Exploring the Service-Oriented Enterprise: Drawing Lessons from a Case Study

The service-oriented enterprise (SOE) is often considered as the future model of organization. Yet there is little empirical research in this domain and limited insight into the benefits and disadvantages. In this paper we analyze a case study of a large, multinational banking company. This company is modularized in functions and business domains and organized around service centers. We found that the SOE emerges and evolves from the implementation of new projects. New banking products and services can be created by deploying service centers. Our finding shows that a service- oriented structure has advantages concerning the time- to-market of products, reduction of duplicate activities and systems, and clarity of the governance structure. Nevertheless many of the expected benefits are not proven the SOE has a number of disadvantages that need to be dealt with.