Abstract—Virtual enterprises that exist on the

Internet are increasingly gaining attention from organisations due to global competition and accelerating changes in the business environment. In virtual enterprises, two or more organisations merge to collaborate for a short period in exploiting market opportunities in response to ever-changing customer demand. Finding the right partners to form a partnership is one of the primary problems in virtual enterprises. Numerous criteria for partner selection are given by researchers and each seems to be critical in its own setting. However, these criteria do not help organisations that wish to apply these criteria to their business collaborations as there are too many to be considered. As market opportunities move rapidly, organisations could lose their chances to pursue those opportunities due to the amount of time that is needed to consider all the criteria. There are two categories of criteria for partner selection – task-related and partner-related criteria. Nevertheless, the focus of this paper is on partner-related criteria. In order to help virtual enterprises particularly small to medium enterprises (SMEs) in the partner selection process, the main partner-related criteria will be identified. Ultimately, these criteria will be used to identify critical success factors (CSFs) that can be employed at the early stage of partner selection to ensure secure and future business collaboration.

Index Terms— critical success factors, partner-related criteria, partner selection, virtual enterprises,

I. INTRODUCTION In the present business environment of accelerating changes, organisations are facing fierce competition and numerous challenges. The vital keys to remaining

Noor Azliza Che Mat is with Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, 3800, Victoria, Australia (corresponding author. Tel : +613 9905 9687; fax: +613 9905 5159; email: noormat@infotech.monash.edu.au

Yen Cheung is with Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, 3800, Victoria ,Australia (email: yen.cheung@infotech.monash.edu.au)

Helana Scheepers is with Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, 3800, Victoria, Australia (email: helana.scheepers@infotech.monash.edu.au

successful in this competitive environment are to focus on core competencies, increase higher flexibility and form partnerships with customers, suppliers or business competitors. In addition, the process of creating added-value in response to ever-changing customer demands becomes a complex task since it entails a combination of diverse types of knowledge that a single organisation does not necessarily possess. Hence, many researchers recognized that it is inevitable and crucial to collaborate with other business in performing business[1]. It is acknowledged that organisations should not carry out their tasks individually or in isolation. In fact, the foundation of successful organisations mainly depends on relationships with other business partners either in vertical or horizontal relationships [2]. However in creating relationships, many factors are required in the collaboration planning process to ensure the success of the collaboration. The success of collaborations is determined by the quality of the created collaborations [3]. In accomplishing good quality collaborations, organisations should identify the right partners with compatible goals, similar objectives and the required skills to form a partnership. The chosen partner can affect the overall mix of available skills and resources, the operating policies and procedures, the short- and long-term viability of the collaboration [4]. Therefore, a list of criteria for potential right partners must be identified when planning such collaborations. Nevertheless, determining the right set of criteria for partner selection is not an easy task. It involves careful consideration of both intangible and tangible factors. Intangible factors such as trust, reputation, and culture have a long term effects on collaborations. In addition, compared to tangible factors, intangible factors are difficult to identify and quantify since these factors require subjective judgements. The focus of this paper is to identify the intangible criteria for partner selection in virtual enterprises. Initial finding from a literature survey have found a large number of criteria given by researchers. In practice however, it would not be possible to incorporate all the criteria as suggested in the literature for partner selection in virtual enterprises. Therefore, a list of critical success factors for partner selection is suggested. The identified CSFs will assist organisations to make the right decisions so that the most reliable and suitable partnerships can be formed to accomplish the assigned task or project.

A Framework for Partner Selection Criteria in Virtual Enterprises for SMEs

Noor Azliza Che Mat*, Yen Cheung., and Helana Scheepers

978-1-4244-1672-1/08/$25.00 © 2008 IEEE.

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The following sections are structured as follows: Section 2 presents a background of virtual enterprises (VEs); Section 3 presents the life cycle of VEs; Section 4 provides a brief description of partner selection criteria; Section 5, 6 and 7 describes the criteria for partner selection in joint ventures, strategic alliances and manufacturing respectively; Section 8 present a brief background on CSF and finally ends with a discussion on implication for partner selection criteria and future work in Section 9.

