Handbook of Research on Information Architecture and Management in Modern Organizations, 2016
Profiles of employees must be properly analyzed and combined for a better organizational benefit.... more Profiles of employees must be properly analyzed and combined for a better organizational benefit. If each employee profile is understood, the organization is in a better position to assign each one an adequate role, optimizing individuals efforts and consequently, benefiting global organizational performance. Professionals of Information and technology (IT) normally are a heterogeneous team, where different competences are needed and where different profiles cohabite. The management of these teams may be improved by the lenses of neuro-organizational behavior. By understanding individual brain profiles it is possible to better allocate each one into the right function. This is a way how to efficiently orchestrate an IT team. Each professional can better contribute to the team if allocated to appropriate tasks. It is like a musician in an orchestra with all other different musicians. Each musician contribution to global music interpretation will run better, if each one plays the right instrument.
Centro Lusíada de Investigação e Desenvolvimento em Engenharia e Gestão Industrial (CLEGI), which... more Centro Lusíada de Investigação e Desenvolvimento em Engenharia e Gestão Industrial (CLEGI), which can be translated as the Engineering and Industrial Management Research and Development Centre, is a research unit whose creation results from an initiative of the Host Institution – Fundação Minerva - Cultura - Ensino e Investigação Científica – to promote the activities related to research and development in these fields. This Research Unit has the general goal of developing a close cooperation and coordination of R&D activities between the two main research areas of Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Management. The activities pursued within the Unit are classified under the following categories: (a) Research and Development, (b) Technology transfer, (c) Higher Education and Professional Qualification, and (d) Dissemination of scientific results. The basis of operation of this Research Centre has its foundation in the benefits that can be achieved from the marriage of teaching and investigation. From the standpoint of teaching,
lecturers and post-graduate students can benefit from an organized research structure centred in the fields of teaching to support lecturing activities since it provides a strong foundation and actuality of knowledge transmission. On the other end, research benefits with the participation of post-graduate students renewing and enlarging the research body. This
symbiotic operation helps keeping focus on the objectives of research and therefore contributes in a positive manner towards the maturity of the research centre and degrees offered by the host institution. The evolution of the research centre is closely related to the evolution of the teaching activities and the emergence of new research lines. Moreover, new degrees are contiguous to research areas and respond interchangeably to the inherent requirements of research and teaching.
This unit promotes a close relationship with industry through research and developing, gathering students and researchers, that materializes in transfer of advanced knowledge and technology to industry and services sector of the economy. In the condition of recently created, this Unit has given the first steps in the field of research and the first results are promising. The Unit provides now the scientific background support in advanced teaching
giving aid to the recently approved master’s degrees. It should be noted that only this year the host institution is allowed to give doctoral degrees which contribute now in a positive manner to a consistent growth of research. The Unit also supports the creation of new degrees at professional level, working as a consultancy body.
The specific objectives of this unit are: Increase innovation and applied research in Mechanical Engineering; Improve industrial productivity; Increase product and environmental quality; Increase entrepreneurial competitiveness; Optimize and rationalize design, production and company management systems; Improve industrial safety; Promote professional specialization and qualification; Promote direct and indirect support to high education.
Areas of Expertise: Artificial Intelligence; Automation and Control; Sustainability, Energy and Environment; Knowledge Management; Lean Thinking; Materials; Operations Management; Production.
Computer games conceptualization and development are processes that have particular features with... more Computer games conceptualization and development are processes that have particular features with significant complexity. The life cycle at computer games development should attend the dynamism, the challenge and the opportunities of the game market. Business process management (BPM) pretends to give an alternative perspective of management to the departmental and hierarchical one. Game firm’s business should be seen with an integrated attitude, incentivising employees from different departments to work together in the same process with a common mission and persecuting same objectives. The importance of integrating the strategic level plans and the task level deployment is crucial for increased alignment and so, organizational performance. This can be better done if there is a process strategy definition, which links strategic initiatives with all needs of a process infrastructure. The processes´ standardizing tendency opens the chance to outsource parts of them bringing possible benefits to game firm and customers. The definition of a clear framework at the strategic level allows lower processes description and global business process architecture specification. Other important aspects of business process management approach at computer games industry should include ownership clarification, performance measurement mechanisms and obviously the identification and activation of improvement opportunities. Author elects business processes customization, integration of flows between firm and its supply chain partners and superior user interfaces using specialized workflow tools as being three improvement opportunities at games industry. In addition to those components, three additional extra concepts are considered critical to have a complete understanding of BPM. They are the conscious process management, the macro process management and the centrality of process. This chapter is going to follow these vectors in order to understand possible opportunities powered by BPM to gain competitive advantages in computer game industry.
