Today’s best managers know that the internet can help them redesign their organizations and dramatically improve their productivity. Many business activities can now be done in other places via the internet rather than in the home office. Creating a service-oriented architecture, or SOA, for your business is kind of like putting building blocks together. Instead of doing a process yourself, take out the block, and put in one where the activity is seamlessly done for you over the internet. The key to using internet-based software components relies on carefully redesigning your processes and operations and figuring out where internet-based activities can be plugged in effectively.
Source: Merrifield, R., Calhoun, J., & Stevens, D. 2008, June. The next revolution in productivity. Harvard Business Review, 72-80.
