Stages of maturity for e-business: the SOG-e model

Stages of growth and maturity models of IT usage and mangement have long been prescribed as guides to the understanding of traditional IT in organisations. The advent of the Internet and the rise of Internet Commerce (IC) in the 1990s has expanded the role of IT in organisations. In many organisations, a new set of Internet-based applications connect the business to consumers and suppliers, and enable the buying and selling of goods and services across computer networks. These marketing and sales applications are often referred to as 'front office' applications in distinction to the traditional IT or 'back office' systems. This paper presents a model called the SOG-e model, that considers both traditional and IC applications in terms of growth and maturity. The SOG-e model charts the progress of both IC and traditional IT in an organisation and incorporates the notion that in mature organisations, there is a seamless integration of the IC and traditional IT streams into a coherent e-business capability