Information technology and systems justification

Information Technology (IT) such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), Radio Frequency Identification Technology (RFID), wireless, the Internet and World Wide Web (WWW), and Information Systems (IS) such as Electronic Commerce (e-commerce) systems and ERP systems have had a tremendous impact in education, healthcare, manufacturing, transportation, retailing, pure services and even war. Many organisations turned to IT/IS to help them achieve their goals; however, many failed to achieve the full potential of IT/IS. These failures can be attributed, at least in part, to a weak link in the planning process. That weak link is the IT/IS justification process. The decision-making process has grown more difficult in recent years with the increased complexity of business brought about by the rapid growth of supply chain management, the virtual enterprise and e-business. These are but three of the many changes in the business environment over the past 10 to 12 years. The complexities of this dynamic new business environment should be taken into account in IT/IS justification. A. Gunasekaran, E.W.T. Ngai and R.E. McGaughey conducted a review of the current literature on IT/IS justification. The purpose of the literature review was to assemble meaningful information for the development of a framework for IT/IS evaluation that better reflects the new business environment. A suitable classification scheme has been proposed for organising the literature reviewed and directions for future research are indicated.