Computer games conceptualization and development are processes that have particular features with... more Computer games conceptualization and development are processes that have particular features with significant complexity. The life cycle at computer games development should attend the dynamism, the challenge and the opportunities of the game market. Business process management (BPM) pretends to give an alternative perspective of management to the departmental and hierarchical one. Game firm’s business should be seen with an integrated attitude, incentivising employees from different departments to work together in the same process with a common mission and persecuting same objectives. The importance of integrating the strategic level plans and the task level deployment is crucial for increased alignment and so, organizational performance. This can be better done if there is a process strategy definition, which links strategic initiatives with all needs of a process infrastructure. The processes´ standardizing tendency opens the chance to outsource parts of them bringing possible benefits to game firm and customers. The definition of a clear framework at the strategic level allows lower processes description and global business process architecture specification. Author elects business processes customization, integration of flows between firm and its supply chain partners and superior user interfaces using specialized workflow tools as being three improvement opportunities at games industry. In addition to those components, three additional extra concepts are considered critical to have a complete understanding of BPM. They are the conscious process management, the macro process management and the centrality of process. This chapter is going to follow these vectors in order to understand possible opportunities powered by BPM to gain competitive advantages in computer game industry.
ABSTRACT The Information Technology (IT) team knowledge of business strategy and the organization... more ABSTRACT The Information Technology (IT) team knowledge of business strategy and the organization team knowledge of information technology are critical factors in the strategic business and IT alignment (BIA). These two factors have in common precisely the importance of "knowledge". The Information Technology team lack of knowledge about business and its strategy and vice-versa should be a major concern for the organization, since this knowledge strongly affects the possibility of an appropriate strategic alignment between business and the IT. It is significantly important to create an enabling environment for the growth of shared knowledge of the business area, encouraging professional IT with actions which increase learning and sensitivity to business issues. In addition to the business strategy and the strategy of IT, it should be highlighted the strategy of knowledge and the importance of alignment with the other two strategies. This article will illustrate the importance of knowledge management in the strategic BIA. It also shows the importance of create a shared knowledge environment for IT and Business teams and the definition of some knowledge growth strategies in Business and IT alignment context. This paper proposes an alternative and complementary view of KM, especially in a context of reaching an alignment between IT and Business strategies.
Organizations continue to strive to strengthen relationships with their customers and to attract ... more Organizations continue to strive to strengthen relationships with their customers and to attract new customers to their products or services. The implementation of marketing campaigns remains extremely important in this context. However, in an increasingly globalized, complex and more reliant on new information technology, organizations need to find ways to be more efficient in their marketing initiatives. The article presents a method for developing a marketing campaign that is based on the principles of database marketing. The method has ten steps and begins by characterizing the organization appropriately, identifying opportunities that can be realized through the exploitation of internal or external data of the organization and that can support a database suitable for marketing campaigns to launch.
Abstract Molecular nature of cancer is the foundation of systematic studies of cancer genomes, pr... more Abstract Molecular nature of cancer is the foundation of systematic studies of cancer genomes, providing exceptional insights and allowing treatments advancement in clinic. We combine techniques of image processing for feature enhancement and recommender systems for proposing a personalized ranking of cancer drugs. We use a database containing drug sensitivity data for more than 310.000 IC50, describing response of more than 300 anticancer drugs across 987 cancer cell lines. The system is implemented in Python (Google Colaboratory) and succeed to find best fitted drugs for cancer cell lines. After several preprocessing tasks, regarding drug sensitivity data, two experiments are performed. First experiment uses original DNA microarray images and the second one uses wavelet transforms to preprocess images. Our main goal is to assess the impact of using wavelet transformed DNA microarray images (versus original images) on the proposed framework. The experiments show that, by improving the search of cancer cell lines with similar profile to the new cell line, wavelet transformed DNA microarray images produce better results, not only in terms of evaluation metrics (hit-rate and average reciprocal hit-rate), but also regarding execution time.
Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai - Studia Europaea, 2010
Abstract This paper shows the benefits of a real implementation of an information system in a sta... more Abstract This paper shows the benefits of a real implementation of an information system in a state institution of higher education in Portugal. It starts by concentrating on the institution to which this real case refers, acknowledging its existing information system change and ...
