4,854 research outputs found

    Customer-engineer relationship management for converged ICT service companies

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    Thanks to the advent of converged communications services (often referred to as ‘triple play’), the next generation Service Engineer will need radically different skills, processes and tools from today’s counterpart. Why? in order to meet the challenges of installing and maintaining services based on multi-vendor software and hardware components in an IP-based network environment. The converged services environment is likely to be ‘smart’ and support flexible and dynamic interoperability between appliances and computing devices. These radical changes in the working environment will inevitably force managers to rethink the role of Service Engineers in relation to customer relationship management. This paper aims to identify requirements for an information system to support converged communications service engineers with regard to customer-engineer relationship management. Furthermore, an architecture for such a system is proposed and how it meets these requirements is discussed

    Recommendation, collaboration and social search

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    This chapter considers the social component of interactive information retrieval: what is the role of other people in searching and browsing? For simplicity we begin by considering situations without computers. After all, you can interactively retrieve information without a computer; you just have to interact with someone or something else. Such an analysis can then help us think about the new forms of collaborative interactions that extend our conceptions of information search, made possible by the growth of networked ubiquitous computing technology. Information searching and browsing have often been conceptualized as a solitary activity, however they always have a social component. We may talk about 'the' searcher or 'the' user of a database or information resource. Our focus may be on individual uses and our research may look at individual users. Our experiments may be designed to observe the behaviors of individual subjects. Our models and theories derived from our empirical analyses may focus substantially or exclusively on an individual's evolving goals, thoughts, beliefs, emotions and actions. Nevertheless there are always social aspects of information seeking and use present, both implicitly and explicitly. We start by summarizing some of the history of information access with an emphasis on social and collaborative interactions. Then we look at the nature of recommendations, social search and interfaces to support collaboration between information seekers. Following this we consider how the design of interactive information systems is influenced by their social elements

    Towards the integration of enterprise software: The business manufacturing intelligence

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    Nowadays, the Information Communication Technology has pervaded literally the companies. In the company circulates an huge amount of information but too much information doesn’t provide any added value. The overload of information exceeds individual processing capacity and slowdowns decision making operations. We must transform the enormous quantity of information in useful knowledge taking in consideration that information becomes obsolete quickly in condition of dynamic market. Companies process this information by specific software for managing, efficiently and effectively, the business processes. In this paper we analyse the myriad of acronyms of software that is used in enterprises with the changes that occurred over the time, from production to decision making until to convergence in an intelligent modular enterprise software, that we named Business Manufacturing Intelligence (BMI), that will manage and support the enterprise in the futurebusiness manufacturing intelligence, enterprise resource planning; business intelligence; management software; automation software; decision making software

    Spending time with money: from shared values to social connectivity

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    This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.There is a rapidly growing momentum driving the development of mobile payment systems for co-present interactions, using near-field communication on smartphones and contactless payment systems. The design (and marketing) imperative for this is to enable faster, simpler, effortless and secure transactions, yet our evidence shows that this focus on reducing transactional friction may ignore other important features around making payments. We draw from empirical data to consider user interactions around financial exchanges made on mobile phones. Our findings examine how the practices around making payments support people in making connections, to other people, to their communities, to the places they move through, to their environment, and to what they consume. While these social and community bonds shape the kinds of interactions that become possible, they also shape how users feel about, and act on, the values that they hold with their co-users. We draw implications for future payment systems that make use of community connections, build trust, leverage transactional latency, and generate opportunities for rich social interactions

    A Layered Software Architecture for the Management of a Manufacturing Company

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    In this paper we describe a layered software architecture in the management of a manufactur-ing company that intensively uses computer technology. Application tools, new and legacy, after the updating, operate in a context of an open web oriented architecture. The software architecture enables the integration and interoperability among all tools that support business processes. Manufacturing Executive System and Text Mining tools are excellent interfaces, the former both for internal production and management processes and the latter for external processes coming from the market. In this way, it is possible to implement, a computer integrated factory, flexible and agile, that immediately responds to customer requirements.ICT, Service Oriented Architecture, Web Services, Computer-Integrated Factory, Application Software

    Evaluating groupware support for software engineering students

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    Software engineering tasks, during both development and maintenance, typically involve teamwork using computers. Team members rarely work on isolated computers. An underlying assumption of our research is that software engineering teams will work more effectively if adequately supported by network-based groupware technology. Experience of working with groupware and evaluating groupware systems will also give software engineering students a direct appreciation of the requirements of engineering such systems. This research is investigating the provision of such network-based support for software engineering students and the impact these tools have on their groupwork. We will first describe our experiences gained through the introduction of an asynchronous virtual environment ­ SEGWorld to support groupwork during the Software Engineering Group (SEG) project undertaken by all second year undergraduates within the Department of Computer Science. Secondly we will describe our Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) module which has been introduced into the students' final year of study as a direct result of our experience with SEG, and in particular its role within Software Engineering. Within this CSCW module the students have had the opportunity to evaluate various groupware tools. This has enabled them to take a retrospective view of their experience of SEGWorld and its underlying system, BSCW, one year on. We report our findings for SEG in the form of a discussion of the hypotheses we formulated on how the SEGs would use SEGWorld, and present an initial qualitative assessment of student feedback from the CSCW module

    An intelligent recommendation system framework for student relationship management

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    In order to enhance student satisfaction, many services have been provided in order to meet student needs. A recommendation system is a significant service which can be used to assist students in several ways. This paper proposes a conceptual framework of an Intelligent Recommendation System in order to support Student Relationship Management (SRM) for a Thai private university. This article proposed the system architecture of an Intelligent Recommendation System (IRS) which aims to assist students to choose an appropriate course for their studies. Moreover, this study intends to compare different data mining techniques in various recommendation systems and to determine appropriate algorithms for the proposed electronic Intelligent Recommendation System (IRS). The IRS also aims to support Student Relationship Management (SRM) in the university. The IRS has been designed using data mining and artificial intelligent techniques such as clustering, association rule and classification

    Requirements engineering for business workflow systems: a scenario-based approach

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    Workflow implementations require a deep understanding of business and human cooperation. Several approaches have been proposed to address this need for understanding, but largely in a descriptive way. Attempts to use them in software development have had mixed results. The work reported here proposes that these approaches can be used in a generative way, as part of the requirement engineering process, by (a) extending requirements engineering modelling techniques with underlying cooperation properties, (b) integrating these techniques through the use of a derivation modelling approach, and (c) providing pragmatic heuristics and guidelines that support the real-world requirements engineering practitioner to ensure a high probability of success for the business workflow system to be developed. This thesis develops and evaluates a derivation modelling approach that is based on scenario modelling. It supports clear and structured views of cooperation properties, and allows the derivation of articulation protocols from business workflow models in a scenario-driven manner. This enables requirements engineering to define how the expectations of the cooperative situation are to be fulfilled by the system to be built - a statement of requirements for business workflow systems that reflects the richness of these systems, but also acts as a feasible starting point for development. The work is evaluated through a real-world case study of business workflow management. The main contribution of this work is a demonstration that the above problems in modelling requirements for business workflow systems can be addressed by scenario-based derivation modelling approach. The method transforms models through a series of properties involving cooperation, which can be addressed by using what are effectively extensions of current requirements engineering methods
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