none / The term “service orientation” has been explained in different ways in the literature and is often associated with terms such as market orientation, customer orientation, and being customer centered—all while never deviating from the firm’s core purpose—in order to satisfy customers’ needs and offer services that they want. A service-oriented organization focuses on what customers really need and want in order to make them feel satisfied. Considerable research has shown that organizations are more successful when they focus on a service orientation. Information technology plays an important role in the development of business orientation. Cases like Walmart involve such things as the application of the barcode, RFID, and a Continuous Replenishment System to ensure that the company has the right product shipped on time, to any store in the world. Information technologies with different functions, including business integration, business analysis, mobile communication, and collaboration, have played different roles in enabling service orientation in a firm. On the other hand, industries with different customer requirements have applied these functions in different ways. There is a need for a broad understanding of how these diverse kinds of information technologies enable service orientation in various types of firms. The study attempts to build insights about what a service-oriented organization is and what the roles information technology plays in a service-oriented organization to satisfy customers’ needs and wants. First, we study the characteristics of service orientations, then we analyze the use of information technology in these kinds of organizations. Next, multiple case studies are conducted to trace IT use in these organizations. Based on cross-industry and cross-case analysis, we examine the motivation for IT use for service orientation, the management of IT adoption, the difference of the IT role to enable service orientation in organizations, and the paths of IT use for service orientation in different industries.