Business Information Systems

Exhausting the Project Management Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), enactment of business information system in an organizational e-transformation can be noticed as an assortment of Information Systems associated within the business processes. The concern with the aligning business processes with Information Systems always upraised the challenges of success or failures. The study is an attempt to identify various reasons of success or failure of alignment, by considering three factors: 1. The best enterprise Business Information Systems alignment. 2. The success of each Information Systems project, and 3. The integration and interdependencies of the Information Systems projects This paper collects the causes of project success and failure from many means, comprising, list of literatures accessible and finest practices in developing and instigating Information Systems Projectsclassified and grouped them, and linked them to Business-IS alignment, to conclude that in most cases the main reasons behind project success or failure is mishandling the project business context.

E-governments are becoming a common phenomenon in the society today as public agencies rapidly embrace new technologies to streamline and reinvent their aging bureaucratic functions. However, due to the sheer diversity of stakeholders involved in governmental operations, practitioners are finding it difficult to manage the dynamism in customer relations that coexists with the migration of public services onto the virtual environment. In an attempt to shed some light for e-government development, this paper studies one such initiative in Singapore from a customer relational perspective. Through the study of how one public organization adapts to the dynamic customer relations brought about by e-government, the case is able to discern the governing factors for successful government-stakeholder relations in an e-government community. An important contribution of this study is the proposal of a development model of relationships in the public sector, which will then be able to suggest how relationships can be effectively managed so as to achieve an e-government future.

SMEs are heterogeneous population of firms whose contributions to private sector participation and economic development are wide which include but not limited to new products and services, improved designs and processes and adoption of new technologies. However, the picture is different in Nigeria where SMEs have been noted to perform below expectation over the years due to enormous challenges ranging from poor level of financial assistance, lack of infrastructural facilities, lack of competitive intelligence skill among workers, unfavorable environment and government policies among others. The paper attempts to bridge the gap between the current situation and the ideal through identification of strategies to enhance competitiveness among SMEs using appropriate technologies and business information, some of the strategies include: clustering, big data networking, economic globalization, specialization in a market niche to compensate for some of the disadvantages of small scale. Also, while there are more challenges to contend with by SMEs in Nigeria, the benefits in terms of access to new markets and knowledge can be enormous. Special attention is given to the role of information in business and in achieving competitiveness in SMEs while considering specific contexts outside Nigeria as a basis for adjudging the strength and weakness of Nigerian SMEs. The paper concludes with salient recommendations to pertinent issues beclouding the firms’ performance and productivity level in Nigeria.

Keywords— : clustering, business information, big data
Intelligence, big data, SMEs, Competitive Intelligence

e-Government systems differ from commercial information systems (IS) in that they frequently encompass strategic goals that go beyond efficiency, effectiveness and economy, and include political and social objectives such as trust in government, social inclusion, community regeneration, community well-being and sustainability. Designing e-Government systems that help to meet these objectives is a significant challenge for the future. This paper develops an evaluative design framework for e-Government projects that complements traditional approaches to IS evaluation. The framework is based upon Moor's concept of public value. It focuses upon citizens' and clients' experiences of service provision and service outcomes as contributors to the formation of public trust. Trust is shown to be related to the extent to which people feel that an e-Government service enhances their sense of being wellinformed, gives them greater personal control, and provides them with a sense of influence or contingency. The framework's development and validation are founded upon analyses of a two live case studies in south-east England and London, U.K.

The accounting information systems course is often viewed as difficult to teach because it contains topics that are less quantifiable and structured in comparison to courses in financial or managerial/cost accounting. Yet, many AIS instructors have developed successful teaching techniques that are suited to the AIS course. A creative teaching approach for the AIS course is that of role-playing organizations and their operations, especially for transaction cycles. In addition, cooperative learning can be nicely coupled with role playing because of their common emphases on social interdependence and shared learning. The benefits and guidelines for cooperative learning and role playing are presented and then illustrated with an example for a transaction cycle of an organization.

In this paper, we expose the legal theories underlying two important classes of Legal Core Ontologies and show how these ontologies inherit both limitations and benefits (such as explanatory power) of their underlying theories. We do that with the help of a real case study in which we have normative omission and collision of principles. We use this case study to conduct an ontological analysis of the support for judicial decision-making in LKIF-Core (representing Kelsen’s Pure Theory of the Law) and UFO-L (representing Robert Alexy’s Theory of Constitutional Rights). We show that UFO-L is able to articulate the semantics of the content of judicial decisions by making explicit the individual’s legal positions that are raised in argumentation along a legal process. The same cannot be said of LKIF-Core that is based on the Kelsenian stance and focuses on the representation of general norms (norm types) and subsumption of facts to these norms.

