A Reflection Upon the Case Studies

Before the Corporate IT Standardization Management Framework is presented, first a summary and cross case analysis of the previous three case studies is given provided.

Client/Server Standardization "Uniform Case"

It is often said that the use of standards in IT saves money. An example is given by Nash (2001) which shows that annual end-user support at a company using a standardized IT environment costs $5400 per workstation, compared with $7400 at a company that uses a mix of technologies. As part of in depth case study research, this type of observations will be further substantiated. Multiple case studies will be carried out, enabling both literal and theoretical replications. The first one is about product standardization of both back-end and front-end of a desktop environment. As described in Chapter 2, Ross (2003) argued that in the ‘standardized technology architecture stage’, with lead-times that range from 2 to 6 years, IT resources are put in a shared infrastructure allowing cost savings by e.g. significant reduction in the number of vendor packages that offer similar functionalities. This also increases IT maintainability, reliability and security.

Software Development Standardization "CMM/DSDM Case"

Pijl et al. (1997) point out that strict adherence to software quality standards could be counterproductive if tailoring for specific types of systems is not possible. They also argue that current quality standards are focussed on standardization processes and procedures, whereas innovative projects require creativity. However, as has been pointed out in Chapter 2, standardization can be beneficial to creativity when one does not have to focus on basic quality issues. On the other hand standardization could impede creativity when it limits the number of possible solutions. Therefore one should not focus on standardization of processes alone. As Mintzberg (1984) argues there are other coordination mechanisms such as standardization of skills, outputs and communication. The second case study is about process standardization within a software development department. We will investigate how this process standard was chosen and implemented and what its effects were on business performance.

Standardization & Standards

The inherently multidisciplinary process of standardization and its outcome, standards, are fascinating and complex subjects since it involves issues ranging from technological, organizational and economic to legal and sociological aspects (Hesser and Inklaar, 1997). Standards have been with us for over 5000 years, starting with the first alphabets and measurement systems and centuries later by national coin-based currencies. In the 19th century there was an enormous struggle with dozens of railroad gauges throughout Europe and the USA, that cried out for standards. This was also an issue as regards electricity (voltages, net frequencies, etc). Only in 1865 the International Telegraph Union (which became the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in 1932), founded by twenty countries, addressed this problem. And just after the Second World War in 1947, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) was established (Hesser and Inklaar, 1997; Spivak and Brenner, 2001). In the following section a literature study is presented on both standardization and standards to identify key characteristics and benefits & risks as far as relevant to this thesis. Basically three types of literature (journals and books) have been studied related to: 1) Information System (IS) management, 2) General management and 3) Standardization and standards. The first category included primary IS journals (MIS Quarterly; Journal of Management Information Systems; Communications of the ACM) and secondary IS journals (including Computer Standards and Interfaces; Database for Advances in Information Systems; Knowledge, Technology & Policy) which were reviewed on the subject of IT standardization and IT standard usage. The second category consisted of top management journals such as Academy of Management Review, Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review and California Management Review whereas the third category included more popular journals (like Information and StandardView). ‘Standard’ books on this subject were included also, for instance the ones from Verman (1973), Cargil (1989) and De Vries (1999). Rationale was to determine the current “state of the art” on standardization with special focus on IT standardization and its effects on business performance in companies.

Conclusions, Discussion, Recommendations

In this chapter a final discussion will be presented following four case studies that have been carried out with respect to company IT standards using an initial and an enhanced conceptual model. The initial model focussed on the control of using IT standards whereas the enhanced version incorporated selection and implementation, besides their usage. Furthermore, control was modified into management and governance with the objective of focussing on opportunities to influence process performance to realize intended business benefits. In the next sections the business benefits identified in the case studies will be discussed, as well as whether these hold in a more general sense also. The structure of this chapter is as follows. First a summary and the conclusions of this research will be provided. Than, the contributions to theory and practice will be discussed including the generalizability of the findings and the limitations of this research. This chapter is concluded with recommendations for further research.

IT, Business Processes & Performance

This chapter describes literature about IT investments, and the impact of IT on the performance of a firm. The reason for this study is that effects of IT standards, which are an integral part of IT, will be investigated in several case studies. Supporting the case study analysis, a method will be adopted that is used to assess business performance from IT in general. Business performance in general can be assessed from different angles, such as financial performance, process performance and transaction performance. Literature from various disciplines shows the complexity of and the disagreement as regards measurement and description of business performance. However, it is generally accepted that these impacts can be assessed best at the intermediate level: that of business processes. After the introduction, literature dealing with IT value and business performance will be discussed. Then a specific method, the Balanced Scorecard, will be dealt with and an explanation is given why we used it in this research. This chapter concludes with a look at the concept of flexibility, as part of business performance, and what it means in relation to IT standards.

Information Security Management Standardization "ISO/IEC 17799 Case"

In this Section an outline will be given on the discipline of Information Security and some of its related standards. Special attention will be paid to the ISO/IEC 17799 process standard as this information security management standard formed the basis of this case study.

Building the Conceptual Model

It is difficult to isolate the business contribution of IT investments, and investments related to IT standardization are no exception, as discussed in the previous chapter. In Chapter 2 literature on standard setting processes and standards was described and in Chapter 3 literature was reviewed on the impact of IT on the process performance of a firm. In this chapter the choice for the research method, as part of the research approach depicted in Chapter 1, Figure 3, will be clarified and an initial conceptual model will be composed. The research method chosen comprises both exploratory and explanatory case study research as this was considered the best way to complement theory in this underdeveloped domain of IS literature (Yin, 1994). The conceptual model integrates aspects of standardization, standards application and standards control, and relates those to the impact of IT standards used in an organization on business process performance.

HR IS Standardization "CHRISP Case"

To gain further experience with the conceptual model, as part of the theory testing phase, a third in-depth case study was carried out at FINCORP. The IS product standardization in this study relates to ERP HR modules of PeopleSoft®1, which include the accompanying HR processes. These modules were selected as company IT standard. As discussed in Chapter 3, measuring the real costs and benefits of IT investments is a notoriously complex problem (Brynjolfsson and Hitt, 1998). Asif and Schuff (2005) acknowledge that this becomes even more complicated when considering ERP technologies that impact on a variety of processes across the value chain. Chand et al. (2005, p.560) also acknowledge the problem of assessing the benefits of ERP systems is less well studied and understood, and illustrate the applicability of the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) to ERP systems. They list various reasons that motivate organizations to implement ERP systems, which can be split into financial and non-financial benefits (Table 1). Anticipated benefits related to company IT standardization can be clearly identified. Furthermore, they integrate the four Kaplan and Nortons’ Balanced Scorecard perspectives with Zuboff’s automate, informate and transformate goals of information systems (Zuboff, 1985) in an attempt to measure the contributions and impacts of ERP systems at operational, tactical and strategic levels. However, in this case study we will use the original perspectives to make comparison with the other case studies possible.

Introduction

The main research objective of this book is to investigate how organizations can realize the intended business benefits from IT standardization. In order to investigate this, we will also study what this standardization process entails and how the usage of the resulting standards impacts business performance. Although ultimately the interest lies in the business performance effectiveness and efficiency, for practical reasons, the focus of this study will be on its intermediate level: the performance of business processes. The justification for carrying out this research, on how to ensure effective and efficient IT standardization and IT standard usage in a company, stems from the fact that this phenomenon has hardly been investigated in the academic literature and that results are not well understood in everyday practice. A globally operating financial services enterprise, FINCORP, will be used as a case company.