Query: Procuring it services

title: Assessing Business IT Alignment Maturity
abstract: Business and IT practitioners, researchers, and consultants have been asking for an effective tool to assess IT business alignment. Until now, none was available. This chapter introduces the strategic alignment maturity assessment. This assessment tool is based on the authors research and consulting experience that identified the major enablers and inhibitors in the achievement of business IT alignment and the methodology that leverages the most important enablers and inhibitors. Alignment focuses on the activities that management performs to achieve cohesive goals across the IT (information technology) and other functional (e.g. finance, marketing, H/R, manufacturing) organizations. Therefore, alignment addresses both how IT is in harmony with the business, and how the business should/could be in harmony with IT. Alignment evolves to a relationship where IT and business adapt their strategies together. Achieving alignment is evolutionary and dynamic. IT requires strong support from senior management, good working relationships, strong leadership, appropriate prioritization, trust, and effective communication, as well as a thorough understanding of the business and technical environments. Achieving and sustaining alignment demands focusing on maximizing the enablers and minimizing the inhibitors. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss an approach for assessing the maturity of the business IT alignment. Once the maturity is understood, an organization can identify opportunities for enhancing the harmonious relationship of business and IT.  Decades have passed. Billions of dollars have been invested on information technology (IT) Today, every organization is in the information business. Alignment applying IT in an appropriate and timely way, in harmony with business strategies, goals and needs remains a key concern of business executives. This This chapter appears in the book, Strategic Information Technology: Opportunities for Competitive Advantage by Raymond Papp.

title: Detection of Bid Rigging in Procurement Auctions
abstract: This paper examines bidding in auctions for state highway construction contracts, in order to determine whether bid rigging occurred. Detection of collusion is possible because of limited participation in the collusive scheme. Collusion did not take the form of a bid rotation scheme. Instead, several ring members bid on most jobs. One was a serious bidder, and the others submitted phony higher bids. The bids of noncartel firms, as well as their rank distribution, were related to cost measures. In contrast, the rank distribution of higher cartel bids was unrelated to similar cost measures and differed from that of the low cartel bid.

title: Modularity and innovation in knowledge intensive business services: IT outsourcing in Germany and the UK
abstract: Drawing on an empirical study of IT outsourcing in the UK and Germany, this paper explores the lessons for modularity that can be drawn from the outsourcing of knowledge intensive business services (KIBS) Because of the inseparability of information and production technologies, IT outsourcing is frequently accompanied by wider transformations in clients' production technologies. This results in the need for knowledge and organisational coordination in the form of the transfer of staff from the client and the retained IT organisation. Modularity is often presented as a design strategy that stimulates innovation. Our research findings challenge the generalisability of this claim when examining KIBS outsourcing. We show that intangibility of services exacerbates the conflicts between clients and suppliers, which may present obstacles to innovation.

title: Procurement, Principles and Management
abstract: Preface PART ONE: OBJECTIVES AND DEVELOPMENT 1. Purchasing scope and development 2. Strategic procurement and supply chain management 3. Public sector procurement PART TWO: KEY PROCUREMENT ISSUES 4. Outsourcing 5. Quality management 6. Inventory management 7. Lead time and time Compression 8. Sourcing strategies and relationships 9. Price and total cost of ownership 10. Negotiations PART THREE: APPLICATIONS 11. Project procurement 12. Procurement of commodities 13. International and global sourcing 14. Capital procurement 15. Retail procurement and efficient consumer response (ECR) 16. Services procurement 17. Corporate social responsibility PART FOUR: E PROCUREMENT SYSTEMS AND CONTRACT MANAGEMENT 18. E procurement systems 19. Contract management and performance measurement

title: The analytic hierarchy process what it is and how it is used
abstract: Here we introduce the Analytic Hierarchy Process as a method of measurement with ratio scales and illustrate it with two examples. We then give the axioms and some of the central theoretical underpinnings of the theory. Finally, we discuss some of the ideas relating to this process and its ramifications. In this paper we give special emphasis to departure from consistency and its measurement and to the use of absolute and relative measurement, providing examples and justification for rank preservation and reversal in relative measurement.