The digitalization of the economy and technological innovations are pushing central banks to investigate new forms of digital money. The concept and design of digital currencies have been investigated by central banks for some time. Although much progress has been made towards a convergence on definitions, the term Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) is still used to refer to a number of concepts. In this paper we address this issue by extending and refining our previous work, the Reference Ontology of Money and Virtual Currencies, to provide a semantic foundation for the concept of CBDC.

The e-Government agenda is being pursued throughout the world to one degree or another, but it has added significance in Central Europe. The region is just beginning to emerge from a period of far-reaching political and economic transformation following the collapse of repressive communist systems. For these countries, e-Government is more than simply a new channel of delivering services; it offers an opportunity to achieve a quantum leap in transparency and efficiency of administration, which the region's leaders have promised their citizens since the early 1990s. Turkey is currently working hard to catch this opportunity. Turkish Government has initiated the Urgent Action Plan in December 2002 to remedy long-lasting economic problems and to improve social and well-being of the country. One of the basic components of this plan is 'e-Transformation Turkey Project' which aims to carry Turkey into Information society. One of the two purposes of this study is to define and to prioritize the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) groups and their subfactors for e-Government in Turkey. The other purpose is to determine and to evaluate the alternative strategies for e-Government applications at the national level in Turkey. We use the SWOT approach in combination with analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to achieve this task. The strategies have been prioritized and sensitivity analyses of the obtained results have been made using a software.

Data warehouses (DW) play a decisive role in providing analytical information for decision making. Multidimensional modeling is a special approach to modeling data, considered the foundation for building data warehouses. With the explosive growth in the amount of heterogeneous data (most of which external to the organization) in the latest years, the DW has been impacted by the need to interoperate and deal with the complexity of this new type of information, such as big data, data lakes and cognitive computing platforms, becoming evident the need to improve the semantic expressiveness of the DW. Research has shown that ontological theories can play a fundamental role in improving the quality of conceptual models, reinforcing their potential to support semantic interoperability in its various manifestations. In this paper we propose the application of ontological patterns, grounded in the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO), for conceptual modeling in multidimen-sional models, in or...

Recent rapid advances in ICTs, specifically in Internet and mobile technologies, have highlighted the rising importance of the Business Model (BM) in Information Systems (IS). Despite agreement on its import ance to an organization?s success, the concept is still fuzzy and vague, and there is no consensus regarding its defini tion. Furthermore, understanding the BM domain by identifying its meaning, fundamental pillars, and its relevance to ot her business concepts is by no means complete. In this paper we aim to provide further clarification by first present ing a classification of definitions found in the IS literature; second, proposing guidelines on which to develop a more comprehensiv e definition in order to reach consensus; and third, identifying the four main business model concepts and values and thei r interaction, and thus place the business model within the world of digital business. Based on this discussion, we propose a new definition for the business model that we argue is more appropriate to this new world.

Project sponsorship is assumed to be critical to the success of information systems development and implementation. However, there is limited research on the effect of vendor-based sponsorship on the management of information technology (IT) projects. This paper contributes to that emerging body of evidence. Drawing on literature on psychological contract, management control and project sponsorship, the authors propose that vendor-based sponsors influence project performance in two main ways. One is to protect project quality by renegotiating contract with the client; and the other is to resource the project. Based on a survey of senior managers in IT services vendor organisations, it reports that project sponsorship improves the quality, but not the cost or timeliness, of vendor delivery of IT projects. The findings suggest that IT services vendors can improve their project delivery capability by appointing project sponsors.

Companies attempt to companies are attempting to find ways to improve their flexibility and responsiveness and in turn competitiveness by changing their operations strategy, methods and technologies that include the implementation of Supply Chain Management (SCM) paradigm. Hence, Information Technology (IT) can enhance the agility of SCM. The aspects, however, which IT impact on SCM are not equal. In this paper, we specify the areas that IT affects on supply chain and evaluate it. Since the judgments of Iranians automobile industry are qualitative, the evaluation has been done by fuzzy ranking method.

