Developing an Event-Based Business Solution: The Case of IBM's National Employee Disbursement System.

Prior research has outlined five critical solution concepts for the successful development of financial systems: event-driven system design, process integration, process reengineering, data integration, and ownership realignment of in- formation system components. This article illustrates the application of these concepts in IBM Corporation's development of its National Employee Disbursement Systems (NED 5). Particular attention is focused on realigning ownership of information system components. Each IBM employee became the owner of key business events associated with reimbursable expenses like travel and payroll deductions and was given responsibility to enter all relevant data concerning the event in machine-processable form. The business process was reengineered, information processes were integrated, and the data were stored in an information warehouse. Managers approved/disapproved reimbursable expenses on-line. A modeling approach consisting of defining the desired process, developing a prototype, administering employee usability tests, analyzing the results, and modifying the process and prototype was used. The usability tests were performed by an independent human factors test group, which had primary responsibility to determine when the system was ready for implementation. Inability to resolve ownership issues associated with the information warehouse and other processes prevented IBM from expanding NEDS into other human-resource areas and to use the integrated data effectively.