IS Benefits Management

Benefits management (BM) and project management (PM) are two interrelated approaches to the success of projects. The literature, however, still lacks empirical evidence of the value of applying BM practices. Hence, it is aimed to test the impact of BM practices on the success of investments in projects, taking into consideration the impact of PM practices on that success. Since the results, based on 200 valid responses, suggest that a significant proportion of organisations adopt PM and BM concurrently, SEM was used. PM practices were not only found to influence project management success but also to affect project investment success. However, BM is found to be less significant and to have less impact on project investment success. Nevertheless, the probability of project success is enhanced significantly when PM and BM practices are combined together. Therefore, a governance based framework is developed to uncover the interweaving relationship between the two practices.

The success of ERP has been discussed extensively throughout the last decade. However, this research offers a new lens for understanding this success through combining project management theory with institutional theory. Based on neo-institutional theory, it is proposed that the more the Project Management (PM) and Benefits Management (BM) are used as practice and governance frameworks in an organization, the more it is able to use them in ERP projects since they become part of its institutional logic in managing its projects. Therefore, ERP investment success is hypothesized to be associated with the organization's project and benefits management institutional logics. After analyzing 130 questionnaires using Structural Equation Modeling, it is found that these hypotheses are supported. Furthermore, the organizations that have both logics outperform others which have not. This research implies that project management is not responsible for the project investment success. This is the responsibility of business change management.

In capability development projects, project management
practices are believed to have an impact on time and cost of delivering outputs. Likewise, program management and benefits management practices are believed to have impacts on the benefits realization and the organization satisfaction. This research uses interpretive research, using a focus group with seven experts from developed countries and eight face-to-face interviews with experts from developing countries, to understand the benefits management practices that are valid and those that are not (and why). Positive research, using two sequential surveys with 50 and 28 responses, respectively, is used to test the propositions of (1) whether benefits  management has an impact on business benefits, (2) whether project management is not important for benefits  management, and (3) whether program management is the best governance way to manage benefits. This research found that there is no significant relationship between using benefits management practices and benefits realization and organization satisfaction. Only project management practices are found to have significant evidence on delivering capability
on time and on cost, realizing business benefits and  organization satisfaction from this capability. The results of the questionnaire are interpreted and explained using the qualitative analysis of the interviews and online focus group.

We are living in a period of enormous technological transformations and the organizations face new opportunities that the systems and information technology (IS/IT) implementations provide with the hope that these investments will help to increase productivity and business prosperity, meanwhile, several studies performed in public and private sectors have proven that the investments done in IS/IT have not brought the expected benefits. Some authors argue that the result of the studies that related investments in IS/IT and the increasing performance of the organizations in the last thirty years were far from true. In this paper the authors propose a link between the Benefits Dependency Network, from a Benefits Management approach, and a Strategy Map, from Balanced Scorecard, to improve the management of business benefits and to ensure that actions taken along the investment life-cycle lead to foreseen benefits realization. The goal of this integration is to build a framework that combines useful features of both methods. We sustain that they can be complementary. As a Strategy Map is committed with strategic alignment, communication and monitoring of strategy execution at all levels of an organization, a Benefits Dependency Network is aimed at explaining how benefits are going to be obtained through organizational change. Using the results of a case-study research, we explain how a Strategy Map can cross with the Benefits Dependency Network. The integrated contribution is meant to increase the investments effectiveness, giving to stakeholders the confidence on a clearer delivery path for their expected benefits.

Modern enterprises struggle to cope with their structural complexity as artificial systems and their role as participants in value networks. Particularly, it is non-trivial to represent and align two distinct dimensions: the (dynamic) purpose and goals of the enterprise, and its construction, moulded by implementation constraints and decisions.
Current enterprise modelling approaches have several limitations in addressing this gap, particularly how to express the value perspective of a system in a coherent and traceable way to its constructional components, in order to effectively support change management.
The objective of this research is to define a value-oriented system development method supported by sound theory that contributes to address these issues, grounded in the Business Modelling and Enterprise Engineering knowledge areas.
The main design artefacts of this thesis are a set of formal models to specify value networks and a process to build and change those networks systematically. These artefacts allow specifying the contribution of an individual actor, the bindings between two actors that exchange these contributions and, finally, the multi-actor chains that form value networks.
The utility of the design artefacts is demonstrated by informed argument and modelling the value perspective of a system in a set of case studies.

