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Organizations deploy a plethora of information technology (IT) systems. Various types of enterprise systems (ES) may coexist with the shadow IT systems (SITS) implemented by individual business units without the involvement of the IT department. The associated redundancy of SITS and ES suggests their integration. After integration, however, organization may find it challenging to retain the flexibility and innovation that the development of SITS offers the business. In this study, we conduct a literature review on IT systems integration. This review and the specific characteristics of SITS then serve to define SITS integration, derive guidelines for the integration decision, the phases preceding and following integration, and the integration process itself. SITS and ES integration can profit from existing knowledge of integration benefits, costs, and of the available technologies. Our study offers IT decision makers an insight into the specifics of SITS integration, and provides a basis for future SITS research.
Shadow information technology systems (SITS) coexist with formal enterprise systems in organisations. SITS pose risks but also increase flexibility of business units. Practice shows that SITS emerge, despite that Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) aims at controling all IT systems in an organization. Studies acknowledge this problem in general. However, they neither show the specific influencing areas of SITS nor provide approaches to address them. To close this gap, we use a literature review to analyse examples of practical SITS and their interference with EAM concerns. Thus, we find that they hinder especially transparency, reduction of EA complexity and governance. Research has focused on achieving transparency, governing the evolution of the EA but lacks strategies for reducing complexity. This study contributes to research and practice by uncovering the main influencing areas of SITS on EAM, as well as by laying a foundation for future research on this topic.
Business units are increasingly able to fuel the transformation that digitalization demands of organizations. Thereby, they implement Shadow IT (SIT) to create flexible and innovative solutions. However, the individual implementation of SIT leads to high complexities and redundancies. Integration suggests itself to meet these challenges but can also eliminate the described benefits. In this emergent research, we develop propositions for a conceptual decision framework, that balances the benefits and drawbacks of an integration of SIT using a literature review as well as a multiple-case study. We thereby integrate the perspective of the overall organization as well as the specific business unit. We then pose six propositions regarding SIT integration that will serve to evaluate our conceptual framework in future research.
ERP systems integrate a major part of all business processes and organizations include them in their IT service management. Besides these formal systems, there are additional systems that are rather stand-alone and not included in the IT management tasks. These so-called ‘shadow systems’ also support business processes but hinder a high enterprise integration. Shadow systems appear during their explicit detection or during software maintenance projects such as enhancements or release changes of enterprise systems. Organizations then have to decide if and to what extent they integrate the identified shadow systems into their ERP systems. For this decision, organizations have to compare the capabilities of each identified shadow system with their ERP systems. Based on multiple-case studies, we provide a dependency approach to enable their comparison. We derive categories for different stages of the dependency and base insights into integration possibilities on these stages. Our results show that 64% of the shadow systems in our case studies are related to ERP systems. This means that they share parts or all of their data and/or functionality with the ERP system. Our research contributes to the field of integration as well as to the discussion about shadow systems.
Durch die zunehmende Vernetzung und den Anstieg von eingesetzter Hard- und Software hat sich die Komplexität der Unternehmensarchitektur von Unternehmen über die Jahre stetig erhöht. Das Aufkommen nutzerfreundlicher Informationstechnologie (IT)-Lösungen befähigt außerdem Fachbereiche, IT innovativ einzusetzen. Dies erhöht die Heterogenität und damit nochmals die Komplexität der Unternehmensarchitektur. Darüber hinaus treibt dieser IT-Einsatz die Digitalisierung in den Unternehmen maßgeblich voran. Dies wirft die Frage auf, ob Unternehmen überhaupt noch eine Relevanz in der Reduktion der Komplexität durch IT-Integration sehen oder ob dies vor dem Hintergrund der Digitalisierung schon ein alter Hut ist. Experteninterviews und eine qualitative Datenanalyse zeigen, dass IT-Integration und Digitalisierung keine disjunkten Phänomene sind, sondern sich gegenseitig beeinflussen. Die Ergebnisse betonen, wie unterschiedlich der Begriff aufgefasst werden kann und dass die einheitliche Nutzung damit essenziell ist. Darüber hinaus zeigen sie, dass Digitalisierung einerseits Treiber der IT-Integration ist, andererseits aber auch die Möglichkeiten zur Umsetzung verändert. Dabei ist die Integrationsentscheidung durch die Vielzahl an Vor- und Nachteile komplex. Fachbereichs-IT ist selten explizites Ziel von IT-Integrationsprojekten. Der Beitrag zeigt den wissenschaftlichen Forschungsbedarf in neuen technologischen Möglichkeiten zur IT-Integration und in der Balance von Flexibilität und IT-Integration in der Unternehmensarchitektur. Er beleuchtet, dass eine gemeinsame Sprache die Basis für IT-Integrationsprojekte ist und dass eine Kultur, in der Fachbereiche aktiv an IT-Integrationsentscheidungen teilhaben, das Ziel eines jeden Unternehmens sein sollte. Insgesamt zeigen die Analysen, dass IT-Integration noch lange kein alter Hut, sondern, im Gegenteil, brandaktuell ist.