The Future of Enterprise Information Systems

Abstract

Enterprise information systems (EIS) were important enablers of crossfunctional processes within businesses since the 1990s. Often referred to as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, they were extended in line with electronic businesses for integration with suppliers as well as customers. Today, EIS architectures comprise, not only, ERP, supply chain, and customer relationship management systems, but also, business intelligence and analytics. Recently, the move towards decentralized technologies has created new perspectives for EIS. Information systems (IS) research addresses opportunities and challenges of these developments already quite well, but what will be the pressing opportunities and challenges for supporting enterprises with IS in the coming years? The remainder of this discussion piece will discuss the future of EIS from diverse but complementary perspectives. We open the discussion piece by discussing how decentralization dynamics impact EIS and how such dynamics must be controlled but also harnessed to make future EIS more efficient and useful. These insights are complemented with a discussion of EIS research challenges from a design science research (DSR) perspective. The next two sections put a stronger focus on implications for practice. The first essay portrays how technological evolution will benefit and challenge EIS. The following essay discusses the value of composable business processes to improve the flexibility of EIS. The penultimate essay offers an outlook how future EIS can allow for enough heterogeneity to facilitate business logic diversification while retaining enough homogeneity to allow for interoperability. The final essay wraps up the discussion piece with a call for more research on EIS implementation and usage in IS journals.

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