The challenges that face health organisations nowadays are to deliver more and better information, and to provide faster quality services at prices that are affordable to the entire population. To fulfil this objective, health organisations require more comprehensive and integrated technological solutions, in order to optimise their available resources, as a means to eliminate inefficiencies and to achieve planned benefits from investments. More and more, project management is recognised as being a key tool for use in developing initiatives that are aimed at promoting the implementation of organisations’ strategies. The focus of this research is to design a framework that combines different management approaches, in order to strengthen the outcomes of investments in Information and Technology Systems (IS/IT) in the health sector. The results encountered at the end of the pre-test phase indicated that the correct appropriation of technology by organisations, combined with the use of project management practices, are facilitators in achieving greater success from project outcomes.

Organisations are under constant pressure. Externally, they face a scenario of intense competition, coupled with a changing environment which is full of uncertainty. Internally, organisations have to deal with limited resources, whilst at the same time comply with increasing requirements and strategic demands. A key to success is the successful management of organisational projects. According to worldwide studies, information systems and information technology (IS/IT) projects have a relatively low success rate. To face these various business challenges, the authors suggest that emphasis should be put on the integration of various and disperse management tools. By combining project management maturity models with benefits management approaches, we expect to reinforce support for the drive to use organisational projects to fulfill organisations’ strategic plans that will enhance the control techniques of project management, whilst recognising the need for organisational change and for ensuring the interpersonal skills necessary to orchestrate the successful completion of a project.

Many organizations today need to deliver more complex products and services in a better, faster, and cheaper way. The business problems that some companies address require enterprise-wide solutions that call for an integrated approach and an effective management of organizational resources to achieve business objectives with an acceptable level of risk. A maturity model is a process improvement approach that provides organizations with the essential elements of effective change. It can be used to guide process improvement across a project, a division, or an entire organization. Maturity models help integrate traditionally separate organizational functions, set process improvement goals and priorities, provide guidance for quality processes, and provide benchmark for appraising current processes outcomes. The benefits management approach emerges as a complement to traditional management practices and proposes a continuous mapping of benefits, implementing and monitoring intermediate results. Benefits management reinforces the distinction between project results and business benefits. Based on a case study the authors show how a set of business objectives can be obtained from identifying, structuring and monitoring business benefits, supported by information technology enablers and organizational transformations, and as a result of a certain maturity level. The authors also state that the main focus of an investment success lies not only in technology implementation, but mainly in changes in organizational performance and business efficiency by means of improved processes and modifications in the way the work is done. We emphasize that the integration between a Maturity Model and a Benefits Management approach can increase the effectiveness of projects, programs or portfolios outcomes. Besides, this linkage can also improve decision-makers confidence that the investments done match the desired maturity stages and will then, with more probability, collect more value for businesses.

Investments in information systems and technology (IS/IT) have not always generated the business value or the financial revenue that should be expected. Some authors argue that the result of those studies that related investments in IS/IT to increased organisational performance over the last thirty years were far from true. Others say that the amount spent on IS/IT and business success has no direct connection. The relationship between IS/IT and performance is widely discussed, but is little understood. Organizations today need to deliver more complex products and demanding services in a better, faster, and cheaper way. The challenges that companies address today require enterprise-wide solutions that call for an integrated approach and the effective management of organizational resources in order to achieve business objectives. Benefits Management (BM) approach proposes a continuous mapping of the benefits of IS/IT investments, implementing and monitoring intermediate results. Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is an innovative approach that considers the financial and non-financial perspectives in determining the performance level of an organization. Not only does it represent a measurement tool, but it is also a multi-dimensional system of performance management which focusses on the alignment of all business initiatives with the strategy. In this paper, the authors propose a link between these two approaches to improve the management of business benefits and to ensure that actions taken along the investment life-cycle lead to foreseen benefits realization. The goal of this integration is to propose a framework that combines the " best of " the both methods. A key issue of this combination lies in the fact that all involved stakeholders must understand more clearly what is required, what is realistically expected, and what is possible to achieve from these investments.

Organizations are making large investments in package based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. While some organizations have achieved business improvement from their ERP systems, many still fail to realize the benefits identified at the project outset. One recommended approach to improve the likelihood of ERP system success and thereby delivery of benefits, is to avoid package customization. However, it appears that implementing a truly ‘vanilla’ system, although desirable, is rarely achieved. The type of customization may also be important in influencing the level of benefits realized from ERP systems. A more tailored system may provide a better fit with organizational processes and increased chances of benefit realization. Research that explores the relationship between ERP system customization and benefits realization is lacking. This study helps to fill this gap using an existing benefits management framework explicitly examining the role of customization in ERP projects. The research method will be exploratory research interviews followed by two in-depth case studies. It is anticipated that investigating the role of customization will significantly advance our understanding of the benefits realization process from ERP system projects.