title: IT Governance How Top Performers Manage IT Decision Rights for Superior Results
abstract: Successful electronic government requires the successful implementation of technology. This book lays out a framework for understanding a system of decision processes that have been shown to be associated with the successful use of technology. Peter Weill and Jeanne Ross are based at the Center for Information Systems Research at MIT's Sloan School of Management, which has been doing research on the management of information technology since 1974. Understanding how to make decisions about information technology has been a primary focus of the Center for decades. Weill and Ross' book is based on two primary studies and a number of related projects. The more recent study is a survey of 256 organizations from the Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific that was led by Peter Weill between 2001 and 2003. This work also included 32 case studies. The second study is a set of 40 case studies developed by Jeanne Ross between 1999 and 2003 that focused on the relationship between information technology (IT) architecture and business strategy. This work identified governance issues associated with IT and organizational change efforts. Three other projects undertaken by Weill, Ross, and others between 1998 and 2001 also contributed to the material described in the book. Most of this work is available through the CISR Web site, http:/mitsloan.mit.edu/cisr/rmain.php. Taken together, these studies represent a substantial body of work on which to base the development of a frameBOOK REVIEW

title: Adoption of e procurement in Hong Kong: An empirical research
abstract: For the past 5 years, a large number of procurement articles have appeared in the literature. E procurement solutions make purchasing activities more effective in terms of both time and cost. E procurement is changing the way businesses purchase goods. Since most products and services are procured using electronic data interchange and the Internet, the application of e procurement is inevitable in both manufacturing and services. There are limited empirical studies in the literature on the adoption of e procurement in a country, that is, at the macro level. Nevertheless, such a study will help companies in other countries to develop policies, strategies, and procedures to implement e procurement. Understanding the importance of such a study, we have conducted a questionnaire based survey about the adoption of e procurement in Hong Kong. The main objective of this study is to identify the perceived critical success factors and perceived barriers regarding the implementation of e procurement. A conceptual framework has been developed for the adoption of e procurement, and this subsequently has been tested with data collected from companies in Hong Kong. Also, this study examines the current status of e procurement adoption in Hong Kong. Finally, a framework is proposed based on the conceptual and empirical analysis for the adoption of e procurement. The results indicate that educating companies in both long and short term benefits would encourage the application of e procurement. Some critical success factors include adequate financial support, availability of interoperability and standards with traditional communication systems, top management support and commitment, understanding the priorities of the company, and having suitable security systems.

title: Complementarity and Evolution of Contractual Provisions: An Empirical Study of IT Services Contracts
abstract: An increasing volume of business activity appears to be occurring via alliances or other interfirm arrangements in which complex contracts are featured, yet there has been relatively little study of contract design in the strategy or management literatures. The economics literature on contracting has been extensive, but it has been less concerned with learning and evolution phenomena in which strategy and organization scholars are deeply interested. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between two types of contractual provisions that are important in high technology contracts, or contracts for which environmental uncertainty or technological complexity are significant, namely, contingency planning and task description. Previous research suggests that contracts can vary significantly in the degree of detail with which such key provisions are written, and that they are each subject to learning. In this paper, we find evidence from a sample of 386 contracts that contingency planning and task description behave as complements in contractual design. We argue that this complementarity reflects patterns of learning to contract. We also find that repeated exchange between two firms leads to greater effort at contingency planning in subsequent contracts, a finding that is also consistent with learning effects, but not with frequently made claims that contracts and trust are substitutes.

title: Understanding the Innovation Impacts of Public Procurement
abstract: Public procurement accounts for a significant proportion of overall demand for goods and services and is increasingly seen as an attractive and feasible instrument for furthering the goals of innovation policy. However, public procurement is already expected to address a wide range of social goals. Much of the current debate about harnessing procurement to promote innovation draws upon a limited set of examples which are not representative of the bulk of public purchasing and tend to downplay diversity in procurement practices and in the types of goods and services procured. They also downplay diversity in the nature of innovations and in the range of ways that procurement can impact upon innovation. A one size fits all model is unlikely to work across all procurement contexts yet all types of public procurement are likely to have impacts upon innovation by shaping the demand environment in which suppliers innovate and compete. We propose a framework and typology based on the nature of the goods and services procured in order to explore the potential impacts upon markets and innovation of each. We conclude that public purchasing should first and foremost remain concerned with proximate public policy goals and that, rather than trying to co opt public procurement into the innovation policy toolbox, policy makers should focus on promoting innovation friendly practices across all types of procurement at all levels of governance.

title: Procurement of IT Consulting Services and Firm Specific Characteristics
abstract: Information technology investments and the management consulting industry witnessed unprecedented growth in the last decade. This led to regulators' (SEC and Congress) allegations that consulting services that are provided by incumbent auditors may be disguised extra payments to auditors for favorable financial reporting. However, there may be alternative valid reasons for procurement of consulting. Under new legislation (proclaimed in the aftermath of spectacular failures like Enron and Worldcom) publicly traded corporations that engage professional services firms to provide both audit services and consulting services must now disclose the extent and nature of these services. Using the data made available by these new mandated disclosures and using