IDENTIFYING FACTORS TO IMPROVE EFFECTIVE XML ADOPTION IN ELECTRONIC BUSINESSES

XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is emerging as the industry standard platform for application integration and many organizations are either adopting the technology or seriously evaluating this option. One of the major concerns of the senior management in such an endeavor is the cost associated with the decision. In this paper, a model is proposed to evaluate an organization’s position in an XML adoption space by evaluating its current level of IT sophistication. The model identifies critical factors necessary for the successful adoption of XML technology along three dimensions – intranet, extranet and Internet. A simulation experiment is conducted to find the most cost effective strategy for allocating the resources to achieve the desired goal. Two options are evaluated under the constraint that the organization can increment the diffusion level of a factor only by a fixed amount. It has been observed that improving the factor that has the highest significance in the dimension in which the company needs to improve most is a more effective strategy than improving the diffusion level of the factor that has organization-wide highest importance.