Purpose – Identifying the benefits arising from implementations of enterprise systems and realizing business value remains a significant challenge for both research and industry. This paper consolidates previous work. It presents a framework for investigating enterprise systems benefits and business change, which addresses the identified limitations of previous research and provides a more detailed analysis of benefits and their contextual variation.
Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on data gathered from 31 real-world organizations (case studies) of differing size, maturity and industry sector the study adopts an iterative content analysis to empirically derive a comprehensive benefits framework.
Findings – The content analysis provides a detailed classification of expectations and benefits, which is described in a four level framework. The four levels (areas) are further subdivided into aspects and criteria plus an attributed appraisal value. The resulting scheme for the “3-level benefit codes” provides a greater level of detail about the nature of expected and realized benefits.
Practical implications – The high level of detail and the code scheme comprising 60 different codes and the method for deriving the codes allows companies to identify and define benefits as well as to assess the outcome of enterprise systems implementation projects.
Originality/value – The paper empirically develops an applicable benefits framework, which addresses the lack of detail of previous frameworks.
Keywords: benefits, enterprise systems, ERP systems, framework, content analysis, case studies
Paper type: Research paper

E-procurement systems, which represent a core e-supply chain initiative, revolutionise the procurement function of organisations and promise many benefits. However, realisation of benefits is not always guaranteed. Existing e-procurement studies are primarily descriptive in nature and do not help management predict the likely benefits that their organisations may experience from implementing an e-procurement system. We thus propose a model to better explain the benefits that organisations may experience from these systems. The model identifies four types of relationships which organisations could establish with suppliers while deciding to introduce an e-procurement system, and associates each relationship type with several predicted benefits. We further present the e-procurement experience of an Australian local government agency, analyse it in terms of the model, and provide initial empirical support for the applicability of part of the model. Finally, the contributions of our study together with its implications for future research and practice are highlighted.

Organizations have made significant investments in technology, hoping to gain competitive advantages in today's dynamic markets. Traditional organisational structures are rigid and highly bureaucratic. Previous evidence has shown that they cannot quickly or accurately respond to the constant changes of the business environment. Organisations should carry out significant changes and implement new practices more adjusted to reality, including the use of project and benefits management approaches, seeking a better use and control of existing resources and capabilities. As project management became crucial for the development of organizational strategies, by reinforcing professional skills and capabilities, it is of interest to carry out studies aiming to identify which factors contribute to projects success. The framework proposed in this paper assists organizations to identify and monitor the benefits of technological projects, allowing the answer to our main research question: " How can benefits and project management approaches help organizations to obtain more successful projects? " The results of the presented case study highlighted that the application of a benefits management process on the pre-identified critical success factors promoted better project management practices and ensured an effective impact on a project success.

Achieving success for ERP systems is not only concerned with deploying the technology on time and on budget but also concerned with the level of achieving targeted benefits from the system. This level of achieving targeted benefits can be managed indirectly through managing the organisational attitude toward the new system. Thus, the aim of this paper is to use the System Dynamics (SD) to reveal how managing organisational attitude leads to an increase in the level of system use and, therefore, leads to a decrease in the level of resistance to change to new system for achieving high level of performance. SD is used to investigate the causal loops of organisational attitude, perceptions, behaviours, and policies taken to achieve desired benefits. The ability to manage an organisational attitude toward ERP is an important factor for achieving desired levels of benefits is the main conclusion of this research.

The business challenges that some companies face require enterprise-wide solutions that call for an integrated
approach and an effective management of organisational resources in order to achieve business objectives
with an acceptable level of risk. A maturity model is an improvement approach which provides organisations
with the essential elements for effective change. The maturity models process helps to integrate traditionally
separate organisational functions, enhances goals and priorities, supplies guidance for quality processes
and shares benchmarks for appraising current outcomes. The benefits management approach emerges as a
complement to traditional management practices and proposes a continuous mapping of business benefits and
the implementation and monitoring of intermediate results. Benefits management reinforces the distinction
between project results and business benefits. Based on a case study, the authors show how a set of business
objectives derived from a maturity level upgrade can be obtained from identifying, structuring and monitoring
objectives and benefits. This was supported by information technology enablers and organisational changes
which were all framed in an organisational maturity level that had been previously measured.