II. VIRTUAL ENTERPRISES

As mentioned previously, the key to sustaining competitive advantage is to collaborate with other business partners to promote synergies through expanding market power and decreasing competition at the same time [5]. To achieve this, businesses need to form a so-called virtual enterprise. A VE is a dynamic business organisation of collaborating enterprise partners for a short time period to pursue market opportunities and may disband when opportunities have passed. [6-9]. This is described as the third wave of e-Business where new collaborative models are employed. The purpose of this collaboration is to share core competencies in different complementary areas. Information and communication technology (ICT) particularly computer networks are the main driver to the establishment of virtual enterprises. In a VE, a partner can take on the roles of a supplier or customer or both. Therefore, in this research the term partner is used to refer to suppliers or customers. Collaborating across enterprise boundaries in VEs leverage competitive advantage and a great number of advantages such as reduction in cost, reduction in cycle-time, reduction of time-to-market, increase in production quality, ability to develop innovative products, improve the company strategic position, increase customer satisfaction, flexibility and faster information exchange. However, despite the advantages in VEs, there are a number of drawbacks of VEs, for example loss of independence, lack of trust and cultural problems. The emergence of advanced ICT and the constantly changing economy have affected the way businesses operate. The traditional business model is usually conducted ineffectively and organisations that refuse to change are losing profits and are unable to obtain fruitful opportunities for expansion [10]. New technologies and common standards make global business interactions cheaper and easier to manage.

III. LIFE CYCLE OF VIRTUAL ENTERPRISES Various authors have depicted the lifecycle of VEs in different stages. It can be divided this process into three distinct stages: Formation, Operation and Dissolution [3]. Meanwhile, another author separated these three stages further using terminologies like: Design or Creation, Management or Operation and Disbanding or Dissolution [11]. On the other hand, [12] classified the process into four

stages i.e. Identification, Formation, Operation and Termination. Figure 2 shows the life cycle of VEs as presented by Strader (1998).

Each of the phases in the lifecycle consists of a number of activities as outlined in Figure 1. In the Identification phase, one or more organisations might realize some new market opportunities that is worthwhile to work with in order to exploit these opportunities (Opportunities Identification). These opportunities are evaluated by the management of the organisations to ensure that profits can be gained throug collaboration (Opportunity Evaluation) and only selected opportunities will be taken by them (Opportunity Selected).

Figure 1: A Life Cycle of VEs

The key broker or the VE initiator then identifies the task that needs to be solved, determines core competencies required as well as skills and capabilities expected from prospective members. In the Formation phase, a group of potential partners that is willing to collaborate is identified (Potential Partner Identification) and evaluated to choose the suitable partners for the collaboration (Potential Partner Evaluation). In this context, the main issue is to determine what criteria should be used and what mechanisms should be applied to select the best partner(s) for the VEs (Potential Partner Selection). This is a significant step and needs to be done carefully because choosing the right partner is a key to the success of VEs as the wrong match may lead to eventually poor performance of the VE. This research particularly focuses on partner selection criteria for VEs in the context of collaborative-commerce or c-commerce.

Once the partner selection process is completed (Partnership Formation), the Operation phase begins by the partners collaborating and integrating their core competencies to satisfy requirements as identified in the Identification phase. In general, the Operation phase involves five different major decision processes, i.e. Design, Marketing, Financial Management, Manufacturing and Distribution. In contrast to the relationship between the processes in the first two life cycle phases, the processes in the Operation phase do not flow sequentially.

Finally, the Dissolution phase takes place once the market opportunities have passed (Operation Termination). In this phase, partners in VEs should be able to evaluate each other on various aspects related to timeliness, quality, cost or time. Additionally, business partners are also able to evaluate their experiences in working with other members. Such information is important for continuous learning and

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provides feedback for further collaborative work. The process of VE formation may then be re-started depending on the feedback and new needs of the organizations.

IV. PARTNER SELECTION CRITERIA A number of conference and journal papers from 1996 to 2006 were reviewed from various sources to identify the criteria used by previous researchers for partner selection. A large number of papers were obtained that related to partner selection. Nevertheless, some of the papers emphasized more on algorithm development for partner selection which is not the main topic of this research while some other papers do not clearly mention the partner selection criteria. Table 1 shows the sources and the number of articles that have been reviewed from these sources. An approach as proposed by [13] was utilized to select the related papers to be reviewed to identify partner selection criteria. The process of choosing the related paper begins by reading the abstract to determine whether the obtained paper associates with partner selection. However, if the same authors have published the same topic on partner selection criteria, only the latest paper was included in the count.

