Prioritization and management of inter-enterprise collaborative performance

Abstract

Collaboration among enterprises has gained attention in the business environment as a means to remain competitive. Enterprises that are collaborating look for improving their performance but, in real assessments, they often do not establish efficient frameworks to structure and manage the enterprise association/inter-enterprise performance. This paper provides a methodology based on the Analytic Network Process (ANP) to prioritize and manage, within a performance management framework, inter-enterprise performance. In addition, this approach allows managing the evolution of the performance status by introducing a model for aggregating actual performance data so that decision makers can evaluate the status of the collaborative relationship and analyze the degree of achievement of the strategy. With this innovative approach, enterprises will obtain significant information for the decision-making process regarding which are the inter-enterprise performance elements that generate a higher impact and, therefore, should be prioritized for improving the enterprise competitiveness. This approach has been applied to a collaborative enterprise network belonging to the renewable energy sector in Spain where managers of the network have validated the results obtained as well as the benefits of the approach in supporting the decision making process. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.