Much work has focused on improving construction productivity including the use of information and
communication technology (ICT) in construction. In particular, Building Information Modelling (BIM) could
revolutionise the project process. Also, it is considered by the different construction industry stakeholders as a
main driver towards them gaining a considerable savings in project costs. Clients can play a vital role in the
implementation process of such technologies but still there is a lack of understanding as to where during the
project lifecycle BIM can provide benefits to the client. In this article a new conceptual framework will represent
the relationship between BIM application benefits and the client organisation maturity levels. This framework
will help the clients to fully understand and monitor the BIM benefits through project life cycle.

Realizing business value and identifying the bene-fits arising from implementations of enterprise systems remains a significant challenge for both research and practice. A review of existing work on enterprise sys-tems benefits reveals some of the gaps in current re-search. This paper presents findings from an ongoing research project to develop a framework for investigating enterprise systems benefits and business change, which addresses the identified limitations of previous research and provides a more detailed analysis of benefits and their contextual variation. Using an iterative content analysis, this preliminary study provides a classification of enterprise systems benefits. The classification, based on 32 case studies is developed into a four level framework to guide the analysis and representation of benefits. The current framework is presented and illustrated by four exemplary company cases. Finally, some future applications of the framework are outlined.

In this study we report on the benefits achieved from enterprise systems implementations. Building on the existing research this paper uses the expectation-benefits framework as an analytical lens to identify and understand realised benefits. The study com- prises 14 empirical case studies that focus on projects to extend existing ERP and CRM implementations. The work serves two key objectives. First to gain greater insights into the range and scope of realised benefits and second to further validate the exp-ben framework. Benefits are identifed in all four areas of the exp-ben framework. Most notable is the continued focus on achieving integration and in the improvement of information quality and better business intelligence.

The expenses in Information Systems and Information Technology (IS/IT) represent a substantial share in organizations’ budgets. However, IS/IT investment projects seem to continue to show reduced success rates. The Benefits Management (BM) has gained relevance as a way, not only, to understand these failures, but also as a tool available to organizations to improve the success of IS/TI investments.
The objective of this article is to understand how BM can be applied in IS/IT investments in the Public Administration (PA) and help to leverage the benefits of these investments. A case study was conducted using an e-Government project in the Portuguese PA. The study showed how a BM approach can be applied in this environment and also identified some difficulties that must be considered. Several benefits, that were not foreseen, were identified and evaluated, or proposed some criteria for their evaluation, highlighting, this way, the true contribution of IS/IT investments in delivering services to citizens and increasing public organizations performance.

The IS/IT has played a key role in the improvement of business strategies and in changing skills and
organizational capabilities. However, the promised benefits of these investments have been difficult
to monitor, implement and account for. Benefits Management (BM) is becoming an increasingly
important approach for projects which implement IS/IT investments. The authors’ motivation was
answer to the following research question: How BM can help organizations obtain the Dynamic
Capabilities (DC) required to meet the growing market challenges? This paper proposes a framework
for assisting organizations identify and monitor the benefits of IS/IT investments, and for leveraging
through IS/IT the internal changes necessary to quickly respond to the demands presented by the
dynamic business environment. The authors’ research approach explored an enriched single case
study. They conducted an in-depth and multi-faceted exploration, collecting and using data from
documentation, archival records, interviews, direct and participant observations.

