The Management of Inflexibility in an Integrated Process--- Using Sales Compensation Process as an Example

The objective of this paper is to provide a foundation for understanding the management of inflexibility in an integrated process by using sales compensation process as a studied case. The majority of process integration studies have focused on the design and management of an efficient operation by taking the advantage of information technology. Little was known about the downsides of process integration. It is necessary to build deep knowledge about the management of integration inflexibility so that risks of integration failure can be minimized. By summarizing literature and industry experiences of process integration and enterprise flexibility and inflexibility, three types of inflexibility are proposed. They are operational, organizational, and system inflexibilities. The sources of these inflexibilities can be categorized into two types: nature of IT-enabled integrating and technological barriers. These two sources of inflexibility, observed in the studied case, are interrelated and can correlatively affect business performance. Companies that intend to apply process integration to their sales compensation process would aim for eliminating the risk of integration downsides by examining the sources of inflexibilities in the IT-enabled process. Only with a solid and thorough view of the system, could companies achieve their goals of rolling out the packaged service in the compensation plan process. This paper analyses the up and down sides of process integration and plans to provide guidance for further application of process integration packages