Table 1: Reviewed papers and frequency

No Journals Freq 1 Long Range Planning 4 2 The International Journal of Advanced

Manufacturing Technology 3

3 International Journal of Computer Integration Manufacturing

3

4 European Journal of Marketing 3 5 European Business Review 2 6 European Journal of Operational Research 2 7 Logistics Information Management 2 8 International Business Review 2 9 Omega 2 10 Journal of Supply Chain Management 2 11 Journal of World Business 1 12 International Business Review 1 13 British Journal of Management 1 14 Journal of Euro-Marketing 1 15 Computer in Industry 1 16 Journal of Technology Management 1 17 International Journal of Technology Management 1 18 International Journal of Logistics Management 1 19 International Journal of Production Economic 1 20 World Congress on Intelligent Control and

Automation 1

21 The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology

1

22 Journal of Supply Chain Management 1 23 Electronic Design Chain 1 24 Applied Mathematic and Computation 1 25 Benchmarking: An International Journal 1 Total 40

In reviewing the literature on partner selection, a number of sub-criteria could not be categorised into either task-related criteria or partner-related criteria. At the same time, some of these sub-criteria could not be classified into the main criteria. Thus, these sub-criteria were excluded if they were mentioned by only one author. Various criteria were identified and categorized. The criteria can be divided between two major groups: task-related criteria and partner-related criteria [4]. A deliberate attempt was made to distinguish between tangible or hard and intangible or soft criteria. Task-related criteria are associated with the operational skills and resources that a venture requires for its competitive successful. Task-related criteria therefore refer to the complementary capabilities the partner may offer closely related to the viability of the proposed venture’s operation. Those could be tangible variables. Typical examples are financial, marketing, R&D resources, customer service, organization and production [14].

On the other hand, partner-related criteria are associated with qualification of a candidate that are not specific to the type of operation, but rather affects the risks faced [4]. Those variables are also known as soft, intangible or human factors. Compared to task-related criteria, these criteria are difficult to evaluate since it cannot be represented readily in a formula. These criteria are used to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of the co-operation of a potential partner and only relevant if the chosen investment involve the active participations of two or more partners. Six main criteria have been identified for partner-related criteria i.e. partner characteristics, compatibility, motivation, commitment, reliability and property right protection [14].

According to [15] a number of possible relationships were identified that can be developed between organisations. These relationships can be categorised as joint ventures, strategic alliances and setting up contracts to perform specific activities (for example supplier or manufacturing). The identification of possible criteria for partner selection will draw on the rich resources these areas in the following sections .

In addition, from the literature, it is found that the criteria for partner selection depends on the type of collaboration between the organizations. Joint ventures, for example might emphasize different criteria for partner selection compared to strategic alliances. The following sections identify the criteria for these different types of collaboration.

V. CRITERIA FROM JOINT VENTURES There were long lists of selection criteria for joint ventures (JV) highlighted by past studies[16]. It seems that there is an endless list of criteria given by different authors. However the confusion can be resolved by establishing broad categories [16]. In Table 2, task-related criteria for joint-ventures has six main categories: financial resources, marketing resources, customer service, R&D technical resources, organizational

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resources and production resources. From the literature study, three sub criteria were identified in financial resources criteria: financial status, short- and mid-term and financial standing [14, 16-18]. Marketing resources criteria, can be divided into eleven sub-criteria: access to local market, strong global footprint, the need for solution packing, distribution network quality, local brand name, link with major buyer, rapid market entry, marketing competencies, distribution channel and established marketing and distribution channel [14, 17-21]. Under customer services criteria, three sub-criteria have been identified: completing customer base, complementing partnership network and partnership with competitors. Only one author mentioned research and development (R&D) resources [14]. Facilities, location of JV facilities, labour material or natural resources, centralized or decentralized organization and technology were included as sub-criteria under the organizational resources criteria as it relates directly to the resources of the organisations [14, 17-21]. While criteria for production resources has six sub-criteria: complementing product and/or services, depth of product integration, product quality and production capability, technological level and the product itself [14, 17-21].

Table 2: Task-related criteria for joint-venture

For partner-related criteria, the partnership criteria have a large number of sub-criteria such as reputation, prior trade relationship and knowledge of market [14, 16-21]. Another criteria that also attracted attention from researchers was compatibility. It was divided into three sub-criteria: compatibility of top management teams, compatible strategic objectives and compatible organization structure [14, 16, 20, 21]. Criteria for commitment has only one sub-criteria: enthusiasm and commitment to product [14, 16, 18]. While two criteria for partner-related: task and property right protection, and reliability received less attention compared to other criteria [14, 17]. For strategic alliances and manufacturing, the similar process was conducted to categorise the partner selection criteria into two main criteria as given by [4] and these two main criteria were subsequently divided into sub-criteria as proposed by [14].

