Elsevier

Computers in Industry

Volume 64, Issue 8, October 2013, Pages 887-897
Computers in Industry

Toward a business model reference for interoperability services

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compind.2013.06.017Get rights and content

Abstract

The importance of interoperability for businesses is undoubted. After an evolution from electronic data interchange to interoperability in electronic business and enterprise interoperability both the scientific and the practitioners’ community are today discussing the notion of interoperability service utilities. Furthermore, researchers are studying decentralized and distributed interoperability approaches such as peer-to-peer networks, for example. However, a comprehensive investigation of business models for such decentralized approaches to interoperability is still missing. Drawing from recent literature on business modeling on the one hand and interoperability research on the other hand this paper designs a business model reference for interoperability services. The business model reference assumes interoperability information as an economic good and is applied in two case studies and evaluated from multiple perspectives. The paper contributes to the scientific body of knowledge as it proposes a novel design artifact which lays the foundation for a number of future research opportunities.

Introduction

Interoperability is a success factor for various businesses. While technical interoperability refers to the ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged [1], enterprise interoperability is defined as the ability of an enterprise to collaborate with its business partners and to efficiently establish, conduct and develop information technology (IT)-supported business relationships with the overall objective to create value [2].

Interoperability as a topic of research has evolved over the last three decades, starting with Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) in the 1980s, addressing electronic business standardization based on eXtensible Markup Language (XML) applications in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and today focusing on semantic interoperability. Recently the notion of Interoperability Service Utilities (ISU) was coined based on the idea that in the future enterprise interoperability should be as commonly available as electricity [3], [4], [5].

Interoperability has always been closely related to novel business models in the networked economy. In the 2000s, for example, interoperability was “provided” by intermediaries, such as electronic marketplaces. The majority of these business models turned out to be unsuccessful. Many electronic marketplaces, for example, were not able to operate on a profitable basis. Consequently decentralized and distributed approaches for interoperability services emerged. These approaches do not require a central repository of interoperability information nor any form of central network management, but are based on decentralized and distributed information sharing and exchange architectures such as peer-to-peer networks [6].

“Traditional” business models for interoperability services have been object of scientific investigation for years [7], [8]. No comprehensive study, though, exists studying the business model of a distributed or decentralized interoperability service. Furthermore, no research is available that assumes interoperability information as an economic good which can be shared, exchanged, and even traded.

This gap in literature motivated the research presented in the paper at hand. The paper addresses the research topic of business models for decentralized interoperability services using interoperability information as an economic good. In its course of research, the paper assumes that a network of interoperability information exists and that this information can be shared and exchanged between the actors within the network, similar to other information goods [9], [10], [11] such as stock prices or business data. The paper defines interoperability information as information about how two or more systems can be enabled to exchange data. A typical form of interoperability information is a mapping of two schemata of business documents. Furthermore, the paper assumes that interoperability information describes mappings between individual concepts of schemata, not between schemata themselves (see Section 3.1 for details). In particular, the paper aims at responding to the research question of how to design a business model reference for decentralized interoperability services that perceives interoperability information as an economic good which can be shared and exchanged.

The research question can be broken down further by asking what components the business model reference consists of and how the reference model can be instantiated in a given context. The paper follows a design-oriented approach. Design Science Research (DSR) is a research paradigm in Information Systems (IS) research which is rooted in engineering disciplines and addresses mainly means-end relationships of contemporary phenomena—in contrast to behavioral approaches, for example, which focus on cause–effect relationships. Thus, DSR aims at advancing theory—in the form of design artifacts as the outcome of the research process embodying scientific design knowledge—and at the same time aims at making a useful contribution to practice [12], [13].

The paper's contribution results mainly from the fact that it is among the first works that take a comprehensive business modeling view on an innovative form of providing interoperability services. It applies the business model reference in a case study and lays the foundation for future work in an important area of research.

The remainder of the paper starts with an overview of related work (Section 2), followed by a detailed description of the research approach (Section 3). Then the model design, demonstration, and evaluation are presented (Sections 4 Design of the business model reference, 4.1 Requirements and assumptions, 4.2 Model overview, 4.3 Business model component “customer”, 4.4 Business model component “financials”, 4.5 Business model component “value object”, 4.6 Business model component “value creation”, 5 Demonstration of the business model reference, 5.1 Case A: automotive OEM, 5.2 Case B: ICT industry association, 6 Evaluation of the business model reference). The paper concludes with a summary of its scientific and managerial contribution and an outlook to future research opportunities (Section 7).