The Danish government has been one of the few governments to launch a coercive e-government strategy. According to this strategy, 70+ public services will be mandated digital and all communication between public institutions and citizens/companies will be digital by 2015. The Danish government launched the Digital Post system in 2010, where public institutions and citizens/companies can communicate in an encrypted and authenticated manner. The Danish government and local government agreed that State funding should be reduced according to the estimated postal cost reduction from 2013. Citizens were forced to accept digital post by 2014, although there was the possibility of being exempted.
This study explores the implementation of coercive digital public sector communication from a critical research viewpoint as engaged scholarship and with genuine collaboration with practitioners. The study attempts to reveal the hidden assumptions of technology determinism, rational choice and natural selection that ruled the implementation by investigating various empirical settings. An explorative study of the Digital Post adoption amongst the 98 Danish municipalities from 2010 to 2013 showed immense differences in adoption level. An investigation of Digital Post responsiveness from 243 public institutions on different levels confirmed the variety of public institution capabilities to handle Digital Post. This part of the study revealed that public institutions did not know what Digital Post was, and that they had immense technical challenges sending and receiving digital post. The economic consequences for public institutions from Digital Post was evaluated for 2013 and 2014 and showed a significant deficit. The results were published in the media with the claim that the reduction of State funding should be lessened. Central actors attempted to question the validity of the results and at the same time, refused to perform their own calculations and stated that local authorities would not be compensated.
Two action research studies in two local authorities pointed to a variety of barriers to Digital Post. Barriers were attributed to management engagement and interoperability issues, which might be dealt with locally but also legal barriers, IT systems that were not able to integrate with Digital Post and lack of digital communications readiness or resistance from other public institutions that could not be controlled.
Qualitative studies (Delphi-studies and focus groups) revealed that staff experienced Digital Post as very complex and reported an increased workload. Further, staff found that Digital Post was not appropriate for particularly less able citizens with limited understandings and competencies within IT. Staff reported that citizens experienced loss of welfare rights and economic loss due to difficulties handling the digital channel. Furthermore, staff reported citizens showing anxiety and anger towards the enforced Digital Post. These results were confirmed from a national survey of clerical staff. Finally, staff expressed perceived reduced work life quality due to their inability to assist particularly less able citizens caused by the strategy that staff should only assist citizens to help themselves.
Moreover, the study found a growing alienation amongst staff, a tendency to be less helpful and direct mistrust towards citizens that applied for exemption.
This study concludes that e-government may harm organizations, employees, citizens and the public sector ethos. The research question that the study seeks to answer is: Why is Digital Post harmful and how could this be mitigated?
The negative impact from the Digital Post e-government initiative could have been limited by a few means. If Digital Post had been allowed to forward digital post to regular e-mail accounts, staff would not have experienced the same level of increased workload and fewer citizens would have been harmed by Digital Post due to more citizens being aware of the digital post. Further, if the Ministry of Finance had taken responsibility for the entire communications chain from front end at the public institution to front end for the citizen, the level of complexity at the public institution end might have been reduced significantly. The project has suffered from lack of control due to the reliance of the commercial market for digital solutions. Further, if crucial design flaws such as basing the citizen end on third party software including Java had been corrected immediately, and citizens did not have to print forms, the complexity level at the citizen end would have been reduced significantly. There is a perception by citizens and staff of imbalance in this coercive e-government initiative, where citizens are forced and have no rights or access to complain and public institutions can use whichever channel they like and central government is imposing deficit on public institutions. The study argues that the public support of the digitization of public services is at risk and that the relations between the public sector and citizens have been negatively affected. The author suggests that it is possible to exert a coercive e-government strategy without harm if e-government is governed and guided by an ethical code. The study proposes an ethical coercive e-government approach comprised of ten ethical principles and an institutional frame to maintain the principles.
There are several implications for research from this study. First, the study shows the deficiency of e-government research in its very superficial treatment of central notions like government, citizen, employees, technology and service. Further, e-government harm does not exist in e-government research. This study suggests a conceptual model that allows the analysis for e-government harm and further, an ontology and epistemology of e-government harm. The existence of e-government harm implies a distinction of what is right from what is wrong. The study suggests an ethical e-government framework to guide coercive e-government. The study also elaborates on the ontology of coercive e-government. Finally, directions are offered of how to establish critical e-government research, e-government harm and coercive e-government as new research agendas.
This thesis comprises a summarizing cover part and 7 research papers. All papers have been accepted after peer-review, except from paper 6 that has been submitted for publication.

Rapid changes in the business environment are increasing the pressure on organisations to ensure the delivery of successful projects to fulfil their strategic goals. The use of emerging information systems and technology (IS/IT) has rapidly grown in several contexts, including healthcare. There have been two major drivers for the investments in Health IS/IT: the ever-increasing burden from chronic disease with costs growing significantly faster, and; the recognition of the need for greatly improved quality and safety in the delivery of healthcare. Both of these key drivers have led to very heavy investments in IS/IT in order to enable timely information-sharing for clinical decisions. The authors argue that by combining the Project Management (PM) approach with the Benefits Management (BM) approach, one can improve the current low success rate of implementations  and enhance the reliability of the delivery of benefits from investments in IS/IT.