VI. CRITERIA FROM STRATEGIC ALLIANCES Strategic alliances are partnerships among two or more business units or organizations that work together to achieve strategically significant objectives that give benefits to all participants involved [22]. One of the most critical aspects of creating successful strategic alliances is selecting partners [22]. A successful alliance requires the combination of two competent organizations, seeking a similar goal with both being intent on being successful. Several studies on partner selection in strategic alliances were found [23-28]. In categorising the partner selection criteria, the distinction criteria as proposed by Geringer (1991) will be utilised: partner-related criteria and task-related criteria. In task-related criteria for strategic alliances, all authors agreed that the financial criteria is important and only one sub-criteria was classified under financial resources: financial assets [23-28] . For marketing resources, nine sub criteria were identified: international market knowledge, distribution channel, link with major buyers, link with major suppliers, local market knowledge, local brand name, marketing, established marketing and distribution system and access to marketing/distribution system [23, 26-28]. For customer services and R&D technical criteria, there is no sub-criteria given by authors and none of the authors chose this criteria as an important aspect. Organisational resources can be divided into eight sub criteria: raw materials or natural resources, labour, local regulatory/knowledge, governmental/ administrative bodies, International regulatory knowledge, industry characteristic, human resources management and organizational competitiveness [23, 26-28]. For production resources, four sub-criteria were identified as important aspects: production technology, product specific knowledge, the product itself and Product development, production and logistics management. For partner-related criteria, the partner characteristics criteria has a numerous of sub-criteria and were discussed

Task-related criteria

Criteria Authors

[14] [17] [19] [16] [20] [21] [18]

Financial Resources x Financial status x x x Short- and mid-term revenue x Financial standing x Marketing Resources x Access to local market x x Strong global market footprint xNeed for solution packing x Distribution network quality Local brand name x Link with major buyer x Rapid market entry x Marketing competencies x Distribution channel x x x Established marketing and distribution channel

x x

Customer Service x complementing customer base xcomplementing partnership network

x

partnership with competitors x R&D Technical Resources x Organizational Resources x Facilities x Location of JV facilities x Labour x x Material or natural resources x x Technology x x Centralized or decentralized organization

x

Production Resources x Complementing product and/or services

x

Depth of product integration x Product quality x Production capability x Technological level x The product itself x x

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by the authors. Such criteria are willingness to share expertise, complementary capabilities, knowledge/technology acquiring and management and financial stability of partner [23, 24, 26-28]. In compatibility criteria, two sub-criteria were listed: chemistry and culture [25]. Whereas reliability, commitment, motivation and property right protection criteria had no sub-criteria identified by the authors.

VII. CRITERIA FROM MANUFACTURING The VE concept is chosen as one of the most important ways for manufacturing to increase the agility and competitiveness in the global competitive environment. A number of studies were found that describe the selection criteria for manufacturing [29-37]. In task-related criteria for the financial resources, only one sub-criteria was identified: financial viability [32, 34-36] while for marketing resources and R&D technical resources criteria, none of the authors discussed these criteria in their studies. In customer services criteria, seven sub-criteria were mentioned by the authors : delivery rate time, average delivery rate time, average response time customer inquiry, time to repairing product, customer support, customer satisfier and follow-up [31-34]. Organisational resources criteria can be separated into seven sub-criteria (required technology, history of innovation, sufficient capacity, assessment of future manufacturing capabilities, current manufacturing facilities/capabilities, quality staff and scope of resources [32, 33, 35]. The production resources criteria were discussed by every author and has fifteen sub-criteria - the largest number of sub-criteria compared to other criteria : cost/cost of development, defects, process capability, on time delivery, process flexibility, development speed, similarity of development process, automation of product development process, compatibility of design tool, product price, quality systems and process, product performance, testing capability, price of materials, part and services, reserve capacity [29-37]. For partner-related criteria, a great considerable of attention was given by the authors on partner characteristics criteria. Twenty four sub-criteria were identified for that criteria : ease of communication, response to change, technical capability, management ability, strategic position, collaborative record, business strength, quality (previous record of factory performance), financial stability, necessary skills, fit of partners organization, feeling of trust, management attitude, design capability, long term relationship, relationship closeness, reputation , location, professionalism, industry knowledge, honest and frequent communication, past and current relationship with suppliers, strategically important, sharing confidential information [29-37]. For compatibility criteria, two sub-criteria were listed by the authors: cultural compatibility and top management compatibility [29, 32-36]. Five sub-criteria were listed for commitment critieria: management commitment, achievement of sales, marketing objectives, commitment to quality, commitment to continuous

