Enterprise Systems (ES) represent the largest IS investment an organization is likely to make – and over the past fifteen years a significant proportion of large organizations and many small and medium organizations have made an initial investment in an ES. These organizations are now upgrading, replacing, or extending their original Enterprise Systems. Early versions, known as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, provided back office functionality that integrated a range of business processes. Today’s Enterprise Systems have evolved to include support for a variety of front office and interorganizational activities such as customer relationship management (CRM) and supply chain management (SCM). They do this both through traditional large integrated software packages such as SAP and Oracle Enterprise Systems, and through best-of-breed systems, integrated through middleware. The design of such large integrated systems represents a major technical challenge, requiring new ways of thinking about business processes, system development, and enterprise architecture. Because of both their size and their integrated nature, these systems are difficult to implement, and are associated with a variety of organizational changes. Organizations expect, but unfortunately do not always realize, significant benefits from their sizable investments in ES. Because of the importance of Enterprise Systems in organizations and the demand for employees able to realize benefits from these systems, educators are exploring approaches for introducing Enterprise Systems into the IS and general management curriculum.

Enterprise Systems has been an active area of organizational, technical, and educational research for a decade, and since 1999 AMCIS has devoted one or more tracks to Enterprise Systems topics. This year the Special Interest Group on Enterprise Systems (SIGEntSys) is sponsoring five ES mini-tracks:

• ES Technology
• ES Organizational Issues
• Extended Enterprise Systems
• ES Learning and Education
• Enterprise Architecture

We welcome both conceptual and empirical papers, as well as teaching cases, other ES curriculum material, and papers that examine research methods appropriate for ES research. We encourage submissions from researchers representing all ontological perspectives. Our intention is to provide a forum for bringing together researchers and educators with similar interests both to share their current work and to plan future directions for the field. We also hope to stimulate future collaboration in both research and curriculum development.

Important deadlines:

• Before February 1, 2006: Submit abstracts via email to the appropriate mini-track chair
• Before March 1, 2006: Register as a reviewer on the AIS Review System
• Before March 1, 2006: Submit papers via the AIS Review System

Mini-track 1: Enterprise System Technology

Cost pressure and low margins force an intra- and inter-organizational optimization of processes. Dynamic changes in the business environment require a flexible reaction and adaption of enterprise systems. Therefore developers must find new ways to model business processes, support different views of the same data simultaneously, and construct appropriate architectures. As a result some enterprise systems are based on service oriented architectures and enhanced by tools like process analyzers or management support systems. This mini-track invites papers on technological aspects of development, implementation and deployment of enterprise systems.

Suggested topics include:

• Technologies and Tools in Enterprise Systems (ES)
• Technology Enhancements, e.g. RFID, Web Services, Virtual Reality, Mobile Applications, Portal Technology, and Workflow Management
• Integrating SCM, CRM and SRM technologies (“ERP II”)
• Integrating Business Process Modeling Tools to ES
• Business Intelligence and Knowledge Management in ES
• Integrating Legacy and Specialist Systems with Enterprise Systems
• Integrating Product Data Management Systems and Product Lifecycle Systems

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Mini-track 2: Enterprise System Organizational Issues

Enterprise Systems (ES) encompass a wide range of software products supporting day-to-day business operations and decision-making. ES serves many industries and numerous organizational areas in an integrated fashion, attempting to automate operations, including inventory control, manufacturing scheduling, sales support, financial and cost accounting, human resources and many other functions and processes in organizations. While most organizations, prior to ES, already had information systems that addressed much of this functionality, ES systems provide a standardized, integrated process-focused environment that is difficult to attain and viably maintain, with stand-alone, custom-built software systems. These large-complex ES generate substantial tangible and intangible benefits and entail many users ranging from top executives to data entry operators, many applications that span the organization, and a diversity of capabilities and functionality. Despite the positive motivations for ES adoption, there exists much controversy surrounding the benefits of these systems. Introducing ES to an organization is not only a significant financial investment, but also requires skills in change management, process redesign, and business project management. The integration of ES (inter and intra-organizational) presents many organizational challenges. Once implemented, these systems affect how organizations operate, and require significant organizational learning before benefits can be realized. This mini-track invites papers on all organizational aspects of Enterprise Systems.

Suggested topics include:

• ES selection and adoption
• ES post-implementation challenges, issues and critical success factors
• Organizational Change, Culture and Organizational Learning
• Organizational and Business Impacts of ES
• Business Benefit Evaluation and Realization
• Case studies and surveys on organizational issues
• Organizational issues related to the integration of ES and IT infrastructures
• Inter and Intra- organizational interaction of ES

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Mini-track 3: Extended Enterprise Systems

Enterprise Systems are no longer limited to the integration of backoffice functions. Extended ES are ones that go beyond the edge of an organizational boundary and stretch out into the entire value chain. Vendors such as SAP and PeopleSoft have introduced extensions to their original systems to support cross-boundary processes such as customer relationship management or supply chain management. Other vendors supply these and other extensions as add-ons to ES. In addition, systems are being built to support inter-organizational networks such as those connecting the different stakeholders in a healthcare network. This mini-track invites papers on all issues related to Enterprise Systems that move beyond the traditional ERP configuration.

