Giacomo Buonanno

Although the Business Model (BM) concept provides a convenient unit of analysis in the business practices, BM research in the Information Systems (IS) field emphasizes blurriness and divergences in its structure. With this paper we provide a clarification of the BM concept and update Al-debei and Avison analysis on the BM literature. Using a structured methodology, we review the titles and the abstracts of 108 articles from IS literature and examine a significant subset of 49 articles. Our work contributes first, to formalize the concept of BM as instanced in IS domain and organizes BM studies around two different frameworks. Second, it highlights the BM research streams and their current states of the art. Last, it discusses the current limitations of the BM studies and offers the basis for future research.

Information System literature is rich in studies concerning the impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) on organizations. This chapter, however, focuses on a specific context: small and medium size enterprises (SMEs). It presents an up-to-date picture of the ICT employed and of the activities ICT support within Italian SMEs. Moreover, it provides results regarding the relationship between ICT and SME strategy. Data were collected through a survey on IT managers of 143 SMEs placed in Northern Italy. Research results highlighted relevant differences on how small and medium size organizations employ ICT in order to influence or support their strategy.

Information Systems evaluation in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) often represents a difficult task. Because of cultural, economic, or organizational reasons, SMEs rarely make use of formal business strategies: as a consequence, the management of the Information System (IS) is often approached in a non-formalized way. Moreover, such enterprises are often characterized by a limited number of specialized staff, hence either the management or the ownership itself should be provided with a well defined, low cost, and easy to use procedure for the evaluation of the Information Technology (IT) investments and for the assessment of the existing IS. This paper presents an Information System Check-Up Model (ISCUM) which fulfills these requirements: according to the strategic importance and the current state of the IS for each functional area, the model highlights the inefficiencies of each area and identifies the strategic choices required to improve the IS performance.