Customer initiated interorganizational information systems: The operational impacts and obstacles for small and medium sized suppliers

Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) have typically remained outside integrated supply networks enabled by interorganizational information systems (IOISs). This paper investigates, by means of a case study, the operational impacts and implementation obstacles of customer initiated IOISs for SME suppliers. In particular, the paper compares the effectiveness of system-to-system and system-to-human integration. As a result we find that interorganizational system-to-human integration can provide operational benefits for non-initiating SMEs, but not as much as system-to-system integration. In addition, system-to-system integration appears elusive where resources are scarce and backend system capabilities limited.