Building a SOA-Based Model for Purchase Order Management in E-Commerce Systems

Purchase Order Management (POM) is one of the most popular E-Commerce applications conducted between B2C and B2B systems. In many cases nowadays POM components use integration approaches that lack interoperability and manageability features. The purpose of this paper is to build a SOA based model for POM in E-Commerce system that achieves the goals of interoperability and manageability. In this paper a technical model of POM E-Commerce system is presented and analyzed. A new POM model based on SOA solution is proposed that overcomes the shortcoming of currently used model. The main contribution of this paper is to align a SOA-based model to the B2C and B2B E-Commerce domain

Business Integration as a Service

This paper presents Business Integration as a Service (BIaS) which enables connections between services operating in the Cloud. BIaS integrates different services and business activities to achieve a streamline process. We illustrate this integration using two services; Return on Investment (ROI) Measurement as a Service (RMaaS) and Risk Analysis as a Service (RAaaS) in two case studies at the University of Southampton and Vodafone/Apple. The University of Southampton case study demonstrates the cost-savings and the risk analysis achieved, so two services can work as a single service. The Vodafone/Apple case study illustrates statistical analysis and 3D Visualisation of expected revenue and associated risk. These two cases confirm the benefits of BIaS adoption, including cost reduction and improvements in efficiency and risk analysis. Implementation of BIaS in other organisations is also discussed. Important data arising from the integration of RMaaS and RAaaS are useful for management of University of Southampton and potential and current investors for Vodafone/Apple

Sistemas de Información en las redes de suministro desde una perspectiva operacional: una revisión de la literatura

[ESP] Un nuevo comportamiento por parte de las organizaciones surge con la creciente colaboración entre empresas pertenecientes a una misma Red de Suministro (RdS). Las Tecnologías de Información (TI) y Sistemas de Información (SI) dan soporte a dicha colaboración, favoreciendo el flujo de información entre diferentes entidades de la RdS sin que éstas modifiquen sus propias soluciones tecnológicas, debido a la existencia de plataformas que permiten vincular SI de diferentes nodos de la RdS. Un Sistema de Información es un conjunto de recursos humanos, materiales, financieros, tecnológicos, normativos y metodológicos, organizado para brindar, a quienes operan y a quienes adoptan decisiones en una organización, la información que requieren (Saroka, 2002). Según Checkland y Holwell (1998) el objetivo básico de un SI es proporcionar de forma adecuada datos e información a la organización, mediante el uso de TI, siendo esta información relevante para las actividades dinámicas tanto de la organización como de sus miembros. Los sistemas de información se pueden clasificar en Sistema de Información de Apoyo a las Operaciones y Sistema de Información de Apoyo Gerencial. Se habla de SI de Apoyo a las Operaciones cuando el SI registra las transacciones del nivel operativo mientras que el SI de Apoyo Gerencial se emplea para tomar decisiones. A pesar de hacer esta distinción, los dos tipos de SI, no deben de tratarse de forma excluyente, ya que siempre existirá flujo de información y datos desde el SI operacional hacia el SI gerencial

A user-centric approach for developing and deploying service front-ends in the future internet of services

Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs) based on web services have attracted a great deal of interest and Internet Technology (IT) investment over the last few years, principally in the context of business-to-business integration within corporate intranets. However, they are now evolving and breaking through enterprise boundaries in a revolutionary attempt to make the approach pervasive. This is leading to what we call a user-centric SOA. A user-centric SOA is an SOA conceived as an internet of services made up of compositional resources empowering end users to collaboratively remix and ubiquitously exploit these resources. In this paper we explore the architectural basis, technologies, frameworks and tools considered necessary to tackle this novel vision of SOA. We also present the rationale behind Ez Web/FAST, an ongoing EU-funded project whose first outcomes could serve as a preliminary proof of concept

IT supported business process negotiation, reconciliation and execution for cross-organisational e-business collaboration

In modern enterprises, workflow technology is commonly used for business process automation. Established business processes represent successful business practice and become a crucial part of corporate assets. In the Internet era, electronic business is chosen by more and more organisations as a preferred way of conducting business practice. In response to the increasing demands for cross-organisational business automation, especially those raised by the B2B electronic commerce community, the concept of collaboration between automated business processes, i.e. workflow collaboration, is emerging. Otherwise, automation would be confined within individual organisations and cross-organisational collaboration would still have to be carried out manually. However, much of the previous research work overlooks the acquisition of the compatible workflows at build time and simply assumes that compatibility is achieved through face-toface negotiation followed by a design from scratch approach that creates collaborative workflows based on the agreement resulted from the negotiation. The resource-intensive and error-prone approach can hardly keep up with the pace of today’s marketplace with increasing transaction volume and complexity. This thesis identifies the requirements for cross-organisational workflow collaboration (COWCO) through an integrated approach, proposes a comprehensive supporting framework, explains the key enabling techniques of the framework, and implements and evaluates them in the form of a prototype system – COWCO-Guru. With the support of such a framework, cross-organisational workflow collaboration can be managed and conducted with reduced human effort, which will further facilitate cross-organisational e-business, especially B2B e-commerce practices

