For more than a decade, the word “e-business” has been an important topic both in business and IT. There
are various definitions of the word “e-business.” The term “e-business” was popularized as a slogan for a
conscious strategy launched by IBM. The day before IBM’s e-business ad campaign appeared on Oct. 7, 1997,
the Wall Street Journal said that Louis Gerstner, IBM’s CEO, wanted “to position IBM as a cutting-edge
company and shake off for good its image as a stodgy, if reliable, supplier of computers to giant corporations
[1].” E-business enables organizations to reduce costs, increase demand, and create new business models [2].
In order to develop schemes of e-business in or among firms, they have to restructure their business process
and information systems, considering changes that enable the companies to attain new value. In this paper, the
authors overview related works on developing e-business schemes, deliberate issues in e-business process
modeling especially for Japanese companies considering their management style, and propose the idea of a
modeling tool for supporting inter-organizational process flow adjustment.