Evaluating Componentized Enterprise Information Technologies: A Multiattribute Modeling Approach

Corporations are increasingly implementing enterprise information technologies (EITs), because of the costs of maintaining legacy systems and the lack of fit of such systems for organization-wide information sharing. A new type of EIT that is being introduced in major corporations (such as Dell Computers), is based on the idea of component systems, which are stand-alone software programs that can integrate with other such components with relative ease. Given the financial outlay for EITs, the evaluation and adoption of these systems is not something that can be completed haphazardly. This requirement is complicated by the relative infancy of models for the evaluation of componentized EITs. To this end, in this paper, we introduce a managerial multistage multiattribute decision model, consisting of the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) model and the Supermatrix approach (also defined as the Analytical Network Processes (ANP) approach). This combination of models builds on earlier work that validates the Supermatrix approach for evaluating traditional EITs at a Fortune 100 organization. The aggregation of these benefits is then measured against the costs of systems, thereby arriving at a ranking of alternatives for each functional area. We illustrate the model with an example and draw managerial implications.