Collaborative Commerce

Following the evolution of electronic business, collaborative commerce uses information technology to achieve a closer integration and a better management of business relationships among parties including internal personnel, business partners and customers. Recently, market and globalisation competition, customer oriented service strategy and product complexity have pushed enterprises a step further on in collaborative commerce. In brief, collaborative commerce is (1) a collaborative technology – similar to workflow collaboration, (2) a customer-driven technology – similar to a pull-type supply chain, (3) a functionally-integrated technology – similar to concurrent engineering and (4) a businessdriven technology – similar to enterprise resource planning, for cross-organisational integration. The paper will illustrate the technologies and the critical success factors of collaborative commerce adoption

Business to Business Enterprise Integration: An exploratory study to develop and test an implementation model for engineer to order organisations.

This research explores the managerial problems associated with adoption of business to business (B2B) enterprise integration in the UK engineer to order (ETO) manufacturing sector. Its aim is to develop a B2B enterprise integration hierarchy to overcome managerial problems and propose a model for implementation. The first part of the research developed an overview of the evolution of the B2B enterprise integration concept, a definition, perceived business benefits and its general status in the UK manufacturing sector. The research is grounded in the extant literature covering supply chain integration, information technology acceptance literature, crisis management and implementation success factors. A qualitative case study approach was selected comprising two phases. The first phase involved key informant interviews at eleven ETO companies in the UK. Three interviews with key informants were carried out at each company. This group triangulation approach mitigated any bias. Four managerial problems were identified: management awareness of the benefits and implementation challenges, risk in terms of return on investment and business continuity during implementation, information security risk associated with loss of competitive advantage and lack of relevant skills within the organisation. From these findings, a B2B de-coupled integration hierarchy was developed and an implementation model proposed. The second phase involved an in case participatory action research study over a one year budget cycle at one of the eleven companies during implementation of a B2B system. This case study tested the use of a B2B de-coupled integration hierarchy approach and refined the proposed implementation model. The outcome of the research recommends a B2B de-coupled integration hierarchy and an iterative implementation model for overcoming the four key inhibitors identified. This is significant for practitioners, particularly in the ETO sector, who are in the process of implementing B2B enterprise integration systems. It confirms that successful implementation can be achieved if senior management teams are fully aware of the potential benefits and the implementation challenges. Additionally, business and information security risks must be dealt with by appropriate de-coupling and the workforce should have the relevant skills to deal with the new systems. From an academic perspective, this research provides two significant contributions. This is the first study to explore the managerial problems associated with adoption of B2B enterprise integration by using a combination of interviewing key informants within an organisational setting and a participatory action case study. Furthermore, it is the first study to propose an iterative implementation model to overcome managerial problems associated with adoption of B2B enterprise integration in the UK ETO sector. It should be noted that this research is limited to key informant interviews at eleven companies and one case study. In order to provide unequivocal validation and generalisability, the research should be expanded to cover other manufacturing sectors

Enterprise Evolution: A Discussion from Different Perspectives. Editorial Introduction to Issue 34 of CSIMQ

The current issue provides discussions on different topics that can be summarized as “Enterprise Evolution”. The selected articles continue and elaborate research that was presented in 2022 during workshops at the Perspectives in Business Informatics Research Conference – BIR 2022 in Rostock, Germany. The articles continue the research work presented at the conference, summarize the findings and provide deeper insights and new perspectives. The articles report on research results regarding ethical, social, and environmental accounting; support for post-merger information systems integration; enterprise architecture for inclusion of demand-responsive services in the overall enterprise architecture of transportation companies; and possibilities of SMEs to use robotic solutions for enhancing their processes

Managing Evolving Business Workflows through the Capture of Descriptive Information

Business systems these days need to be agile to address the needs of a changing world. In particular the discipline of Enterprise Application Integration requires business process management to be highly reconfigurable with the ability to support dynamic workflows, inter-application integration and process reconfiguration. Basing EAI systems on model-resident or on a so-called description-driven approach enables aspects of flexibility, distribution, system evolution and integration to be addressed in a domain-independent manner. Such a system called CRISTAL is described in this paper with particular emphasis on its application to EAI problem domains. A practical example of the CRISTAL technology in the domain of manufacturing systems, called Agilium, is described to demonstrate the principles of model-driven system evolution and integration. The approach is compared to other model-driven development approaches such as the Model-Driven Architecture of the OMG and so-called Adaptive Object Models.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures. Presented at the eCOMO'2003 4th Int. Workshop on Conceptual Modeling Approaches for e-Busines

Examining enterprise architecture for digital transformation

The Digital Transformation era has unlocked unique opportunities for organizations to disrupt and innovate with digital products and services by leveraging novel emerging technologies such as mobile computing, big data analytics, cloud computing, and the internet of things. Consequently, the emergence of this new digital generation has increased the awareness of disruptive innovations, posing multiple challenges to organizations that had adopted traditional Enterprise Architecture approaches, such as materializing digital business strategies with regard to federated applications. These business strategies must address the dynamic changes of the involved services and their data interfaces; and, therefore, require higher interoperability for seamless integration. This paper introduces preliminary results from conducting a systematic literature review focused on identifying the constituents of Digital Transformations reflected as new opportunities to improve conventional Enterprise Architecture practices. The findings are classified into four categories: (1) Customer Journey, Customer Experience and Value Creations Streams; (2) Architecture Agility &amp; Evolution; (3) Architecture Modularity (Interoperability); and (4) Social and Cultural Alignment of the Enterprise.</p

On using Markov decision processes to model integration solutions for disparate resources in software ecosystems