The business challenges that some companies face require enterprise-wide solutions that call for an integrated approach and an effective management of organisational resources in order to achieve business objectives with an acceptable level of risk. A maturity model is an improvement approach which provides organisations with the essential elements for effective change. The maturity models process helps to integrate traditionally separate organisational functions, enhances goals and priorities, supplies guidance for quality processes and shares benchmarks for appraising current outcomes. The benefits management approach emerges as a complement to traditional management practices and proposes a continuous mapping of business benefits and the implementation and monitoring of intermediate results. Benefits management reinforces the distinction between project results and business benefits. Based on a case study, the authors show how a set of business objectives derived from a maturity level upgrade can be obtained from identifying, structuring and monitoring objectives and benefits. This was supported by information technology enablers and organisational changes which were all framed in an organisational maturity level that had been previously measured

Nowadays the investments made by organizations to get better business performances are crucial and difficult to obtain. So, it´s more and more important that the business-cases underline not only the short-term objectives, but also the long-term benefits that promotes a sustainable future for organizations and investors. The main objective of our research is to study how investments on IS/IT influence projects
performance in organizations. The rational of our model is that organizational maturity has a positive effect on projects performance with the mediation of benefits management. We emphasize that the integration between a maturity model and a benefits management approach can increase the effectiveness of strategic
projects. Besides, it can also improve business confidence that the investments done match the desired maturity stages and will then collect benefits perceived as business value.

It is often argued that IT investments require active management practices for benefits realization. This applies also to enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. As well, benefits realization efforts are assumed to create more value than they cost. Hence, the maturity of organizations should be increased and their cultures cultivated towards more rational benefits realization practices. Our study on ERP implementations in Egyptian medium-sized organizations, however, provides aberrant results that challenge the fundamental arguments for formal benefits realization practices. While investments in ERP are regarded as significant, and the projects challenging, formal benefits realization and investment evaluation practices are considered largely irrelevant. The reasons include the "self-evident" nature of ERP benefits, perceived difficulty and costliness of method use and suspicions on rationality of methods. A government policy to support ERP investments may also decrease incentives for further benefits optimization. Cost coordination of the implementation efforts, however, continues to be an issue.

In the rapidly-changing environments characterizing most industries today, organizations face intense competitive pressure to do things better, faster and cheaper. The business environment of the 1990s has been subjected to rapid and accelerated change that creates more and more uncertainty and complexity. Most markets are becoming increasingly dynamic. Organizations can no longer rely on a traditional analytical approach to understand their industry or market, since that market is changing in rapid and unexpected ways. In spite of its worldwide dissemination, Balanced Scorecard (BSC) has demonstrated inadequacy in certain circumstances. Some of the original advantages of the BSC can nowadays be interpreted as weaknesses. We suggest that in business dynamic environments the benefits management approach, by using the benefits dependency network can help BSCs to guide and support the benefits achievement related with investments, in a complementary way. By using a case study we try to show how a BSC exhibits limitations to deal with business disruptive environments and how a benefits management approach brings a strengthened business implementation vision, from strategy down to operations.

Realizing business value and identifying the benefits arising from implementations of enterprise systems remains a significant challenge for both research and practice. A review of existing work on enterprise systems benefits reveals that current frameworks pay limited attention to contextual and temporal variations, socio-technical and business change, and levels of benefit realization. This research study investigates the complex mix of expected and realized benefits specifically arising from ERP systems. The aim is to address the limitations of current frameworks and extend theoretical understandings to provide a richer picture of ERP benefits and their contextual variation. Drawing on data gathered from more than 60 case study organizations of differing size, maturity and industry sector the study adopts an iterative content analysis to empirically derive a comprehensive benefits framework. The extended classification and the methodology used to construct it are presented and discussed along with their implications for future research and practice.

Realizing business value and identifying the benefits arising from implementations of enterprise systems remains a significant challenge for both research and practice. A review of existing work on enterprise systems benefits reveals some of the gaps in current research. This paper presents findings from an ongoing research project to develop a framework for investigating enterprise systems benefits and business change, which addresses the identified limitations of previous research and provides a more detailed analysis of benefits and their contextual variation. Using an iterative content analysis, this preliminary study provides a classification of enterprise systems benefits. The classification, based on 32 case studies is developed into a four level framework to guide the analysis and representation of benefits. The current framework is presented and illustrated by four exemplary company cases. Finally, some future applications of the framework are outlined.

