Is business process integration feasible?

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether business process integration is feasible.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper employs a single case study strategy to research the aforementioned research question. The case study is exploratory.

Findings

Based on the findings and within the context of the case organisation, it appears that enterprise application integration (EAI) technology can integrate business processes. However, since it is not possible to generalize from a single case study, further research is suggested to investigate this area. From the case study, it appears that EAI can easily integrate the business processes when it is combined with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

Research limitations/implications

This is a single case study and thus the results cannot be generalized.

Practical implications

The empirical date suggest that organisations may combine ERP with EAI to integrate their business processes in a more flexible way.

Originality/value

The contribution of the paper is threefold: it describes the business process automation layer of EAI technology, it defines and presents a stage model for the business process integration and it examines the research question.

Citation

Themistocleous, M. and Corbitt, G. (2006), "Is business process integration feasible?", Journal of Enterprise Information Management, Vol. 19 No. 4, pp. 434-449. https://doi.org/10.1108/17410390610678340