In spring 2001, Veropoulos, the third biggest retailer in Greece and three of its top suppliers together with a service provider, started a pilot implementation to experiment with collaborative store ordering. The pilot involved the ordering from the retailer’s stores to their central warehouse as well as to the direct-storedelivery suppliers. The four companies together with the service provider were starting an ambitious plan to use the Internet technology in order to enable the sharing of daily POS data between retail stores and suppliers with the objective to streamline the store replenishment process. This effort resulted in significant business results but at the same time several pitfalls and challenges as far as the use of technology was concerned.

This article explores the political relationships, power asymmetries, and conflicts surrounding the development, deployment, and governance of IT-enabled sales and marketing information systems (IS) at Digital Devices Inc. The study reports on the web of individual, group and institutional commitments and influences on the IS development and implementation processes in an organizational culture that promoted and supported user-led development. In particular, the article highlights the problems the company’s IS function encountered in implementing its ad-hoc strategies and governance policies. It will be seen that the majority of these problems occurred because of the high levels of autonomy and budgetary independence of the IT-literate, engineering-oriented business ‘communities-of-practice’ that constituted Digital Devices. The case therefore provides rare insights into the reality of IS development and IT infrastructure deployment in organizations through its in-depth description of the positive and negative influences on these processes and their outcomes.

Technology leapfrogging by a late adopter of technologies means skipping intermediate technologies and adopting the latest technologies. In this way, this late adopter would be exposed to unprecedented opportunities offered by the new technologies. This case study focuses on China’s attempt at leapfrogging to mobile phone telecommunications technology. It provides a description of the underlying forces involved in shaping and influencing this leapfrogging attempt. Students or readers are encouraged to analyse this case from their contextual perspective—may it be from the standpoint of a competing country, foreign investor, competing marketing corporation, policy maker, or consumer. Instructors of teaching cases may perhaps consider assigning different roles to students in discussing this case within a group.

This case study describes marketing options, systems architecture, and strategies for an IT company to enter the market for B2B EIPP (business-to-business electronic invoice presentment and payment). The organization explores the possibility of developing EIPP software and offering an EIPP service in competition with other EIPP services. The advantages of EIPP to potential customers and to the organization itself are described together with the option of partnering with a bank to offer the service.

This case describes a dental supply company’s experiences in the design and implementation of an e-commerce solution. The online store provides dentists with over 16,000 different dental products, from alloys to dental instruments to X-ray products. The design choices, process, and challenges of implementing this e-commerce solution are discussed.