Information System development in a Business Network

Abstract: The development of an Information System (IS) for service provisioning in the Lappish tourism industry is examined. On a conceptional level, and backed by content analysis and participant observation, the process of Requirements Engineering (RE) at the overall provisioning level of custom packaged service offerings offered by individual providers, the organisational level of these providers, the actual RE itself, and the IS that is resulting from these requirements are examined.

Main interests are 1) the question whether the perceived overall character (supply-chain or network) of the service provisioning can have an influence on the design of the IS, and 2) whether this identified character has an impact on the RE process. RE and the service provisioning activity are examined with a view that originates in Transaction Cost Economies (TCE). No data seem to exist that suggests that there is an impact from the identified character of the service provisioning process (here both can be used, but a supply chain perspective seems more plausible) on the RE process. 
There is reason to suggest that the character of the service provisioning can have an impact on design, because in the literature about TCE figure in particular prominent as an explanation for the emergence of networks in the provisioning of goods and services.