Abstract

Companies making large investments in information systems anticipate positive impacts on their organisation. Measuring information systems effectiveness or success has been an important criterion for practitioners and researchers in justifying the associated investment, both pre- and post-implementation. Often this kind of impact simply relates to the cost benefits. However, the impact that these systems bring to the companies usually involves the whole organisation. This paradox has cause misunderstanding on how to measure information systems correctly. As a result, researchers have come up with a variety of measures that produced a contradictory result, where some studies have shown positive impacts and some shown negative or nil impacts. The research-in-progress described herein follows promising work by QUT’s ‘IT Professional Services’ research program (ITPS), evaluating the success of contemporary and complex Enterprise Systems in Queensland Government. Their 'IS-Impact' measurement model (Gable et al, 2003, Sedera et al 2004) includes four distinct but related dimensions of the multidimensional phenomenon IS-Impact. The two ‘impact’ dimensions (Individual- Impact and Organisational-Impact) are an assessment of benefits that have followed (or not) from the system to date. The two ‘quality’ dimensions (System-Quality and Information-Quality) reflect potential future impacts from the system. Together, these four dimensions reflect an ostensibly complete view of the Enterprise System – an over-arching measure of IS-Impact. The main aims of the research-in-progress are: (1) to operationalise and validate a Malay version of the IS-Impact instrument, (2) to further test the validity and robustness of the ISImpact model and its extendibility to an enterprise systems in small and medium enterprises in Malaysia, and (3) to measure, evaluate and describe the state of enterprise systems in small and medium enterprises in Malaysia.

Share

COinS