Bootstrapping enterprise models with business continuity processes and DEMO

Orientação: Sérgio Luís Proença Duarte GuerreiroBusiness Continuity Plan (BCP) ensures the continuity of business processes in catastrophe or disaster situations, building organizational resilience and mitigating risks. Theoretically, BCP covers all the roles throughout the company, and identi es a blueprint of all key functions and processes with the objective of maintaining or restoring critical operations. However, due to poor documentation and misinterpretation of the complex business processes between the stakeholders, pinpointing and documenting all the key functions and processes is still a challenging task. The research methodology used to conduct this thesis was the research of information and literature review and was supported by a case study in an insurance company. It studies and presents a new approach to complement the management of the BCP, supported by a conceptual integration of DEMO and the Business Continuity Planning. It presents an evaluation of this proposal and contributes with outcome learnings from the practice. The aim is to complement and leverage enterprise's domain knowledge about key business processes and functional needs. The bene ts of Design & Engineering Methodology for Organization should be tested in order to represent business processes at any domain, and therefore, aid managers in implementing and maintaining BCP

Capability-actor-resource-service : a conceptual modelling approach for value-driven strategic sourcing

This PhD research addresses a problem within strategic sourcing, which is a critical area of strategic management that is centered on decision-making related to procurement. Strategic sourcing is related to two disciplines: (i) procurement and supply management and (ii) strategic management. Sourcing is the strategic part of procurement that refers to tasks like determining cost saving and value-driven opportunities, choosing the most appropriate go-to market strategies, and selecting and evaluating suppliers for building long-term and short-term contractual relationships. Many companies face challenges in obtaining the benefits associated with effective strategic sourcing. Although the concept of strategic sourcing is fairly well recognized, managers are still challenged by many barriers to its implementation. The main problem is the lack of practical instruments (i.e., tools and techniques) to implement the value-driven management approach to strategic sourcing, while at the same time preparing companies for fact-based decision-making by delivering data management and data analytics capabilities. This is the problem which is addressed with this PhD research. To address this problem, the research goal has been defined as “develop a modeling approach that enables companies 1) to drive fact-based decision-making with respect to procurement data management and procurement analytics”; and 2) to implement strategic sourcing toward achieving value-driven targets”. We apply conceptual modeling as our main solution approach to achieve the above research goal. We define three major areas where conceptual modeling can contribute to strategic sourcing decision-making: conceptualization, design and computer support. The proposed conceptual modeling approach is characterized by four different perspectives: (i) a way of thinking (i.e., a conceptual foundation), (ii) a way of modeling (i.e., a modeling language and method to use it), (iii) a way of working (i.e., a model-based analysis approach), and (iv) a way of supporting (i.e., a computer-aided design tool). The scope of PhD research is limited to the first three perspectives, while for the fourth perspective a solution architecture will be proposed as part of future research. This PhD dissertation is a paper-based dissertation consisting of six chapters. Three chapters (chapter 3, 4, 5) of this dissertation have been submitted to international peer-reviewed journals (chapter 4 is published and chapters 3 and 5 are accepted) and one chapter (chapter 2) has been published in the post-conference proceedings of an international workshop

A performance reporting tool for electricity service delivery for selected local South African municipalities

Thesis (PhD (Industrial Systems))--University of Pretoria, 2021.Basic services such as sanitation, waste removal, water, and electricity supplies are necessary for life, well-being, and human dignity. In South Africa, municipalities are the sphere of government constitutionally designated to provide these services. With months of rolling blackouts and volatile operating performance, Electricity Service Delivery (ESD) deserves some attention and improvement because it is setting the country on a pathway to national emergency, weakening investors’ confidence and stagnating the country’s already problematic economic growth prospects. Since improvement does not materialise spontaneously, deliberate and purposeful actions are required to understand the current state of ESD, extract stakeholders’ intentions for an improved ESD (diagnosis), and then devise means to operationalise the intentions. This study focuses on performance assessment with initial reporting capabilities to provide adequate information and insight for diagnosis of ESD within South African local municipalities. It starts by exploring a systematic literature review of available tools for diagnostic service performance assessment. Then, it extracts and validates, through a focus group session, the criteria which such tools must satisfy to be considered useful in the South African context. The study is based on a Design Science Research (DSR) methodology and follows an inquisitive process of multi-stakeholder engagement to extract evidence about existing functional and constructional ESD areas of concern/requirements. The study inductively develops an artefact, the ESD Performance Reporting Tool (ESD-PRT) to guide improvement in electricity service delivery in South African local municipalities. The ESD-PRT continuously extracts performance metrics from Power System Resources (PSR), citizens, and organisational competencies of the municipalities, with provisions for emerging areas of concern and requirements within design domains and sub-domains. It was evaluated for practicality and usefulness based on the DSR iterative approach and compared to the closest available similar solution. This entry point solution to an optimised local municipality ESD would guide the redesign of ESD and potentially save South Africa billions of Rands currently lost to energy losses, downtime in economic activities and social discontent occasioned by power outages and rolling blackouts. The study was demonstrated in three local municipalities geo-located in two different provinces. The researcher believes that the study outcome would apply to most local municipalities in South Africa. However, its applicability to metropolitan municipalities still needs to be tested.Industrial and Systems EngineeringPhD (Industrial Systems)Unrestricte

Factors Influencing Customer Satisfaction towards E-shopping in Malaysia

Online shopping or e-shopping has changed the world of business and quite a few people have decided to work with these features. What their primary concerns precisely and the responses from the globalisation are the competency of incorporation while doing their businesses. E-shopping has also increased substantially in Malaysia in recent years. The rapid increase in the e-commerce industry in Malaysia has created the demand to emphasize on how to increase customer satisfaction while operating in the e-retailing environment. It is very important that customers are satisfied with the website, or else, they would not return. Therefore, a crucial fact to look into is that companies must ensure that their customers are satisfied with their purchases that are really essential from the ecommerce’s point of view. With is in mind, this study aimed at investigating customer satisfaction towards e-shopping in Malaysia. A total of 400 questionnaires were distributed among students randomly selected from various public and private universities located within Klang valley area. Total 369 questionnaires were returned, out of which 341 questionnaires were found usable for further analysis. Finally, SEM was employed to test the hypotheses. This study found that customer satisfaction towards e-shopping in Malaysia is to a great extent influenced by ease of use, trust, design of the website, online security and e-service quality. Finally, recommendations and future study direction is provided. Keywords: E-shopping, Customer satisfaction, Trust, Online security, E-service quality, Malaysia