Enterprise Inter- and Intra-Organizational Integration: Building International Consensus

The international initiative on Enterprise Inter- and Intra-Organisational Integration (EI3-IC) had the objective to increase both international consen­ sus (IC) and public awareness on enterprise integration. In these proceedings we intend to present the current status in inter- and intra-organisational inte­ gration for electronic commerce and thereby to further increase awareness and consensus within academia and industry about enterprise inter-and intra­ organisational integration. The conference proceedings contain the papers presented at the ICEIMT conference in Valencia, Spain, selected papers presented at the different workshops and three papers on the initiative itself: overview, history and results. The proceedings follow the conference structure with each section (Parts 2 to 5) starting with the workgroup reports, followed by a particular view on the section theme and additional papers either presented at the con­ ference or during the related workshop. Section editorials discuss the differ­ ent contributions. As stated in the paper by Nell and Goranson in section 1 the results from all workshops indicate the important role of business processes in the area of e-commerce and virtual enterprises. Sharing relevant knowledge between co­ operating partners and making it available for decision support at all levels of management and across organisational boundaries will significantly en­ hance the trust between the partners on the different levels of partner opera­ tions (strategy, policy, operation and transaction). Clearly business process modelling can significantly enhance establishment, operation and decom­ mission of the required collaboration.