The transactlon·processlng environment In which companies maintain their operational databases was the original target for computerization and Is now well understood. On the other hand, access to company Information on a large scale by an end user for report-Ing and data analysis Is relatively new. WIthin IBM, the computerization of Informational systems Is progress· lng, driven by business needs and by the availability of Improved tools for accessing the company data. It Is now apparent that an architecture Is needed to draw together the various strands of Informational system activity within the company. IBM Europe, Middle East, and Africa (E/ME/A) has adopted an architecture called the E/ME/A Business Information System (EBIS) architecture as the strategic direction for Informational systems. EBIS proposes an Integrated warehouse ot company data based firmly In the relational database environment. End-user access to this warehouse Is slmplffled by a consistent set ot tools provided by an end-user Interface and supported by a business data directory that describes the Information available In user terms. This paper describes the background and components of the architecture of EBIS.

The mobile ecosystem is characterized by a large and complex network of companies interacting with each other, directly and indirectly, to provide a broad array of mobile products and services to end-customers. With the convergence of enabling technologies, the complexity of the mobile ecosystem is increasing multifold as new actors are emerging, new relations are formed, and the traditional distribution of power is shifted. Drawing on theories of network science, complex systems, interfirm relationships, and the creative art and science of visualization, this paper identifies key players and maps the complex structure and dynamics of nearly 7000 global companies and over 18,000 relationships in the converging mobile ecosystem. Our approach enables decision makers to (i) visually explore the complexity of interfirm relations in the mobile ecosystem, (ii) discover the relation between current and emerging segments, (iii) determine the impact of convergence on ecosystem structure, (iv) understand a firm's competitive position, and (v) identify interfirm relation patterns that may influence their choice of innovation strategy or business models.

Industrial traceability systems are designed to operate over complex supply chains, with a large and dynamic group of participants. These systems need to agree on processing and marketing of goods, information management, responsibility, and identification. In addition, they should guarantee context independence, scalability, and interoperability. In this paper, we first discuss the main issues emerging at different abstraction levels in developing traceability systems. Second, we introduce a data model for traceability and a set of suitable patterns to encode generic traceability semantics. Then, we discuss suitable technological standards to define, register, and enable business collaborations. Finally, we show a practical implementation of a traceability system through a real world experience on food supply chains.

Project management strategies are a part of every organisation as developing high quality customer satisfied software is always one of the challenges for any software organisation. Though the scope creep is known to be one of the factors which influence project success, existing project management strategies do not effectively measure or predict the scope creep. This paper focuses on effective scope creep management which is achievable through a comprehensive analysis of the scope creep and its impact on project success. The paper further presents a case study conducted in one of the leading software companies to investigate the significance and impact of scope creep in the project success. An investigation was carried out on several empirical projects and a three-dimensional visualisation of scope creep on success of project was brought out. This trio visualisation comprises of historical data perspective which leads to visualise the inferences in a pictorial representation perspective. Facts, thus, gained from historical and pictorial data perspectives lead one towards visualisation of scope creep and its management using a mathematical modelling perspective. This mode of visualising the scope creep and its implications on project success ensures one to effectively modulate their strategies in order to develop software products which attain total customer satisfaction.

There is a plethora of theories to explore the disciplines of business, management and sociology, with institutional theory being widely used to explore a range of research challenges. In the area of Information Systems (IS), the use of institutional theory remains in its infancy, with much potential for adoption. Much of the rationale underpinning the proposed research is that a systematic review and synthesis of the normative literature may support the direction of further research and the use of institutional theory in exploring pertinent research challenges facing the IS community. This study also serves to signpost cross-disciplinary research, and thus opens up a whole new research paradigm. Therefore, this article seeks to provide a bibliometric analysis and a comprehensive and systematic review of the literature pertaining to institutional theory to ascertain the current ‘state of play’ of the theory. Information on a series of variables was extracted after conducting a revie...

New technologies, notably service oriented architectures and Web services, are enabling a third wave of business process management (BPM). Supporters claim that BPM is informed by complexity theory and that business processes can evolve and adapt to changing business circumstances. It is suggested by BPM adherents that the business/IT divide will be obliterated through a process-centric approach to systems development. The evolution of BPM and its associated technologies are explored and then coevolutionary theory is used to understand the business/IT relationship. Specifically, Kauffman's NKC model is applied to a business process ecosystem to bring out the implications of coevolution for the theory and practice of BPM and for the relationship between business and IT. The paper argues that a wider view of the business process ecosystem is needed to take account of the social perspective as well as the human/non-human dimension.

