Using the REA Approach to Modeling of IT Process Evaluation

For many businesses, Information Technology (IT) solutions play a strategic role in gaining and maintaining competitive advantage. For several decades, a business information system infrastructure has been persistently developed and hence it is increasingly more complex. Well organized IT processes have become more crucial than ever before. IT executives (CIOs) have to make decisions based on high quality information concerning various features, how IT processes are planned, managed and improved. In order to successfully evaluate and manage IT processes, CIOs are supported by dedicated software and hardware solutions, best practices and standards. The IT processes evaluation is much more effective when the source data comes from tailored solutions for given information needs. There are a lot of opportunities to develop an information system architecture for the IT process evaluation using various software tools. Today, we are facing the important question of whether or not it is possible to create software strictly dedicated to an IT management domain, which also would be an integral part of the ERP architecture and more suitable for SMEs. An attempt to give an answer to this question is the main goal of this paper. We propose to use the Resource-Event-Agent (REA) approach to modeling IT process evaluation. This is an important assumption because REA lets us see an IT management domain both as a set of mutually connected business activities and as a part of the interests of accounting records. Therefore, the REA modeling makes it possible to describe the IT realm to satisfy information needs, for both accountants and non-accountants.