From Many to One: A Case Study of Cooperative Enterprise Systems in B2B Digital Platform Creation

Enterprise systems are complex solutions to diverse needs of companies, but their extent does not typically span firm boundaries. Instead, there are different ways to handle inter-organizational IT requirements, including digital platforms that have established their position in the recent years. Despite the significance of enterprise systems for the companies and the growing interest in business-to-business digital platforms, the relationship of the two remains largely unexplored. Our qualitative case study utilizing grounded theory analysis portrays the trajectory from multiple enterprise systems into a new B2B platform. We show how shared problem space powers an intentional and clearly defined change, leading to a co-existence of the enterprise systems and the digital platform, and an alignment of interests between the stakeholders. This relationship of the platform and enterprise systems is more balanced than the one-way dependency presented in the literature, where the complementing systems are subject to the platform core.