A Method to Redesign the IS Portfolios in Large Organisations

Over the past decades, large organisations have developed increasingly complex portfolios of information systems to support business processes. Maintenance and leveraging of these so-called system complexes have become a major challenge to many executive boards. The challenge is even bigger for organisations that are the result of mergers. The question arises whether, from both an operational and a strategic perspective, it would be feasible to migrate to a single (new) system complex. In this paper, we describe the ´picture approach´, a method for analysing, redesigning and combining system complexes in information-intensive organisations. The method was applied successfully in three cases (insurance companies), all operating multiple system complexes. The method consists of mapping an organisation´s information systems and showing their roles in the business processes. The picture approach is evaluated in three ways, one of which is a comparison with design principles for process modelling in Enterprise Application Integration.