Dr. Peter B. Seddon

BSc(Honours), BCom, Grad Dip in CompStud., PhD ( University of Melbourne)

Associate Professor

1. Contact Details

Peter Seddon

at the base of the Heavenly Valley chair lift, Mt Hotham Ski Field, Victoria

2. Research Interests

My research interests revolve around::

  • The measurement of success of IT investments, particularly at the organizational level (sometimes called the Business Value of IT)
  • The identification of factors contributing to the usefulness and success of information systems
  • Enterprise Systems/Packaged Enterprise Application Software (PEAS), including ERP, CRM, SCM, EAI.
  • IT Outsourcing
  • IT Management including (a) IT capabilities for the IT Function, (b) the role of the CIO, and (c) enterprise architecture
  • Business analytics
  • Business processes (including TQM, BPR, and the importance of process in organizations))
  • Accounting information systems

(Potential PhD students: Please take note of the above topics. I'm keen to supervise very capable students who think clearly, write good English, and have scored in the top 5% of their coursework classes at Melbourne or any other university. (Very high grades are necessary to obtain a PhD scholarship at The University of Melbourne.)  

 

Key current projects:

Managing the IT Function in large Australian Organizations, 2010-2019 ($300K)

(Australian Research Council Discovery project DP0771805, with Leslie Willcocks and Sara Cullen, funded for 2007-2009)

The goal of this project is to understand how IT functions in large organizations in Australia should be structured and managed in the second decade of the twenty-first century (2010-2019). This topic is important because commoditization of IT and globalization of IT service provision are rapidly and dramatically changing the way IT is sourced and how IT functions around the developed world are structured; considerable numbers of IT jobs seem destined to be “offshored” to the low-wage economies. By studying a number of large Australian organizations over three years, we hope to be able to offer sound advice to Australian Chief Information Officers (CIOs) on the best ways to structure and manage their IT functions during the next decade.

 

Competing on Business Analytics ($400K)

(Australian Research Council Discovery project DP0987003, with Graeme Shanks, Rens Scheepers, and Peter Reynolds, funded for 2009-2011)

The goal of this project is to develop and test a model that explains and predicts how organisations can gain competitive advantage from their use of business analytics. Business analytics involves the collection, storage and interpretation of data in order to make better decisions and to optimize business processes. Although analytic techniques have been used in business for many years to aid decision-making, many organisations have had difficulty in achieving anticipated benefits from large-scale, enterprise-wide, business-analytic systems, e.g., data warehouses. Recently, however, Davenport (Competing on Analytics, Harvard Business Review, January 2006) and Davenport and Harris (Competing on Analytics, Harvard Business School Press, 2007), have provided substantial case-study evidence of the successful use of business-analytic systems to gain competitive advantage. Stimulated by the success of these US companies, the goal of this project is to explore the circumstances under which business analytics can be used to obtain competitive advantage in large Australian organizations..

OASIS Research Group

OASIS Research Group Staff page

 

For more details on these projects, please see this link.

3. Publications

4. Teaching Responsibilities

Current Research Students

  • Shawn Alborz (PhD student, cosupervisor Rens Scheepers): The importance of the Relationship in IT Outsourcing
  • Graeme Thomas (PhD student, ANU, co-supervisor Walter Fernandez): IT Project Evaluation: Is More Formal Evaluation Necessarily Better?
  • Toomas Tamm (PhD student, co-supervisor Graeme Shanks): Organizational Benefits from an IT Architecture
  • Prithvi Bhattacharya (PhD student, co-supervisor Rens Scheepers): Factors affecting benefits from Enterprise Systems

   

Current Class-room Teaching

2009:

  • Lecturer-in-charge: 615-282 Shaping the Enterprise with ICT (Undergraduate breadth subject for non-Science students, semester 1)
  • Note: The above subject introduces students to SAP's ERP software. The Department of Information Systems at The University of Melbourne has been a member of what is now called the SAP University Alliance Community since 2001. Students have accessed SAP ERP via the internet, usually connecting to what is now called the University Competence Centre (UCC) at QUT in Queensland from their homes. In the period 2001-2008 we have introduced a total of 1,110 students to the use of SAP ERP software, both as users and also in configuring the software (not ABAP). We use Cheryl Calvert's Notes. We are grateful to SAP for its support of the UCC at QUT.
  • Lecturer-in-charge: 615-657 Enterprise Systems (Masters students, semester 2) Subject website

2008:

Subject page for 615-260 Enterprise Systems, 2004  

Completed Research Students

PhD

 

  • Shari Shang (2002): Maximizing the Benefits from Enterprise Systems.  Dr Shang is now at National Chengchi University (NCU), Taiwan
  • Sara Cullen (PhD cosupervisor Leslie Willcocks): Explaining the drivers of successful IT Outsourcing
  • Lorraine Staehr (PhD cosupervisor Graeme Shanks): Understanding the Business Benefits from ERP System Use
  • Jayantha Rajapakse (PhD student, cosupervisor  Rens Scheepers): Explaining difficulties in realization of benefits from ERP systems in developing countries

   

Masters

  • Wong Ming Kheng (2002): A Framework for Maximising the Benefits of PC/LAN Infrastructure Investment

 

Honours

  • Meera Kesari (2002), Co-supervisor Shanton Chang: Usefulness of process modelling in application software implementations
  • Richard Hong (2002), Co-supervisor Darren Skidmore: Web Services
  • Justin Shuen (2002), Co-supervisor Shanton Chang: Critical Success and Failure Factors in Outsourcing of IT
  • Danny Wang (2001): Logistics and the successfulness of Internet businesses
  • Colin Reilly (2000): Benchmarking and Information Technology Outsourcing Outcomes
  • Naomi Benjamin (1998): Data Warehousing Success: Measurement and Causes

 

Masters by Coursework

  • Song Yang (2003): Benefits and Key Project Success Factors from Enterprise Systems Implementations: Lessons from Sapphire 2003
  • Ann (Zhong) Liu (2007): How Do Key Project Success Factors Affect Organizational Benefits From Enterprise Systems Projects?
  • Toomas Tamm (2008): A Critique of the Feeny and Willcocks (Sloan 1998) Core IS Capabilities Model
  • Jimmy (2008): Exploring the Organizational Structure and Coordination of Multi-National IT Outsourcing Vendors

Lapsed PhD students

  • Lee Chia Yao (cosupervisor Brian Corbitt):  Strategic sources of value from e-markets
  • Cheryl Calvert (cosupervisor Jennie Carroll): Channels and mechanisms to increase user knowledge of packaged-software-based systems
  • Phil Freeman (cosupervisor  Rens Scheepers): Explaining the drivers of successful CRM systems.
  • Felicity Murphy (cosupervisor Martin Gibbs): The role of lead customers in the on-going development of packaged software.

5. Professional Responsibilities

  • Co-chair (with Rens Scheepers and Graeme Shanks) OASIS research group, Department of Information Systems

 

Previously:

 

 

 

Peter Seddon
Updated: April 2009