Business intelligence is used by companies for analysing business information, providing not only... more Business intelligence is used by companies for analysing business information, providing not only historical or current views on business operations, but also providing predictions about the business. Consequently, knowledge discovery in databases can support the implementation of business intelligence solutions, especially in order to deal with the reality of big data, using diverse data mining techniques that can help to better prepare the data and to create improved models. The current paper proposes a methodology to implement business intelligence and analytics solutions, based on the CRISP-DM methodology, where the application of simplification and equivalence algorithms in modelling data representations can be used for improving the process of business management. This promising approach can boost business intelligence and analytics by using alternative techniques for discovering and presenting new knowledge about the business. The application of simplification and equivalence algorithms within the business context enables finding the most comprehensive or relevant knowledge, represented for instance as association rules, and bringing a real competitive advantage for the stakeholders.
Handbook of Research on Information Architecture and Management in Modern Organizations, 2016
Profiles of employees must be properly analyzed and combined for a better organizational benefit.... more Profiles of employees must be properly analyzed and combined for a better organizational benefit. If each employee profile is understood, the organization is in a better position to assign each one an adequate role, optimizing individuals efforts and consequently, benefiting global organizational performance. Professionals of Information and technology (IT) normally are a heterogeneous team, where different competences are needed and where different profiles cohabite. The management of these teams may be improved by the lenses of neuro-organizational behavior. By understanding individual brain profiles it is possible to better allocate each one into the right function. This is a way how to efficiently orchestrate an IT team. Each professional can better contribute to the team if allocated to appropriate tasks. It is like a musician in an orchestra with all other different musicians. Each musician contribution to global music interpretation will run better, if each one plays the right instrument.
Centro Lusíada de Investigação e Desenvolvimento em Engenharia e Gestão Industrial (CLEGI), which... more Centro Lusíada de Investigação e Desenvolvimento em Engenharia e Gestão Industrial (CLEGI), which can be translated as the Engineering and Industrial Management Research and Development Centre, is a research unit whose creation results from an initiative of the Host Institution – Fundação Minerva - Cultura - Ensino e Investigação Científica – to promote the activities related to research and development in these fields. This Research Unit has the general goal of developing a close cooperation and coordination of R&D activities between the two main research areas of Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Management. The activities pursued within the Unit are classified under the following categories: (a) Research and Development, (b) Technology transfer, (c) Higher Education and Professional Qualification, and (d) Dissemination of scientific results. The basis of operation of this Research Centre has its foundation in the benefits that can be achieved from the marriage of teaching and investigation. From the standpoint of teaching,
lecturers and post-graduate students can benefit from an organized research structure centred in the fields of teaching to support lecturing activities since it provides a strong foundation and actuality of knowledge transmission. On the other end, research benefits with the participation of post-graduate students renewing and enlarging the research body. This
symbiotic operation helps keeping focus on the objectives of research and therefore contributes in a positive manner towards the maturity of the research centre and degrees offered by the host institution. The evolution of the research centre is closely related to the evolution of the teaching activities and the emergence of new research lines. Moreover, new degrees are contiguous to research areas and respond interchangeably to the inherent requirements of research and teaching.
This unit promotes a close relationship with industry through research and developing, gathering students and researchers, that materializes in transfer of advanced knowledge and technology to industry and services sector of the economy. In the condition of recently created, this Unit has given the first steps in the field of research and the first results are promising. The Unit provides now the scientific background support in advanced teaching
giving aid to the recently approved master’s degrees. It should be noted that only this year the host institution is allowed to give doctoral degrees which contribute now in a positive manner to a consistent growth of research. The Unit also supports the creation of new degrees at professional level, working as a consultancy body.
The specific objectives of this unit are: Increase innovation and applied research in Mechanical Engineering; Improve industrial productivity; Increase product and environmental quality; Increase entrepreneurial competitiveness; Optimize and rationalize design, production and company management systems; Improve industrial safety; Promote professional specialization and qualification; Promote direct and indirect support to high education.
Areas of Expertise: Artificial Intelligence; Automation and Control; Sustainability, Energy and Environment; Knowledge Management; Lean Thinking; Materials; Operations Management; Production.
Computer games conceptualization and development are processes that have particular features with... more Computer games conceptualization and development are processes that have particular features with significant complexity. The life cycle at computer games development should attend the dynamism, the challenge and the opportunities of the game market. Business process management (BPM) pretends to give an alternative perspective of management to the departmental and hierarchical one. Game firm’s business should be seen with an integrated attitude, incentivising employees from different departments to work together in the same process with a common mission and persecuting same objectives. The importance of integrating the strategic level plans and the task level deployment is crucial for increased alignment and so, organizational performance. This can be better done if there is a process strategy definition, which links strategic initiatives with all needs of a process infrastructure. The processes´ standardizing tendency opens the chance to outsource parts of them bringing possible benefits to game firm and customers. The definition of a clear framework at the strategic level allows lower processes description and global business process architecture specification. Other important aspects of business process management approach at computer games industry should include ownership clarification, performance measurement mechanisms and obviously the identification and activation of improvement opportunities. Author elects business processes customization, integration of flows between firm and its supply chain partners and superior user interfaces using specialized workflow tools as being three improvement opportunities at games industry. In addition to those components, three additional extra concepts are considered critical to have a complete understanding of BPM. They are the conscious process management, the macro process management and the centrality of process. This chapter is going to follow these vectors in order to understand possible opportunities powered by BPM to gain competitive advantages in computer game industry.