Section snippets

Interoperability research

As mentioned above interoperability is defined as the ability of two or more systems to exchange data, and to mutually use the information that has been exchanged [14]. An important prerequisite to achieve interoperability is the construction of mappings between the schemas of the involved information systems [15]. A schema mapping is the outcome of the task of matching between concepts describing the meaning of data in various heterogeneous, distributed data sources [16]. Examples are database

Context of the research and assumptions

The context of this research is formed by the EU funded project The Network is the Business (NisB)3 which builds upon the state-of-the-art outlined in Section 2. The project aims at advancing enterprise interoperability through a decentralized approach. It does not assume the existence of standardized schema representations which need to be mapped through a central instance to achieve interoperability. In contrast, the project makes the four

Requirements and assumptions

The design of the business model reference is based on four assumptions which are derived from the context of this research (see Section 3.1). Based on these assumptions, the business model reference has to meet two types of requirements. One set of requirements results from its nature as a reference model. Guidelines for orderly reference modeling [53] are applied in this research:

  • R1.1: Design adequacy refers to the correctness and usefulness of a reference model and addresses the question

Case A: automotive OEM

Case A is a global automotive OEM operating a large supply network of a variety of suppliers across multiple tiers. Main challenges are the reconciliation of information during product development processes and the flexibility of the supply network. Furthermore, three years ago the company formed a strategic alliance with another OEM headquartered on a different continent. Among other aspects, the alliance includes sharing of production capacity and the linking of the two supply networks. The

Evaluation of the business model reference

The evaluation of the business model reference for interoperability services is based on the multi-perspective approach introduced by Frank [57]. He distinguishes between economic, deployment, engineering, and epistemological perspectives in the evaluation process.

Table 6 shows the evaluation results. Most of requirements specified in Section 4.1 are met. Exceptions are the identification of use cost and the assessment of the adoption of the model over time. Furthermore, it must be noted

Contribution

The paper makes a threefold contribution to the scientific body of knowledge. First, it takes a comprehensive business modeling perspective of interoperability services perceiving interoperability information as an economic good. This perspective allows for advanced understanding of the relevant components and sub-components and also helps specifying the requirements for the underlying IT infrastructure. Examples are sharing and exchange processes and billing and accounting processes for

Acknowledgement

The research presented in this paper is a result of the NisB project. The NisB project was funded by the European Commission within the 7th Research Framework Programme under Grant Agreement Number 256955.

Boris Otto is Assistant Professor and Head of the Competence Center Corporate Data Quality at the Institute of Information Management at the University of St. Gallen. His main areas of research are Data Governance, Enterprise-Wide Data Quality Management, Business Engineering and Business Networking. Prior to his current position he gained practical experience at PricewaterhouseCoopers and SAP. He holds a PhD in engineering from the University of Stuttgart, Germany, and obtained his

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    Boris Otto is Assistant Professor and Head of the Competence Center Corporate Data Quality at the Institute of Information Management at the University of St. Gallen. His main areas of research are Data Governance, Enterprise-Wide Data Quality Management, Business Engineering and Business Networking. Prior to his current position he gained practical experience at PricewaterhouseCoopers and SAP. He holds a PhD in engineering from the University of Stuttgart, Germany, and obtained his post-doctoral qualification (“habilitation”) from the University of St. Gallen. In 2011, he was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.

    Verena Ebner is Research Assistant and PhD student at the Institute of Information Management at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. She is member of the Competence Center Corporate Data Quality which is a consortium research project aiming at both the advancement of corporate data quality research. Her research interests include data architecture design and enterprise data modeling. She holds a diploma in computer science from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany. Before her current position, she gained practical experience at IBM Deutschland GmbH.

    Ehsan Baghi is a Research Assistant and PhD student at the Institute of Information Management at the University of St. Gallen. After his studies of computer science at the Technical University of Darmstadt, he joined Information Management Group GmbH (IMG) as a SAP Consultant in Munich. Later on he held a position as Application Development Manager at Valora AG in Switzerland, before he joined the Competence Center Corporate Data Quality at the Institute of Information Management. His research focus is Data Quality Controlling and Business Networking.

    Ran M. Bittmann is a researcher at SAP Labs Israel with over 30 years of experience in the computer industry. Ran holds a Ph.D. in Information Systems from the Bar Ilan University Business Administration School. His main interests are: Decision Support System, Predictive Analytics and Data Communication.

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