Semantic and Syntactic Matching of Heterogeneous e-Catalogues

In e-procurement, companies use e-catalogues to exchange product infor-mation with business partners. Matching e-catalogues with product requests helps the suppliers to identify the best business opportunities in B2B e-Marketplaces. But various ways to specify products and the large variety of e-catalogue formats used by different business actors makes it difficult. This Ph.D. thesis aims to discover potential syntactic and semantic rela-tionships among product data in procurement documents and exploit it to find similar e-catalogues. Using a Concept-based Vector Space Model, product data and its semantic interpretation is used to find the correlation of product data. In order to identify important terms in procurement documents, standard e-catalogues and e-tenders are used as a resource to train a Product Named Entity Recognizer to find B2B product mentions in e-catalogues. The proposed approach makes it possible to use the benefits of all availa-ble semantic resources and schemas but not to be dependent on any specific as-sumption. The solution can serve as a B2B product search system in e-Procurement platforms and e-Marketplaces

How agile COTS selection methods are (and can be)?

Agile methods are proposed nowadays as a way to support software systems procurement. Most of the existing proposals such as eXtreme programming or scrum seem to conceive software procurement as an exercise of software development. However, a great deal of software systems are commercial off-the-shelf (COTS)-based systems, in which the focus changes from bespoke software development to COTS selection and integration. Many proposals for COTS selection have been issued and therefore one may wonder how do they behave from the agile point of view. In this paper, we study the agile principles in the context of COTS selection and we analyze some of the most widespread existing methods. As a result, we identify some practices that would help in making COTS selection processes more agile.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Creating a Software Marketplace for the SME Community in the Irish Construction Industry

The Construction Industry is a sector where Information Communication Technology (ICT) and e-Business are used to a lesser extent than in most other sectors. The high concentration of Small to Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) in the industry and the typical nature of the service provided, being an on-site and often highly customised service are generally identified as the reason for the low ICT uptake. The majority of Irish companies in the construction sector are SMEs. E-Business has provided the construction SME industry the opportunity to compete globally. The Construction IT Alliance (CITA) has identified a programme that can create a digital SME community that will promote ICT software. In creating this community CITA will be able to provide the construction industry in Ireland with an ICT software service deployed from a centralised data centre. This ICT concept commonly referred to as „Cloud Computing‟ will enhance CITA‟s services in providing ICT uptake to the wider Irish construction industr

Design of Tender Management System

One of the E-government initiatives is the development of the government-to-business (G2B) system, which is an agenda sets to promote a higher service quality between government entities and the business sector. In Jordan, the vision of E-government would be an essential and active participant in the social development and economic with ICT to enable easy access to government services and information. The tender process in Jordan will be assessing based on the capital of the enterprises in order to be tender. However, the main user is the problem of corruption in the selection of tender. This proposal is to develop tender management system for public sector in Jordan, as well as to reduce corruption. The prototype will develop by using C# language , and the research design adopted the general methodology. The evaluation was based on usability testing with the System Usability Scale (SUS) proposed by Brooke. The prototype was assessed by a sample consists of thirty eight respondents. The results have been positive; when the respondents should that they are able to use the system

The role of e-procurement in purchasing management

This exposition summarises research published in several academic articles, in order to meet the requirements of PhD by publication. The focus of the work is on the role of electronic procurement in management of the purchasing function. From the late 1990s a number of independent e-procurement mechanisms were launched which offered potential benefits such as increased order accuracy, transaction efficiency and greater integration between trading partners. At the outset of this programme of research, e-procurement was therefore an emerging phenomenon with little academic research and presented an opportunity to investigate a largely unexplored area. Edmondson and McManus (2007) suggest that for nascent, as opposed to mature areas of research, where few formal constructs or measures exist, an exploratory, qualitative approach is required. This research followed such an approach through the use of case studies, involving observation, participation and interviews with key organisational actors. Each paper makes use of several cases in order to compare and contrast results from different organisations and to draw conclusions from multi-case analysis. The published articles focus on the impact of core applications within e-procurement, including online reverse auctions, electronic marketplaces, online catalogue sites, and buying systems covering the ‘requisition to pay’ cycle. The findings from the papers address a number of core themes in purchasing management. In considering buyer-supplier relationships, it was observed that such dyads are driven by traditional buyer negotiation factors such as segmentation, power and price and that use of eprocurement applications tended to enforce such traditional behaviours. In relation to the potential for integration, the study found that integration between firms was barely affected, as the concept of integration was neither an objective nor a business case driver for e-procurement adoption. This situation reflects the finding that procurement managers pursue functional targets rather than supply chain-level objectives. However, other significant effects from e-procurement adoption were noted such as the tendency by buyers to reduce supplier numbers and a move to re-engineer the procurement function in buying firms, through automating transactional processes. The research finds that e-procurement does not have a deterministic impact on purchasing management, and that it acts as an enabler to more effective management of the function though the way its different mechanisms are deployed. The exposition establishes that e-procurement is used in relation to supply conditions which are characterised by both ‘markets’ and ‘hierarchies’, but that it is the predefined purchasing strategy of the firm, rather than available technology solutions, which determines when markets and hierarchies are used. Additionally, an original model is introduced, focusing on developing an e-procurement policy which can support strategic purchasing goals. This model extrapolates findings from stages in the research, and marries together elements from various papers and frameworks therein, to produce some guidelines for adoption of this technology