Computer games conceptualization and development are processes that have particular features with... more Computer games conceptualization and development are processes that have particular features with significant complexity. The life cycle at computer games development should attend the dynamism, the challenge and the opportunities of the game market. Business process management (BPM) pretends to give an alternative perspective of management to the departmental and hierarchical one. Game firm’s business should be seen with an integrated attitude, incentivising employees from different departments to work together in the same process with a common mission and persecuting same objectives. The importance of integrating the strategic level plans and the task level deployment is crucial for increased alignment and so, organizational performance. This can be better done if there is a process strategy definition, which links strategic initiatives with all needs of a process infrastructure. The processes´ standardizing tendency opens the chance to outsource parts of them bringing possible benefits to game firm and customers. The definition of a clear framework at the strategic level allows lower processes description and global business process architecture specification. Author elects business processes customization, integration of flows between firm and its supply chain partners and superior user interfaces using specialized workflow tools as being three improvement opportunities at games industry. In addition to those components, three additional extra concepts are considered critical to have a complete understanding of BPM. They are the conscious process management, the macro process management and the centrality of process. This chapter is going to follow these vectors in order to understand possible opportunities powered by BPM to gain competitive advantages in computer game industry.
ABSTRACT The Information Technology (IT) team knowledge of business strategy and the organization... more ABSTRACT The Information Technology (IT) team knowledge of business strategy and the organization team knowledge of information technology are critical factors in the strategic business and IT alignment (BIA). These two factors have in common precisely the importance of "knowledge". The Information Technology team lack of knowledge about business and its strategy and vice-versa should be a major concern for the organization, since this knowledge strongly affects the possibility of an appropriate strategic alignment between business and the IT. It is significantly important to create an enabling environment for the growth of shared knowledge of the business area, encouraging professional IT with actions which increase learning and sensitivity to business issues. In addition to the business strategy and the strategy of IT, it should be highlighted the strategy of knowledge and the importance of alignment with the other two strategies. This article will illustrate the importance of knowledge management in the strategic BIA. It also shows the importance of create a shared knowledge environment for IT and Business teams and the definition of some knowledge growth strategies in Business and IT alignment context. This paper proposes an alternative and complementary view of KM, especially in a context of reaching an alignment between IT and Business strategies.
Organizations continue to strive to strengthen relationships with their customers and to attract ... more Organizations continue to strive to strengthen relationships with their customers and to attract new customers to their products or services. The implementation of marketing campaigns remains extremely important in this context. However, in an increasingly globalized, complex and more reliant on new information technology, organizations need to find ways to be more efficient in their marketing initiatives. The article presents a method for developing a marketing campaign that is based on the principles of database marketing. The method has ten steps and begins by characterizing the organization appropriately, identifying opportunities that can be realized through the exploitation of internal or external data of the organization and that can support a database suitable for marketing campaigns to launch.
Abstract Molecular nature of cancer is the foundation of systematic studies of cancer genomes, pr... more Abstract Molecular nature of cancer is the foundation of systematic studies of cancer genomes, providing exceptional insights and allowing treatments advancement in clinic. We combine techniques of image processing for feature enhancement and recommender systems for proposing a personalized ranking of cancer drugs. We use a database containing drug sensitivity data for more than 310.000 IC50, describing response of more than 300 anticancer drugs across 987 cancer cell lines. The system is implemented in Python (Google Colaboratory) and succeed to find best fitted drugs for cancer cell lines. After several preprocessing tasks, regarding drug sensitivity data, two experiments are performed. First experiment uses original DNA microarray images and the second one uses wavelet transforms to preprocess images. Our main goal is to assess the impact of using wavelet transformed DNA microarray images (versus original images) on the proposed framework. The experiments show that, by improving the search of cancer cell lines with similar profile to the new cell line, wavelet transformed DNA microarray images produce better results, not only in terms of evaluation metrics (hit-rate and average reciprocal hit-rate), but also regarding execution time.
Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai - Studia Europaea, 2010
Abstract This paper shows the benefits of a real implementation of an information system in a sta... more Abstract This paper shows the benefits of a real implementation of an information system in a state institution of higher education in Portugal. It starts by concentrating on the institution to which this real case refers, acknowledging its existing information system change and ...
Business intelligence is used by companies for analysing business information, providing not only... more Business intelligence is used by companies for analysing business information, providing not only historical or current views on business operations, but also providing predictions about the business. Consequently, knowledge discovery in databases can support the implementation of business intelligence solutions, especially in order to deal with the reality of big data, using diverse data mining techniques that can help to better prepare the data and to create improved models. The current paper proposes a methodology to implement business intelligence and analytics solutions, based on the CRISP-DM methodology, where the application of simplification and equivalence algorithms in modelling data representations can be used for improving the process of business management. This promising approach can boost business intelligence and analytics by using alternative techniques for discovering and presenting new knowledge about the business. The application of simplification and equivalence algorithms within the business context enables finding the most comprehensive or relevant knowledge, represented for instance as association rules, and bringing a real competitive advantage for the stakeholders.
Abstract. The strategic alignment of IS/IT and business is complex and dynam-ic in its nature. In... more Abstract. The strategic alignment of IS/IT and business is complex and dynam-ic in its nature. Independently of other affecting factors, author pretends to ex-plore the importance of behavior aspects within IT practitioners' activity, so he reviews three important behavior ...
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Books by Fernando Belfo
lecturers and post-graduate students can benefit from an organized research structure centred in the fields of teaching to support lecturing activities since it provides a strong foundation and actuality of knowledge transmission. On the other end, research benefits with the participation of post-graduate students renewing and enlarging the research body. This
symbiotic operation helps keeping focus on the objectives of research and therefore contributes in a positive manner towards the maturity of the research centre and degrees offered by the host institution. The evolution of the research centre is closely related to the evolution of the teaching activities and the emergence of new research lines. Moreover, new degrees are contiguous to research areas and respond interchangeably to the inherent requirements of research and teaching.
This unit promotes a close relationship with industry through research and developing, gathering students and researchers, that materializes in transfer of advanced knowledge and technology to industry and services sector of the economy. In the condition of recently created, this Unit has given the first steps in the field of research and the first results are promising. The Unit provides now the scientific background support in advanced teaching
giving aid to the recently approved master’s degrees. It should be noted that only this year the host institution is allowed to give doctoral degrees which contribute now in a positive manner to a consistent growth of research. The Unit also supports the creation of new degrees at professional level, working as a consultancy body.
The specific objectives of this unit are: Increase innovation and applied research in Mechanical Engineering; Improve industrial productivity; Increase product and environmental quality; Increase entrepreneurial competitiveness; Optimize and rationalize design, production and company management systems; Improve industrial safety; Promote professional specialization and qualification; Promote direct and indirect support to high education.
Areas of Expertise: Artificial Intelligence; Automation and Control; Sustainability, Energy and Environment; Knowledge Management; Lean Thinking; Materials; Operations Management; Production.
Papers by Fernando Belfo
lecturers and post-graduate students can benefit from an organized research structure centred in the fields of teaching to support lecturing activities since it provides a strong foundation and actuality of knowledge transmission. On the other end, research benefits with the participation of post-graduate students renewing and enlarging the research body. This
symbiotic operation helps keeping focus on the objectives of research and therefore contributes in a positive manner towards the maturity of the research centre and degrees offered by the host institution. The evolution of the research centre is closely related to the evolution of the teaching activities and the emergence of new research lines. Moreover, new degrees are contiguous to research areas and respond interchangeably to the inherent requirements of research and teaching.
This unit promotes a close relationship with industry through research and developing, gathering students and researchers, that materializes in transfer of advanced knowledge and technology to industry and services sector of the economy. In the condition of recently created, this Unit has given the first steps in the field of research and the first results are promising. The Unit provides now the scientific background support in advanced teaching
giving aid to the recently approved master’s degrees. It should be noted that only this year the host institution is allowed to give doctoral degrees which contribute now in a positive manner to a consistent growth of research. The Unit also supports the creation of new degrees at professional level, working as a consultancy body.
The specific objectives of this unit are: Increase innovation and applied research in Mechanical Engineering; Improve industrial productivity; Increase product and environmental quality; Increase entrepreneurial competitiveness; Optimize and rationalize design, production and company management systems; Improve industrial safety; Promote professional specialization and qualification; Promote direct and indirect support to high education.
Areas of Expertise: Artificial Intelligence; Automation and Control; Sustainability, Energy and Environment; Knowledge Management; Lean Thinking; Materials; Operations Management; Production.