The Role of IS-Flexibility for the Management of an E-Procurement System: A Case Study

A number of benefits of e-procurement systems have been identified by researchers and by practitioners. However, the selection of an appropriate solution from a large number of available solutions is still considered difficult in practice. Traditional cost-benefit and business strategy approaches fall short to provide guidelines regarding an appropriate, let alone optimal level of information system (IS) flexibility to support procurement processes, yet there is empirical evidence that insufficient as well as overly extensive IS flexibility can lead to sub-optimal results. In this paper, we present a case study of an e-procurement system at a Fortune 100 firm that confirms the importance of actively managing IS flexibility. We identify the expected time-frame of an e-procurement system as an important variable for the selection and the management of IS flexibility, in addition to business process characteristics that have been identified earlier as having an impact on flexibility requirements.