A Review on various E-business and M-business models & Research Opportunities

A business model is a set of process/activities that results in sustainable profit through desired revenue and customer value. The business model spells out how a company makes money by specifying its position in the value chain. A business model which uses electronic communication technology such as internet for exchanging information is called e-business model. The e-business model includes the roles and relationships among a firm's customers, allies, and suppliers; the major flows of product, services, information, and money; and the major benefits to the participants. This paper contains review on various business models used in e-business, m-business, and m banking. All the major E-commerce business models which fall under 3 main categories : B2B - Business to business, B2C - Business to consumer, C2C - Consumer to consumer are also discussed with their benefits and limitations. Based on business model framework, various research agenda and opportunities are identified and elaborated

Building a Semantic Tendering System

In the new B2B e-commerce arena, applications such as auctions and data exchange are growing rapidly. However, Web content is currently designed for human consumption rather than computer manipulation. This limits the possibility of Web automation. Fortunately, the new development of the Semantic Web that allows Web pages to provide information not only in terms of their content, but also in terms of the properties of that content, can be used for automation. Electronic tendering systems are among the successfully commercial systems that can tremendously benefit from the availability of Semantic Web. This study proposes an e-tendering system that uses the Semantic Web to investigate the automatic negotiation process. The system is built in a P2P environment to simulate a two-player negotiation. It is found that the ontology of semantic information can be used to locate qualified suppliers and precede negotiation. The bargaining power of each party is then determined by the relative magnitude of the negotiators’ respective costs of haggling and the utility that varies with the degree of risk preference. Our experiments showed that applying automatic negotiation strategies to e-tendering system in semantic web can reflect the risk preference of the participants

Creating business value through e-marketplace trading

Electronic marketplaces (e-marketplaces) have been researched over many years from the study of electronic data interchange (EDI) systems to the current internet based trading platforms. Early e-marketplaces connected a buyer and supplier using proprietary systems that established a market hierarchy. The buyer was responsible for the system, established the terms of trade and the electronically enabled supplier could connect to the system. These systems were costly to build, which limited their use, and only organisations with an integrated system could use them. The web based e-marketplaces opened up the possibility of connecting many buyers and suppliers and enabling electronic transactions. The e-marketplace offers opportunities for establishing trade relationships with many organisations across the world. Business to business (B2B) e-commerce is a significant part of the Australian economy and there are opportunities to take advantage of e-marketplace trading. One of the advantages of electronic trading is the ability of the technology to deliver transaction benefits; these can have a significant impact on organisations regardless of organisational size. However, despite the potential of the e-marketplace to deliver organisational benefits there have been limited studies which consider the strategic implementation of e-marketplace trading. Organisational strategy and the implementation of strategic initiatives involve interactions between organisational structures and agents. The analytical dualism this represents complicates uncovering the fundamental causes of e-marketplace participation. Not only does the adoption of e-marketplace trading impact on the buyer and supplier organisations, it introduces the e-marketplace vendor organisation and the e-marketplace technology into the participation decision. The complexity of the interactions across organisational structures and between organisational agents and technology adoption can produce a diversity of outcomes. The philosophical underpinning of critical realism for the study is supported by the lack of understanding as to why, and in what circumstances, organisations successfully participate in e-marketplace trading. The critical realist philosophy provides the opportunity to understand the interrelationships between context, organisational structures and agents and identify the causal mechanisms involved in producing various outcomes. It allows for the development of middle level theory as existing theories are examined to explain the perceived phenomena. Large organisations operating in Western Australia are used as case studies to uncover the causal relationships between context, structures and agents that can produce successful, strategic implementation of e-marketplace participation. Existing literature in relation to e-marketplaces and IT adoption is used to develop the research questions and formulate the interview questions. The structured case methodology is used to analyse each case and relate the findings to possible explanatory theories. Context, mechanism and outcome patterns, identified in each case, are presented. Building on economic market, institutional and network theories the research identifies organising vision theory and community discourse as explanations for organisational legitimation that can circumscribe the use of e-marketplace trading. Six types of community group that influence organisational adoption of e-marketplace technology are identified. The research suggests that the influence of these groups within the organisation, the fit with organisational culture and strategic objectives can prevent or instigate change. Further, the decision making process supported by the group (or group member) is more influential in the strategic adoption of the e-marketplace than the ability of the technology to deliver efficiency or transaction processing gains. This implies that technology adoption studies should include contextual and environmental issues and practitioners should examine how much their decision making is influenced by organisational and environmental features. The thesis contributes to the discussion on organising vision theory, e-marketplace trading and business value creation. It demonstrates the application of the structured case study methodology to research that is underpinned by critical realism