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.The software ecosystem of an enterprise is usually composed of an heterogeneous set of applications, databases, documents, spreadsheets, and so on. Such resources are involved in the enterprise’s daily activities by supporting its business processes. As a consequence of market change and the enterprise evolution, new business processes emerge and the current ones have to be evolved to tackle the new requirements. It is not a surprise that different resources may be required to collaborate in a business process. However, most of these resources were devised without taking into account their integration with the others, i.e., they represent isolated islands of data and functionality. Thus, the goal of an integration solution is to enable the collaboration of different resources without changing them or increasing their coupling. The analysis of integration solutions to predict their behaviour and find possible performance bottlenecks is an important activity that contributes to increase the quality of the delivered solutions. Software engineers usually follow an approach that requires the construction of the integration solution, the execution of the actual integration solution, and the collection of data from this execution in order to analyse and predict their behaviour. This is a costly, risky, and time-consuming approach. This paper discusses the usage of Markov models for formal modelling of integration solutions aiming at enabling the simulation of the conceptual models of integration solutions still in the design phase. By using well-established simulation techniques and tools at an early development stage, this new approach contributes to reduce cost, risk, development time and improve software quality attributes such as robustness, scalability, and maintenance

Major Features, Benefits, and Prerequisites for Intelligent Enterprise Managing System

The modern conditions of high-tech and highly competitive markets require the evolution of the enterprise automation systems. Such new, the post-ERP systems should meet the conditions for the provision of customer self-service and other counterparts, the dramatic decrease of the manual labour through automation, robotic application, integration with other systems and external contracting systems, multi-channel marketing and distribution, reduction of supply chains and other current trends. These systems should be built on the new IEM Automation Paradigm (Intelligent Enterprise Managing) and therefore belong to the IEM system class. As stated in the IEM paradigm article, a modern approach to solving the task of automation is based on the application of "best" solutions for each separate entity or business unit. In practice, however, this approach has resulted in a series of significant problems. The scale of the problems is increasing with the growth in transactional load, competitive pressures on the market, requirements for accelerate optimization, and business processes changes

ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE: A CASE FOR DEVELOPMENT OF ENTERPRISE-WIDE INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Under the pressure of constantly increasing organizational demands for cost saving, sophisticated, and finally integrated business applications, Information Systems are evolving into enterprise-wide integrated information processing facilities organized as a large-scale distributed systems of systems. The complexity of these systems and the process of their development and integration raise a whole set of new issues. To address them, new approaches are needed that: (1) cope with complexity and change, (2) support development of open systems, and (3) preserve consistency. In this paper we present an architecture-based approach for development and evolution support of Enterprise-Wide Information Systems (EWIS). We introduce the concept of an Enterprise Software Architecture (ESA) and discuss its role as a means in the development process in respect to the above three issues. Finally, we identify an object-based ESA as an attractive alternative for development of EWIS

Integration of dairy farms in supply chain in bulgaria

This paper presents a new business model for an effective market inclusion of numerous small-scale dairy farms developed by a private entrepreneur. Firstly, it gives insight on development and challenges of Bulgarian dairy sector. Next, it describes the innovation, identifies drivers and changes of inclusion, and assesses its efficiency and sustainability. Finally, it evaluates the possibilities for up-scaling of the model, and suggests business and policies recommendations. Major features of the model include: developing a competitive dairy processing enterprise for locally produced milk; installing milk collecting, cooling, and controlling facilities in the neighborhood and within farms; modernizing milk supply and processing quality according to the top industry standards; building an effective system for governing relations (coordination, stimulation, control, conflict resolution) with individual farmers; developing a company mark and reputation for high quality products; introducing a great variety of specific, original and locally produced products into regional, national, and international markets. Critical factors for evolution of the model have been identified as: private entrepreneurship, experience and skills, technological discipline, available resources, introduction of innovations, effective governance (control, incentives, adjustment) of vertical relations, building a good reputation, development of markets and formal regulations. Integration of farmers has been associated with needs of progressive changes in breed of animals, technology of production, and labor organization, and led to higher income, quality of production, stability of sells and prices, care for animals and environment, and possibility for modernization and adaptation to formal requirements.chain governance, vertical integration, business innovation, farmers inclusion, dairy farming, Bulgaria

Recommendation-Based Conceptual Modeling and Ontology Evolution Framework (CMOE+)

Within an enterprise, various stakeholders create different conceptual models, such as process, data, and requirements models. These models are fundamentally based on similar underlying enterprise (domain) concepts, but they differ in focus, use different modeling languages, take different viewpoints, utilize different terminology, and are used to develop different enterprise artifacts; as such, they typically lack consistency and interoperability. This issue can be solved by enterprise-specific ontologies, which serve as a reference during the conceptual model creation. Using such a shared semantic repository makes conceptual models interoperable and facilitates model integration. The challenge to accomplish this is twofold: on the one hand, an up-to-date enterprise-specific ontology needs to be created and maintained, and on the other hand, different modelers also need to be supported in their use of the enterprise-specific ontology. The authors propose to tackle these challenges by means of a recommendation-based conceptual modeling and an ontology evolution framework, and we focus in particular on ontology-based modeling support. To this end, the authors present a framework for Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) as a conceptual modeling language, and focus on how modelers can be assisted during the modeling process and how this impacts the semantic quality of the resulting models. Subsequently, a first, large-scale explorative experiment is presented involving 140 business students to evaluate the BPMN instantiation of our framework. The experiments show promising results with regard to incurred overheads, intention of use and model interoperability