Evaluation of cross-organizational business processes for data collection initiatives Twenty-fourth Americas Conference on Information Systems, New Orleans, 2018 1 Evaluation of cross-organizational business processes for data collection initiatives Completed Research Alessio De Santo University of Neuchâtel alessio.desanto@unine.ch Ulysse Rosselet University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland, HEG Arc ulysse.rosselet@he-arc.ch Cédric Gaspoz University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland, HEG Arc cedric.gaspoz@he-arc.ch Abstract The continuous specialization of the organization’s activities towards its core competencies (Prahalad and Hamel 2000) and the adoption of digital business strategies (Bharadwaj et al. 2013) results in the emergence of a new type of cross-organizational business process. In the past few decades, cross- organizational business processes were reduced to their communication and coordination aspects (Scheckenbach 1997), without the need for real process ownership (Hirschmann 1998). Nowadays, digitalization across organizational borders brings brand new issues when it comes to inter-organizational information collection. Researchers have studied the technical and organizational issues around cross- boundary information sharing, mainly in the public sector (Pardo et al. 2006; Ramon Gil-Garcia et al. 2007). However, the collecting of information resulting from a cross-organizational business process lacking a designated process owner can be very difficult. This paper addresses this issue by presenting a three-part evaluation framework dedicated to assessing data collection initiatives across organizations. Keywords Business process, orchestration, cross-organizational. Introduction New forms of organizations favor competitive advantages by performing only those activities closest to their core competencies, and outsourcing other activities to external partners (Miles and Snow 1986). This form of organization implies the creation of specific communication and coordination tasks across organizational units in order to guarantee the business process flow (Thomas H. Davenport and James E. Short 1990). Werth (2008) classifies cross-organizational business processes into two groups: parallel and sequential processes. Parallel processes can be used to pool resources, replicating the same process in order to increase the throughput. For instance, airline alliances offer multiple flights in parallel to multiply travel routes for customers (Werth 2008). Sequential processes are used to build value chains or to outsource operational functions to external entities. Tightly integrated industries such as automotive rely on cross-organizational processes where each organization builds on the previous output to add value that will again be used to create more value further down the chain (Werth 2008). The resulting value chain is the sum of the contributions toward a goal defined by the organization owning the final product. In the case of outsourcing, a function or a process is outsourced to an external organization that runs it independently. Synchronization is less important, as each actor runs its own process, depending mostly on information from other parties. The outsourcing of facilities management or customer call-centers are two examples of cross-organizational processes where inter-process communication is sufficient to guarantee the overall quality. Each process exchanges information with the surrounding processes in order to guarantee the flow, without the need to exchange in-depth information on the progress of a