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Käsitteellinen lähestymistapa organisatoristen verkostojen tutkimukseen

Tutkimusympäristöt joissa eri tieteenalojen tutkijat toimivat yhdessä ratkaistakseen verkostoissa toimivien kumppaniyritysten ongelmia ovat haasteellisia tiedonvaihdon ja tutkimustiedon keräämisen kannalta. Vaikka tutkimuskohde on yhteinen, tutkijat lähestyvät sitä omien tieteidensä näkökulmasta käyttäen siihen teorioita ja menetelmiä jotka eivät ole yhteensopiva muiden kanssa. Lapin yliopistossa tehdyn tutkimustyön aikana nämä ongelmat tulivat esiin, kun useissa monialaisissa projekteissa tarkasteltiin liiketoimintaverkostoja sekä teollisuusliiketoiminnan että matkailun alalta. Projektien kohteina olevissa verkostoissa yritykset pyrkivät tyypillisesti hakemaan verkostotoiminnasta hyötyjä informaatioteknologian avulla tehostaakseen liiketoimintasuhteitaan ja siten edesauttamaan johtamiseen ja operatiiviseen toimintaan liittyvää tiedonkulkua. Pääasiallinen ongelma näissä ympäristöissä tapahtuvassa tutkimuksessa on, että uudet projektit eivät helposti pysty hyödyntämään edellisten projektien tuotoksia, koska aikaisemmin kerättyä tutkimustietoa, analyysejä tai luotuja ratkaisumalleja ei ole saatavilla siinä muodossa että ne voitaisiin ottaa uuden tutkimuksen pohjaksi. Tässä työssä on tarkasteltu ja kehitetty käsitteellisiä malleja ja niihin liittyviä menetelmiä, jotka tukevat monitieteistä liiketoimintaverkostojen tutkimusta, ja samalla tekevät mahdolliseksi hyödyntää jo olemassa olevaa tutkimustietoa. Tässä diplomityössä kehitetty ratkaisu perustuu liiketoimintaverkostojen analysointiin käsitemallintamisen avulla. Tämän tuloksena on luotu organisatoristen ympäristöjen käsitemalli, joka keskittyy integraatiota edistäviin yhteistoimintasuhteisiin, ja kuvattu siihen liittyvä tutkimuksellinen prosessi joka mahdollistaa projektin aikana syntyvän tutkimusaineiston käsitteellistämisen ja lisätiedon liitämisen niihin. Tämä helpottaa tutkimustiedon jäsentämistä ja sen jakamista tutkijoiden ja kohdealueen toimijoiden välillä. Lisäksi työssä määritellään metatietokuvauksia ja rajattuja sanastoja jotka perustuvat semanttisen webin tekniikoihin, joilla voidaan luokitella eri projektien aikana syntyviä tutkimusartefakteja ja hallinnoida tutkimustietoa.The research settings, where project teams consisting of researchers from different scientific fields, and working together to provide solutions to the issues of networked partner organizations, are challenging in terms of communicating and accumulating research knowledge. Although the focus of the research is shared, difficulties emerge because it is explored from different scientific perspectives, relying on theories and methods that do not match with others. This observation was made during research work conducted at the University of Lapland in projects that concentrated on business networks in the manufacturing and tourism industries. The organizations in these commercial environments typically seek benefits from information technology to intensify the network-wide business relationships and to improve knowledge-intensive operations and management. The main problem is that new projects cannot easily benefit from the results of past projects because the collected research materials, analyses and models are not easily found and they are difficult to align with the objectives of new projects. In this work, to resolve theses issues, conceptual models and related approaches have been analyzed and elaborated to support cross disciplinary research on business networks, and at the same time enable the re-use and sharing of research knowledge. The solution presented in this Master's thesis has been developed by relying on conceptual modelling approaches to analyze business networks. As a result, general concept model of inter-organizational environments has been built that focuses on the integrative relationships in them. Further, accompanying research process that enabies the conceptualization and annotating of the project research outcomes has been constructed. This helps in organizing and sharing research information between researchers and stakeholders. Additionally, metadata descriptions and controlled vocabularies based on semantic web technologies are defined to align research constructs originating from different projects and to support research knowledge management

The First 25 Years of the Bled eConference: Themes and Impacts

The Bled eConference is the longest-running themed conference associated with the Information Systems discipline. The focus throughout its first quarter-century has been the application of electronic tools, migrating progressively from Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) via Inter-Organisational Systems (IOS) and eCommerce to encompass all aspects of the use of networking facilities in industry and government, and more recently by individuals, groups and society as a whole. This paper reports on an examination of the conference titles and of the titles and abstracts of the 773 refereed papers published in the Proceedings since 1995. This identified a long and strong focus on categories of electronic business and corporate perspectives, which has broadened in recent years to encompass the democratic, the social and the personal. The conference\u27s extend well beyond the papers and their thousands of citations and tens of thousands of downloads. Other impacts have included innovative forms of support for the development of large numbers of graduate students, and the many international research collaborations that have been conceived and developed in a beautiful lake-side setting in Slovenia