easily integrate the business processes when it is combined with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.
Research limitations/implications
This is a single case study and thus the results cannot be generalized.
Practical implications
The empirical date suggest that organisations may combine ERP with EAI to integrate their business processes in a more flexible way.
Originality/value
The contribution of the paper is threefold: it describes the business process automation layer of EAI technology, it defines and presents a stage model for the business process integration and it examines the research question.
Keywords
Citation
Themistocleous, M. and Corbitt, G. (2006), "Is business process integration feasible?", Journal of Enterprise Information Management, Vol. 19 No. 4, pp. 434-449. https://doi.org/10.1108/17410390610678340
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2006, Emerald Group Publishing Limited