A COMPANY’S LONG-TERM INNOVATION CAPACITY WHEN INTRODUCING ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE: SOCIOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF HYBRID CLOUD-PLATFORMS

Abstract

While the cloud emerged as an economic successful model compared to Application Service Provider (ASP), it is now a prerequisite for ever shorter innovation cycles in networked companies; risks and opportunities arise for companies using enterprise systems. Startup companies are positioned to implement innovations and build up the company, as well as its further components, while taking innovation into account. Established companies have to deal with the integration of these innovations into their existing business system. This paper studies the aspects that must be considered when software is introduced to bring about a stable innovation capability for the company. A case study is therefore presented in which a medium-sized retail company introduces new POS (point-of-sale) software with the help of a cloud platform. The case study assessed the relevance of various aspects, which must be considered during implementation. The relevance of complexity reduction was, among others, rated as highly relevant while uncertainty absorption, in contrast to other literature, was rated as less relevant.