Alignment of Business Models and Software: Using an Architecture-Centric Method to the Case of a Healthcare Information System

The alignment of business issues with technological service-oriented solutions has proven to be a crucial aspect of modern business development. In this regard, the provision of methods to solve the gap between business and technology becomes absolutely necessary. This paper presents a proposal to systematize that leap by defining a development method centred on the concept of Architecture. The use of different architectural models at different levels of abstraction (along with the definition of model transformations between them) allows for the establishment of a trace between the business-level elements and software elements that are derived from them. Key benefits of our proposal are, on the one hand, the provision of a method for business-technology alignment and, on the other hand, the definition of a new model to represent the structure of a business. This proposal has been refined and validated using the case of an information system for the management of paediatric percentiles

Seeking Synergies Between Four Views of Service in the IS Field

The term service appears in IS in contexts ranging from visible business activities performed for customers through invisible computerized responses to computerized requests deep within IT infrastructures. After distinguishing between rigorous definitions of service and treatment of service as an analytical lens, this paper presents a framework that distinguishes between four lenses for understanding and analyzing services and systems in the IS field. Each lens is directly applicable to many situations, and less applicable elsewhere. This paper summarizes each lens and identifies potential synergies between pairs of lenses. The synergies may help in using secondary lenses to support analyses guided by a primary lens. The range of lenses helps in understanding the range of meanings of service in IS

Effect of Linked Rules on Business Process Model Understanding

Business process models are widely used in organizations by information systems analysts to represent complex business requirements and by business users to understand business operations and constraints. This understanding is extracted from graphical process models as well as business rules. Prior research advocated integrating business rules into business process models to improve the effectiveness of important organizational activities, such as developing shared understanding, effective communication, and process improvement. However, whether such integrated modeling can improve the understanding of business processes has not been empirically evaluated. In this paper, we report on an experiment that investigates the effect of linked rules, a specific rule integration approach, on business process model understanding. Our results indicate that linked rules are associated with better time efficiency in interpreting business operations, less mental effort, and partially associated with improved accuracy of understanding

Mapping the Domain of Service Science

The emerging discipline of service science currently lacks coherence because it calls on knowledge from many disciplines and covers topics ranging from services involving human interaction and discretion through invisible services that are hidden in computerized infrastructures. This paper explains the service domain framework, which is designed to help in understanding, analyzing, and researching service topics across the entire domain of service science. This framework is presented as four concentric layers, with the inner layer most closely related to specific service processes and activities, and each of the other layers successively broader in scope and further from action related to specific services. Figures in the paper illustrate the location of topics from different disciplines, synergies between quadrants, links within layers, the location of service-dominant logic, the location of various aspects of SaaS, and the path for bypassing the gap between human and machine services

Genuinely Service-Oriented Enterprises: Using Work System Theory to See Beyond the Promise of Efficient Software Architecture

The concept of service-oriented enterprise has great potential. Taken literally, however, it raises many issues, including practical difficulties of creating a service-oriented enterprise in the computer science sense and the huge leap from flexible IT infrastructure to an enterprise that is genuinely oriented toward providing services for customers and employees. This paper is a conceptual contribution showing how work system theory can help in seeing analysis and design issues beyond technical architectures that have dominated research to date. After summarizing background concepts related to service, service systems, and the vision of service-oriented enterprises, this paper explains how work system theory can help in recognizing many obstacles on the path toward that ideal. Recognition of those obstacles supports analysis and design by illuminating the amount of change required to move to a genuinely service-oriented enterprise and by helping analysts and designers decide where service-orientation in its various guises is really appropriate

PLATFORM ONE4ALL AS SERVICE ORIENTED ARCHITECTURE (SOA) IN IMPLEMENTING COMPUTER SOLUTIONS

The paper presents platform one4all uses several computer products implementing as services for realization of the basic/fundamental business processes, communication and workflow management, project management, or the analysis of business activities. The newly presented the foundations of building the systems of Service Oriented Architecture, SOA, their conception and influence on functioning of the whole enterprise

Business Architectures in the Public Sector: Experiences from Practice

Government agencies need to transform the way in which they are organized in order to be able to provide better services to their constituents and adapt to changes in legislation. Whereas much e-government research has a technology focus, our goal is to investigate whether business architectures can help governments to recreate agencies to make them robust in dealing with political preferences, and further, whether their adoption can guide the realization of IT-oriented enterprise architectures. In this article the concept of business architecture and its implications are analyzed by investigating the case study of the Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Services. The case demonstrates the mediating role business architectures can play between policy and strategy on the one hand, and enterprise IT architecture on the other. Business architectures help: (1) to define business domains and the events connecting them, and (2) to use principles to integrate the domains and ensure synergies. Business domains can be designed and operated independently, which enable higher levels of adaptability. Our case analyses show that the pluriformity of the political visions, public values, and actors involved and the division of responsibilities complicate the creation of a business architecture

System Interaction Theory: Describing Interactions between Work Systems

Interactions between systems are a necessity, a source of opportunity, and a source of difficulty and complication in building, implementing, and maintaining IT-reliant systems in organizations. This paper presents system interaction theory (SINT), a theory for analysis that covers almost all intentional and unintentional interactions between work systems that may be sociotechnical or totally automated. SINT is a broadly applicable theory that encompasses interactions between the types of systems that are central to the IS discipline. To minimize redundancy, this paper summarizes SINT immediately after introducing the research goal and, thereby, provides a context for the many distinctions and references that follow. A discussion of SINT’s domain and scope explains why SINT views interacting entities as work systems rather than as tasks, components, or software modules. The literature review positions SINT in relation to topics under headings that range from general systems theory and computer science to human computer interaction and organization science. Topics in SINT include relevant characteristics of systems and system interactions, purposes and/or causes of system interactions, system interaction patterns, direct effects of system interactions, responses to direct effects, and outcomes related to system interactions. The paper discusses a variety of potential contributions to theory, practice, and research

Business model analysis of a case company in knowledge intensive business sector Case: Oy Integro Finland Ab

This study initiated with the need of analyzing the case company’s business model, and evaluate its suitability to the new market territory of the case company. The objectives of this study include understanding of business model concept and its importance, learning to apply the business model framework to the case company, finally testing and modifying the business model framework of Rajala et.al in a general level of application. The study begins with concept introduction and discussion, include definition of business model, importance of business model, definition of business strategy, introduction of Knowledge-intensive business services, and concept of behavioural analysis/profile etc. Not only include the concepts mentioned before, this study also introduces the development trend of these concept and their relevance to the case company’s situation. The business model framework used in this study was developed by Rajala et al. for software business companies, which share quite much similarities with KIBS companies. After literature review, there is the empirical study of this thesis, which is mainly based on the case company. The empirical study is made based on questionnaires and interviews. The result is analyzed based on Rajala et al.’ business model framework (2001). Conclusion has been drawn after the analysis, and suggestions have been made to the case company. After the case company analysis, the study has been developed to a general level – for all KIBS companies. And the business model framework used in this study has been slightly modified to suit better for the KIBS companies’ situation. Besides the analysis of the case company, and the recommendation has been made to the case company, there is another result, which is more on a general level, that the Rajala et al.’s business model framework (2001) has been modified as follow: firstly, the customer has been moved to the center of the framework, in order to bring people’s attention to the significance of customer; secondly, business partner has been added into the framework, in order to emphasize the importance of business partner to a company’s success