An AHP-QFD Integrated Approach to Meet Three Dimensional Environmental Value Requirements in Sustainable E-Business Modelling

Abstract

It is surprising that although ‘e-business’ and ‘sustainability’ are the two current major global trends but none of the e-business modelling ideas covers the sustainability aspects of the business. Environmental value requirement is one of the three pillars of sustainability concept that must be fulfilled to achieve a fully sustainable e-business model. A little literature is available on ‘sustainability of ICT’ but none of them clearly explains how environmental value requirements can be identified and efficiently fulfilled to achieve sustainability in e-business. Recently, companies are successfully using Quality Function Deployment (QFD) as a powerful tool in various fields that addresses strategic and operational decisions in businesses. This research approach, therefore, uses an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) integrated QFD approach to show how environmental value requirements can be identified and efficiently fulfilled to achieve sustainability of e-business with a comprehensive case study. This approach is unique in the sense that in developing the model environmental value requirements are considered from three dimensions and environmental value concept is integrated with customer’s value requirements, business’s value requirements, and process’s value requirements. The approach uses the case of a commercial bank in Bangladesh for the demonstration of the approach.