The worldwide diffusion of Electronic Commerce shifts the exchange relationship between buyers and sellers from the face-to-face model to the face-to-screen model; and it is, therefore, important for organisations to consider the Web attributes that attract users. Yet, conceptualising, empirically testing, and refining tools for measuring the easiness and usefulness of transactional Web sites are lacking. The present study tries to fill this gap in the literature by describing the development of two tools for measuring perceived easiness and usefulness in a Web context. The findings of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses reveal that the two instruments demonstrate sound measurement properties and would be useful to organisations interested in setting up an electronic business, and to scholars interested in Web research.

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In this paper a concept will be proposed about a hypergraph-based formalism for representing enterprise architecture. The paper presents a formal model using TOGAF and hypergraph theory. Hypergraphs provide a flexible mathematical structure to describe complex relationships in an enterprise architecture , mirroring the dependencies among components, and exploring integrity and consistency issues. The proposed approach extends the analytical potential for discrepancy checking in complex enterprise architecture structures. The approach can be utilized for EAM-based analysis of information systems.

The purpose of this study is twofold. First, we examine the effects of using database technology in the classroom on students' acquisition of database knowledge and performance on relation normalization tasks. Second, we solicit sstudnets' views on this methodology to determine their satisfaction. Our results suggest that designing an active learning exercise tha allows students to interact with a database management system during class improves knowledge acquisition, the ability to apply knowledge, and satisfaction with the course and the instructor.

In IT management, maturity models have proved to be an important instrument because they allow for a better positioning of the organization and help find better solutions for change. Over the last few years, over a hundred maturity models have been developed to support IT management. However, the procedures and methods that led to these models have only been documented very sketchily. Using a scientific approach, we have developed criteria for the development of maturity models. These criteria also serve as a basis for the comparison of sparsely documented maturity approaches. The results thus obtained have been generalised and consolidated into a generally applicable model. A case study will illustrate the applicability of our model. The results of this paper are meant to serve as a manual for methodically well-founded designs and evaluations of maturity models.

Bureaucratic institutions not only provide mechanisms to coordinate work activities in the public sector, but also serve to enforce the democratic values of equality and impartiality. This paper explores how recent approaches to e-government neglect these important dimensions of bureaucracy and proposes an alternative approach to e-government. This paper sets the wider new public management reform context to help explain some of the difficulties the NHS IT Projects are running into by 2007. The e-bureaucratic form is proposed as an e-government solution, which, while taking advantages of the information and communication technology as means of coordination, also help to enforce the values of equality and impartiality underpinned through the actions emanating from bureaucratic structures.

The importance of the acquisition and provision of information within knowledge work such as engineering is widely acknowledged. This article reports an extensive empirical study of such information behaviors in engineers, using a novel and effective work sampling method. Seventy-eight design engineers each carried a portable handheld computer (PDA) for 20 working days. Once every hour, they were prompted to enter data concerning the task they were currently performing, including the information behaviors in which they were engaging. The resultant data represent a comprehensive picture of engineers' information behaviors and the percentage of their working time for which each of these behaviors accounts (55.75% in total). Specific hypotheses concerning the time spent engaged in these behaviors were also tested. Accordingly, it was found that participants spent substantially more time receiving information they had not requested than information they had, and this pattern was also reflected when they provided others with information. Furthermore, although there was no difference found between the time participants spent searching for information from other people compared with nonhuman sources, in the former case they spent relatively less time locating the information source and information within that source, and relatively more time engaged in problem solving and decision making. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for theory and organizational practice.

Business information system is an area of the greatest significance in any business enterprise today. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) projects are a growing segment of this vital area. These software systems are designed and installed by ERP vendors. Most current research on the subject concerns only managerial issues. This study is to probe the performance of ERP software in terms of the three crucial technical factors that determine the success or failure of a given ERP software. To probe these research issues, an exploratory case study was conducted with a survey and interview at a large organization with an ERP system. The statistical analysis of the collected data supports the three hypotheses of the study, leading to the conclusion that the crucial technical factors for ERP implementation are the same in literature and in the companies with successful ERP implementation. The future research study will involve other technical aspects of ERP implementation for enhancing its p...

Since DeLone and McLean (D&M) developed their model of IS success, there has been much research on the topic of success as well as extensions and tests of their model. Using the technique of a qualitative literature review, this research reviews 180 papers found in the academic literature for the period 1992-2007 dealing with some aspect of IS success. Using the six dimensions of the D&M model -system quality, information quality, service quality, use, user satisfaction, and net benefits -90 empirical studies were examined and the results summarized. Measures for the six success constructs are described and 15 pairwise associations between the success constructs are analyzed. This work builds on the prior research related to IS success by summarizing the measures applied to the evaluation of IS success and by examining the relationships that comprise the D&M IS success model in both individual and organizational contexts.

