Enterprise information system(s) (EIS) such as the enterprise resource planning (ERP) and electronic commerce (EC) play a major role in the 21st century organizations. These systems will have a significant impact on organizational productivity and competitiveness in the increasingly global markets of the 21st century, and they warrant the attention of researchers. Globalization of markets and operations is closely related to the success of a company. This paradigm heightens the importance of sharing information and thus, the critical role of EIS in enhancing organizational effectiveness and competitiveness. ERP systems are the software tools used to manage enterprise data and provide information to those who need it, when they need it. These systems help organizations manage their supply chains: receiving, inventory management, customer order management, production planning and control, shipping, accounting, human resource management, and all other activities that take place in a modern business.
Global markets and competition have forced companies to operate in a physically distributed environment to take the advantage of benefits of strategic alliances between partnering firms. Earlier, information systems such as material requirements planning (MRP), computer-aided design (CAD), and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) have widely been used for functional integration within an organization. With global operations are in place, there is a need for suitable enterprise information systems (EIS) such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and e-commerce (EC) for the integration of extended enterprises along the supply chain with the objective of achieving flexibility and responsiveness. Companies all over the world spend billions of dollars in the design and implementation of EIS in particular ERP systems such as Oracle, Peoplesoft, SAP, JD Edwards, and BAAN with the objective of achieving an integrated global supply chain. Inter-organizational information systems play a major role in improving communication and integration between partnering firms to achieve an integrated global supply chain. There is a growing demand for research and applications that will provide insights into issues, challenges, and solutions related to the successful applications and management aspects of EIS. Modeling and Analysis of Enterprise Information Systems provides researchers, scholars, professionals, and educators with the most current research on modeling and analysis of enterprise information systems. This volume presents new concepts in enterprise information systems.