Organizations create competitive advantage by creating more economic value than their rivals. Increasing business competition and information technology development have both led to huge corporate organizational changes and have raised the importance of intangible assets along the value chain. Value creation and the success of organizations increasingly depends on the leverage of knowledge available internally, as nowadays it has become essential to understand employee portals' business value and to build adequate change management programmes. The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) and Strategy Map (SM) show an organization's objectives, how they are achieved, and the link between the goals of the various sub-units and how these act together to produce the overall results. BSC and SM clarify how intangible assets are aligned with strategy, to create value for the organization. However, the concerns related to change management seem not to have been properly addressed. To conveniently deal with these matters, the authors propose a framework to map the cause-effect relationships that generates business value, as well as provides top management and decision makers with the information needed for a suitable top-down commitment and sponsorship, which is essential to bring about the appropriate change management and benefits' realization. SM and Benefits Dependency Network (BDN) were combined, resulting in a suitable framework to help organizations enhance their knowledge, mitigating the risk of investment failure or misuse, and a timely contribution to capture more value from investments in intangible assets. The developed framework helps organizations address their concerns related to value creation and change management, and it has been applied to this Employee Portal case study. This case study allows us to conclude that, although the promotion of organizational culture and corporate alignment are not usually frequent goals of organizations, and do not motivate investments in the development of employee portals, they are generally recognised as being essential tools for decision-making and value creation.

In the rapidly-changing environments characterizing most industries today, organizations face intense competitive pressure to do things better, faster and cheaper. The business environment of the 1990s has been subjected to rapid and accelerated change that creates more and more uncertainty and complexity. Most markets are becoming increasingly dynamic. Organizations can no longer rely on a traditional analytical approach to understand their industry or market, since that market is changing in rapid and unexpected ways. In spite of its worldwide dissemination, Balanced Scorecard (BSC) has demonstrated inadequacy in certain circumstances. Some of the original advantages of the BSC can nowadays be interpreted as weaknesses. We suggest that in business dynamic environments the benefits management approach, by using the benefits dependency network can help BSCs to guide and support the benefits achievement related with investments, in a complementary way. By using a case study we try to show how a BSC exhibits limitations to deal with business disruptive environments and how a benefits management approach brings a strengthened business implementation vision, from strategy down to operations.

It is often argued that IT investments require active management practices for benefits realization. This applies also to enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. As well, benefits realization efforts are assumed to create more value than they cost. Hence, the maturity of organizations should be increased and their cultures cultivated towards more rational benefits realization practices. Our study on ERP implementations in Egyptian medium-sized organizations, however, provides aberrant results that challenge the fundamental arguments for formal benefits realization practices. While investments in ERP are regarded as significant, and the projects challenging, formal benefits realization and investment evaluation practices are considered largely irrelevant. The reasons include the “self-evident” nature of ERP benefits, perceived difficulty and costliness of method use and suspicions on rationality of methods. A government policy to support ERP investments may also decrease incentives for further benefits optimization. Cost coordination of the implementation efforts, however, continues to be an issue.

Nowadays the investments made by the health system to get better organizational performance are crucial and difficult to perform. So, it´s more and more important that the business-cases underline not only the short-term objectives, but also the long-term benefits that promotes good services for organizations and their users. The main objective of our research is to study how organizational maturity, enhanced by investments on information systems and technology (IS/IT) and project management best practices, leads to successful projects in health system organizations. The rational of our model is that organizational maturity has a positive effect on projects success, and that this success is also positively mediated by project management practices. We emphasize that the combination of a maturity model and a project management approach can increase the effectiveness of projects. Besides, it can also improve confidence that the results of investments meet the stakeholder's expectations, by collecting benefits and allowing a perceived value for the organizations.

Realizing business value and identifying the benefits arising from implementations of enterprise systems remains a significant challenge for both research and practice. A review of existing work on enterprise systems benefits reveals that current frameworks pay limited attention to contextual and temporal variations, socio-technical and business change, and levels of benefit realization. This research study investigates the complex mix of expected and realized benefits specifically arising from ERP systems. The aim is to address the limitations of current frameworks and extend theoretical understandings to provide a richer picture of ERP benefits and their contextual variation. Drawing on data gathered from more than 60 case study organizations of differing size, maturity and industry sector the study adopts an iterative content analysis to empirically derive a comprehensive benefits framework. The extended classification and the methodology used to construct it are presented and discussed along with their implications for future research and practice.

Abstract. Governments are investing in e-government to enhance public sector efficiency. It has been argued by e-government scholars that citizens’ demand for e-government does not meet expectations; hence governments might not achieve the expected benefits. This study investigates formative evaluation as a method to ensure e-government benefits realization. The case is ex-post evaluation of value
from digital communication in a citizen service center at a Danish municipality and was conducted as Action Research. Barriers to adoption were revealed, addressed and eliminated during the formative evaluation process. Clear expectations
from top management, assessments and disclosure of workers' behavior and commitment from managers proved pivotal in the benefits realization process. Further research into the internal e-government adoption processes and the impact from external factors is needed in order to understand more profoundly the challenges for realizing benefits from e-government.