Business process management is one of the core drivers of business innovation and is based on strategic technology and capable of creating and successfully executing end-to-end business processes. The trend will be to move from relatively stable, organization-specific applications to more dynamic, high-value ones where business process interactions and trends are examined closely to understand more accurately an application’s requirements. Such collaborative, complex end-to-end service interactions give rise to the concept of Service Networks (SNs). This book chapter surveys business process management, concentrating on business transactions, and introduces a business transaction language to realizes a novel business transaction model that enables end-to-end service constellations to behave according to agreed-upon transaction criteria. The objective of the BTL is to provide the environment to build robust and successful mission-critical SBAs, using a fusion of concepts from application integration, transaction-based and business process management technologies.

In Australia, before a divorcing couple can have their case heard by the Family Court, they must undertake mediation. Thus it is useful to develop information technology tools to support negotiation and mediation in family law. Most negotiation support systems focus upon integrative bargaining. In doing so, they tend to ignore issues of fairness. In Australian Family Law, the interests of the children, as opposed to those of their parents/guardians, are paramount. We investigate the use of providing BATNAs and integrative bargaining in providing family mediation decision support. The discussion is highlighted with examples taken from the domain of Australian Family Law.

Data quality (DQ) assessment can be significantly enhanced with the use of the right DQ assessment methods, which provide automated solutions to assess DQ. The range of DQ assessment methods is very broad: from data profiling and semantic profiling to data matching and data validation. This paper gives an overview of current methods for DQ assessment and classifies the DQ assessment methods into an existing taxonomy of DQ problems. Specific examples of the placement of each DQ method in the taxonomy are provided and illustrate why the method is relevant to the particular taxonomy position. The gaps in the taxonomy, where no current DQ methods exist, show where new methods are required and can guide future research and DQ tool development.

This paper first provides a historical perspective on approaches to developing infonnation systems and argues that there are major weaknesses associated with the conventional waterfall model and the methodologies which followed. The paper suggests that a contingency approach to information systems development has much to offer and looks at Multiview, which is described as an exploration in infom1ation systems development. Some strengths and weaknesses of this contingency approach an~ highlighted and a new version of Multi view offered. This description enahles a further discussion of infom1ation systems development and suggests that human and organisational aspect are at least as important as the technical ones which tend to he emphasised. Information systems development is seen as first a social process, though it will contain technical aspects. This social process is examined in more detail illustrating the arguments, for example, with different views of the systems analyst and the problem situation in this process. Such a broad approach also suggests that the area of which infom1ation systems development is a part, is multi-disciplinary where technology and computing are hy no means dominant.

The dramatic increase in the number of SMEs has been considered as the backbone of economies. Although literature has been rich in studies on organisational learning (OL), most of the research mainly focuses on large organisations, leaving small and medium enterprises (SMEs) marginalised. Accordingly, this paper seeks to redress the balance through investigating the impact of business information systems (BIS) on OL and identifying the main factors that enhance OL in SMEs in the Egyptian context. The main purpose of this research is to propose a conceptual model for OL which contains Organisational Dimensions (OD); namely Organisation Culture (OC), Management Support (MS), Group, and Personal Behaviour (PB) Dimensions; namely Human, Follower, and Time as the main factors that affect OL. BIS was introduced as a mediator for the model. The study used a questionnaire as a tool for data collection, where 410 employees at SMEs were surveyed. Research hypotheses were tested, and data was statistically analysed using SPSS.

Institutional theory has proven to be a central analytical perspective for investigating the role of social and historical structures of information systems (IS) implementation. However, it does not explicitly account for how organisational actors make sense of and enact technologies in their local context. We address this limitation by exploring the potential of using institutional theory with sensemaking theory to study IS implementation in organisations. We argue that each theoretical perspective has its own explanatory power and that a combination of the two facilitates a much richer interpretation of IS implementation by linking macro- and micro-levels of analysis. To illustrate this, we report from an empirical study of the implementation of an Electronic Patient Record (EPR) system in a clinical setting. Using key constructs from the two theories, our findings address the phenomenon of implementing EPRs at three levels: the organisational field, the organisational/group, and ...

This paper suggests ways to facilitate creativity and innovation in software development. The paper applies four perspectives-Product, Project, Process, and People-to identify an outlook for software innovation. The paper then describes a new facility-Software Innovation Research Lab (SIRL)-and a new method concept for software innovation-Essence-based on views, modes, and team roles. Finally, the paper reports from an early experiment using SIRL and Essence and identifies further research.