Suggested topics include:

• New directions in Enterprise Systems
• Supply chain management and Enterprise Systems
• Customer relationship management and Enterprise Systems
• Interorganizational Enterprise Systems
• Extended Enterprise Systems selection, implementation and usage issues
• Costs and benefits of extended Enterprise Systems
• Cases on extended Enterprise Systems

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Mini-track 4 – Research on Enterprise Systems Learning and Education

With Enterprise Systems occupying a dominant position in organizations, IS educators have turned to the task of ensuring that IS and management students are appropriately prepared. As a result many different approaches for teaching Enterprise Systems have been introduced. In many cases, IS concepts are successfully learned by utilizing real-world Enterprise Systems in an experiential learning environment. Students in various areas such as information systems, accounting information systems, production and operations management, marketing, and engineering management are studying important aspects of enterprise systems from the development, configuration, and implementation of these systems to their ongoing maintenance, use, and auditing of such systems. Research has shown that enterprise systems can enhance traditional business education, as well as create new areas for curriculum innovation and subject matter learning.

This mini-track invites papers that examine learning and educational issues associated with enterprise systems: how best to support and enhance existing curriculum, what new curriculum should be introduced, how to integrate the theory and practice of enterprise systems use in the classroom, how to measure learning outcomes, and evidence of the success of this approach. This mini-track is interested in curriculum content and pedagogical approaches regarding ES learning and education. In addition to presenting relevant curricula and case studies, we especially encourage empirical studies, laboratory studies, and theory-based approaches.

Suggested topics include:

• ES approaches to innovative curriculum, business, and engineering programs
• Empirical evidence of ES Learning Outcomes
• Theory based development of ES Learning and Educating
• Grounded approaches to determining "what" should be taught
• Grounded approaches to determine "how" to teach/learn most effectively
• Research reports on utilizing ES in a research lab environment
• Evaluation of educational approaches
• Teaching case studies
• New and emerging "general concepts, principals, and theories"
• Convergence of teaching Management, IT, and Enterprise Systems

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Mini-track 5 – Enterprise Architecture

Enterprise systems are instruments for the support of informational and transactional business processes. Hence, their functionalities should correspond to business requirements. However, significant discrepancies between enterprise systems functionalities and business requirements can be observed in many real life situations. One source of such discrepancies is different life cycles. A second source of discrepancy is different development paradigms. For example, strategic planning and organizational design outcomes, such as enterprise architectures, and enterprise systems often are not developed in a synchronized way. Whereas strategic planning and organizational design are regarded as a core differentiator and therefore are performed individually, buy-before-make strategies dominate for many enterprise systems. Consequently, structures on the strategy level, organizational level, and systems level may have become inconsistent. Furthermore, operations as well as changes in and to the enterprise may become more risky, take longer than expected, and consume more resources than anticipated.

It is believed that the development, implementation, and use of enterprise architecture can enable better management of IT and organizational resources. Enterprise architecture is a representation of dependencies between the most important aggregate business specifications (e.g. goals, products / services, value propositions, risks, opportunities), the most important aggregate organizational specifications (e.g. business processes, performance indicators, information objects, organizational structures), and the most important aggregate information systems specifications (e.g. functionalities, data, interfaces, applications). Although the difficulty and complexity of development, implementation, and use of enterprise architectures can be extremely high, the potential rewards can also be very substantial.

This mini-track invites papers that examine enterprise architecture in the context of enterprise systems and in the context of its relationships with other organizational and IT resources. General questions include: (a) how is enterprise architecture developed, maintained, and embedded into information management and into organizational development; (b) what is the value proposition of enterprise architecture; (c) how do IT managers, business managers, and end-users benefit from participating in the development and implementation process; (d) what is the complementarity of the enterprise architecture with other organizational resources; (e) how are enterprise systems and enterprise architecture interlinked; and (f) how, with regard to use, does the firm reap the proposed benefits of the enterprise architecture?

Suggested topics include:

• Reference architectures or innovative architectures on business, organizational, and systems level
• Specific architecture views, e.g. for risk, information, or performance management
• Benefits and risks associated with the development, implementation, and use of an enterprise architecture
• Interplay between enterprise architecture and IT infrastructure flexibility
• Enterprise architecture in specific application scenarios (supply chains, lean manufacturing, outsourcing)
• Standards and standardization of architectures
• Economic justification and organizational issues (e.g. roles and responsibilities) of enterprise architecture
• The role of the enterprise architecture in the formation of strategic alliances
• Alignment of business, process and IS architecture
• CEO/CIO partnership and enterprise architecture development
• Balancing reusability, scalability and time-to-market of architectures
• Quality control for architecture artifact development and maintenance
• Tools for supporting enterprise architecture development and maintenance
• Enterprise architecture implementation practices
• Decoupling of enterprise architecture, IS development projects and information management
• Software development project management and the enterprise architecture

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