In the rapidly-changing environments characterizing most industries today, organizations face intense competitive pressure to do things better, faster and cheaper. The business environment of the 1990s has been subjected to rapid and accelerated change that creates more and more uncertainty and complexity. Most markets are becoming increasingly dynamic. Organizations can no longer rely on a traditional analytical approach to understand their industry or market, since that market is changing in rapid and unexpected ways. In spite of its worldwide dissemination, Balanced Scorecard (BSC) has demonstrated inadequacy in certain circumstances. Some of the original advantages of the BSC can nowadays be interpreted as weaknesses. We suggest that in business dynamic environments the benefits management approach, by using the benefits dependency network, can help BSCs to guide and support the benefits achievement related with investments, in a complementary way. By using a case study we try to show how a BSC exhibits limitations to deal with business disruptive environments and how a benefits management approach brings a strengthened business implementation vision, from strategy down to operations.

We are living in a period of enormous technological transformations and the organisations face new opportunities that the IS/IT implementations provide with the hope that these investments will help to increase productivity and business prosperity, meanwhile, several studies performed in public and private sectors have proven that the investments done in IS/IT  have not brought the expected benefits.
As competition due to globalization increases – it is ever more important that an organisation performs to its best capabilities.
The increase of the interest in benefits realization has coincided with the increasing use and complexity of the IS/IT.
Some authors argue that the result of the studies that related investments in IS/IT and the increasing performance of the organisations in the last thirty years were far from true. However, others say that the amount spent in IS/IT and the business success has no direct connection.
One of the crucial aspects of the IS/IT investments management is that once all the investments costs are mapped, the identification of the potential benefits and the guarantee that these benefits will be achieved
The difficulties of the benefits identification, namely, the intangible benefits, which cause the traditional financial methods, not to work properly.  As a consequence, the organisations should implement correct benefit management methods.

Neste presente artigo os autores propõem uma integração entre a Rede de Dependência de Benefícios, usada numa abordagem à Gestão de Benefícios dos Investimentos em Sistemas e Tecnologias de Informação, e o Mapa Estratégico do Balanced Scorecard. Esta integração visa melhorar a gestão de benefícios do negócio e assegurar que as acções tomadas ao longo no ciclo de vida dos investimentos conduzem à realização efectiva de benefícios. O objectivo principal deste exercício é construir um enquadramento que combine e potencie as características principais de ambos os métodos. Deste modo, sustenta-se que estes podem ser complementares. Assim como o mapa estratégico está comprometido com o alinhamento estratégico, comunicação e monitorização da execução da estratégia em todos os níveis de uma organização, a Rede de Dependência de Benefícios explica como os benefícios são identificados e posteriormente obtidos mediante mudanças organizacionais. Usando os elementos de um estudo de caso, ilustra-se de que forma a Rede de Dependências Benefícios se pode integrar no mapa estratégico. A contribuição resultante promove o aumento da eficácia dos investimentos, dando aos interessados a confiança de um caminho mais claro e partilhado, conducente à entrega dos benefícios esperados.

Realising business value and identifying the benefits arising from implementations of ERP systems remains a significant challenge for both research and practice. A review of existing work on ERP benefits reveals that current frameworks pay limited attention to contextual and temporal variations; socio-technical and business change; and levels of benefit realisation. This paper presents findings from an ongoing research project to develop a framework for investigating ERP benefits and business change, which addresses the identified limitations of previous research and provides a more detailed analysis of ERP benefits and their contextual variation. Using an iterative content analysis, the preliminary study presented here is based on 15 case studies. The final study will draw on data gathered from more than 60 case study organisations of differing size, maturity and industry sector.

Many organisations adopt large-scale enterprise information systems (EIS), because they are looking for more comprehensive benefits than those available from small, off-the-shelf software applications. However, adoption of EIS has often proved to be challenging and expensive. This work is designed as an inductive case study using a retrospective investigation to understand the process that allows a newly established company to obtain substantial benefits from an ERP system. The main contribution of this work is an improved understanding of how a successful implementation for the ERP system that incorporates some activities of benefits management framework but, without explicit adoption of these
benefits managements techniques, can help organizations realise substantial benefits from the system.
The results of this study also suggest that broad expectations and wide-ranging objectives are determined in the early stage, without detailed specification of the benefits. The findings also emphasise that a low level of customisation can lead to improved realisation of benefits.