Identifying Inter-organizational Key Performance Indicators from EDIFACT Messages

Inter-organizational relationships (IORs) are important for creating business potential and increasing business performance. The evaluation of IORs is necessary for analyzing the collaboration between businesses as well as for assessing business partners. However, the evaluation of IORs is ambiguous since it is usually measured by success factors, such as trust and information sharing, which are difficult to be measured quantitatively. In this paper, we propose using quantifiable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for measuring success factors. We aim to identify KPIs in inter-organizational scenarios where information is exchanged electronically based on EDIFACT message types. In particular, we i) derive inter-organizational KPIs and propose guidelines for their calculation from EDIFACT data elements, and ii) aggregate these KPIs to define quantitative measurements reflecting inter-organizational success factors. Therefore, we first define a method for the systematic selection of suitable data elements from EDIFACT message types based on frequency analysis. Second, we consider the semantics of data elements and message types in defining KPIs. Having these KPIs at hand supports the quantitative evaluation of success factors which in turn enables the evaluation of IORs.