Evaluating e-Business Investments by Defining Profiles

摘要

The success of e-business investments - often seen as a quantum leap in business - represents an essential key success factor for enterprises in many branches. Thus, a decision whether to invest or not is mainly a problem of strategic planning. In order to structure e-business investments systematically and make different investments comparable, prior research especially targeted the classification of e-business activities. Common approaches focus on the market, the target group, the strategic orientation or the implemented phases. With the exception of the last classification approach none of these approaches give any information about the risk and uncertainty of an e-business project and its corresponding investment. Since risk and uncertainty, which are closely connected, are the two main characteristics of e-business projects, a classification relating to these two aspects is required. By identifying crucial risk and uncertainty drivers and by defining a corresponding profile scheme it is possible to assess an e-business investment related to its risk. In addition, certain constellations in the profile scheme allow the prediction of general statements concerning the future success of a special e-business investment. As a consequence, the goal of this research paper is to provide a useful profile scheme. By focusing on five key drivers a profile scheme is established, which supports the assessment in a vivid and concrete manner. Certain constellations in the profile scheme are discussed in order to establish general statements concerning the future success of a special e-business investment. For demonstrating its feasibility and impact the profile scheme is applied to a real world case. In this context this research paper makes three important contributions: (1) it structures e-business investments systematically by providing a profile scheme, (2) allows the evaluation of different investments in order to compare them and to predict their future success and (3) it presents the first application of the profile scheme that uses a real world case.