improvement, caution cost (level of commitment) [32, 34, 37]. In reliability critieria, only one sub-criteria were identified: security [29, 31]. Property right protection has only one sub-criteria: intellectual property [35]. However, none of the author discussed about motivation criteria and thus there is no sub-criteria identified for that criteria. Even though criteria for partner selection have been identified, for operational reasons it may not be feasible to consider all of them in a particular situation. Thus, by identifying the critical success factors (CSFs) to be applied in the partner selection process, organisations can reduce the time taken in identifying and selecting partner. The process of listing the CSFs also allows for a more effective and efficient methodology for selecting partners. This can be done through the critical success factors concept which limited number of criteria will be identified to improve the partner selection process. The following section presents the concept of critical success factors in partner selection.

VIII. CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS Critical success factors (CSFs) are used widely by organisations in achieving their mission. They are used significantly to identify or present a set of key factors that organisations should concentrate or focus on in order to be successful. CSFs can be defined as the limited number of areas in which satisfactory result will ensure successful competitive performance for the individual, department or organisation [38]. CSFs allow organisations to focus their efforts on identifying and building capabilities to meet CSFs. In addition, they also allow organisations to decide if they have the capability to build the requirements needed to achieve CSFs. The most important advantage of CSFs is they enable organizations to focus their attention on major concerns in achieving their mission. Other advantages of CSFs are simple to understand, easily communicable toco-workers, less communicated to monitor and can be used as strategic planning methodologies.

IX. DISCUSSION Tables 3 and 4 show the CSFs for joint ventures,

strategic alliances and manufacturing for both task-related and partner-related criteria, respectively. The total numbers of authors identified in the literature review for this research are 22 authors and the frequencies shown in both tables represent the number of the authors that discussed the criteria.

Table 2: CSFs for task-related criteria No Criteria Frequency 1 Financial 14 2 Marketing resources 10 3 Customer service 4 4 R&D technical resources 1 5 Organisational resources 14 6 Production resources 18

Table 3: CSFs for partner-related criteria

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No Criteria Frequency 1 Partner characteristic 222 Compatibility 123 Motivation 24 Commitment 75 Reliability 46 Property right protection 2

As shown in both tables, partner characteristics were identified by all authors and these criteria needs much attention from organizations to be considered in partner selection. It was an evident from prior research and the result of many researchers that partner selection has an important effect on VEs operations. The chosen partner can affect the overall mix of available skills and resources, the operating policies and procedures, the short- and long-term viability of VEs [4]. Compared to task-related criteria, partner-related criteria has a huge impact on both manufacturing and business performance [39, 40]. Moreover, partner-related criteria can be critical variables since it can influence the efficiency and effectiveness of cooperation between partners [41]. Most importantly, consideration of partner-related criteria during the selection stage assists the relationship management become easier and thus create higher chances for the partnership to be more successful [42]. In strategic alliances for example, intangible factors of potential partners have a significant impact on the long-run viability of VEs. Examples of such resources are culture, trust, managerial know-how, reputation or other soft aspects that could aid in partner selection. As shown in Table 9, partner-related criteria, especially partner characteristics received much attention from various authors. However partner-related criteria such as culture compatibility, level of commitment trust or management is obviously hard to measure and represent using mathematical formulas compared to task-related criteria since it involves subjective evaluation. Hence it is critical for prospective organisations to understand the process of partner selection and the variables which influence the process. Thus, it is important to identify the CSFs for partner selection so that organizations can focus their attention on the most important criteria,

X. FUTURE WORK Further work of this project is to gather data to identify the CSFs for partner selection through questionnaire survey. A questionnaire survey will be conducted on manufacturing companies that are involved in collaborative marketplaces. This will identify the intangible criteria that are critical to organisations. These CSFs will help organisations to focus on these factors for successful partner selection Later, the model will be developed and the CSFs will be used as an input to identify the set of potential partners to collaborate in a project. The suitable method for performing this task is being investigated. Ultimately, the identified CSF will be evaluated. The evaluation is to validate that all the CSFs are reliable using case studies from a collaborative commerce marketplace.

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