Measuring and evaluating IS expectations and benefit success from B2B electronic trading: a new survey approach

This article demonstrates a survey approach for measuring and evaluating IS benefit success from business-to-business (B2B) electronic trading. This article is of significance in demonstrating practical benefit success mechanisms for evaluating complex IS projects. A new survey approach is used to help evaluate the IS benefit success for each participating organisation. Disconfirmation theory and the expectations paradigm are used to justify the overall approach taken. A central tenet of the overall evaluation approach has been the need for a combined evaluation of benefit success based on interpreting or diagnosing two outcomes: (a) the ‘realised benefit outcome’ (RBO), or the actual number of realised strategic and operational benefits a company has achieved, regardless of initial expectations, as well as (b) the ‘benefit state outcome’ (BSO), or the extent of benefit planning gap (BPG) experienced within each company relative to their original expectations. This article demonstrates in detail how to measure benefit success from survey data using a perceptual self-assessed rating instrument. The approach will be useful for other academics and practitioners in the development of usable IS benefits evaluation mechanisms.