Strategic Demands on Information Services in Uncertain Businesses: A Layer-Based Framework from a Value Network Perspective

Current dynamic and turbulent markets require flexible business processes that increasingly depend on fast and reliable information flows between heterogeneous companies. This relies on innovative types of integrated applications on all layers - technological, organizational and process-related - and a holistic managerial framework to establish a smoothly operating layer integration. Thus, we first characterize actual business requirements - especially regarding business attributes such as complexity, flexibility and a heterarchical system behavior from a value network perspective. Then, we propose a layer-based framework for modeling strategic requirements on information services. We finally draw conclusions regarding the consequences for information and business services and related architectural design principles.