Interaction-driven definition of e-business processes

Business-to-business interaction (B2Bi) is the next step for corporate IT [1]. Business relationships become increasingly dynamic, and new requirements emerge for data and process management. Standardisation initiatives are successfully targeting business ontology [4]. Still, business agility mainly depends on the flexibility of the business processes of a company. In the B2B space, traditional approaches to process modelling and management are inadequate. Today more than ever, traditional workflow management is crucial for the internal effectiveness of a company. Internal efficiency is a prerequisite for external agility. From both a technical and a business perspective, internal workflow management relies on specific assumptions in terms of resources involved in the process, as well as the process itself [2]. Level of control, availability, reliability, and cost stability are parameters that traditional process models and technology can almost take for granted. A single authority ruling on the process definition and the total control over process execution are also basic concepts for internal workflows. From a business perspective, a big upfront investment is put in the complete definition of process specifications. A different conceptual framework is required for the definition and management of e-business processes [3, 5]. The intrinsic capability to adapt to rapidly changing business requirements becomes crucial. The line of research explored in this paper derives from an approach to process modelling and management that explicitly targets the peculiarities and dynamics of B2Bi. In the model we propose, the upfront specification of the interaction logic of a company can be limited to partially specified processes and basic interaction rules. Specific information is then gathered from the observation of actual instances of business interaction, and used to refine and extend the initial model. In addition to the enforcement of explicit business requirement, the goal is to capture and leverage implicit operational knowledge. In the following sections, we present an overview of the methodology we are currently experimenting with for the inference of complex processes from business interaction flows. For our initial experiments, we focus on business messages compliant with the RosettaNet standard [4]

A General Approach of Quality Cost Management Suitable for Effective Implementation in Software Systems

Investments in quality are best quantified by implementing and managing quality cost systems. A review of various opinions coming from practitioners and researchers about the existent quality cost models reveals a set of drawbacks (e.g. too theoretical and too close to ideal cases; too academic, with less practical impact; too much personalized to particular business processes, with difficulties in extrapolating to other cases; not comprising all dimensions of a business system). Using concepts and tools in quality management theory and practice and algorithms of innovative problem solving, this paper formulates a novel approach to improve practical usability, comprehensiveness, flexibility and customizability of a quality cost management system (QCMS) when implementing it in a specific software application. Conclusions arising from the implementation in real industrial cases are also highlighted.Quality Costs, Performance Planning and Monitoring, Quality Management, Quality Cost Software

Mapping the e-business profile and trends in cost management in the UK construction industry

The advancement of e-business applications and IT infrastructure has had massive impact on construction business processes over the last decade. The added effects of globalisation coupled with global economic recession have forced businesses to implement e-business applications within their organisations. It is clear in all industries, that e-business technologies have become a key strategic vehicle in improving performance. In Construction, e-business applications complement most of the business functions and have removed geographical boundaries resulting in a global construction market with increased competition, increased collaboration and have helped reducing the fragmentation of the industry. However, even though the successes are inevitable, it is scrutinized that the advancement is still constrained within the industry. Thus there is a need to undertake an analysis of current construction e-business usage and attitude of construction professionals towards e-business trends to ensure a productive and beneficial implementation of construction e-business tools within organisations. This study acknowledged the niche for research into current e-business usage in UK construction organisations and aimed to determine and map the use of ICT in construction cost management activities, and explore the attitudes of professionals towards e-business approaches. Initially a comprehensive literature review was carried out together with an online web search to identify what ICT and software packages are being used for construction cost management activities. Results from this review aided in developing the research questionnaire and a detailed an online structured survey was carried out using the chartered quantity surveying organisations within the UK. This paper presents the findings of the survey and discusses the ICT usage within construction organisations for cost management activities and the attitude of construction professionals towards BIM and construction e-business trends

Integration of BPM systems

New technologies have emerged to support the global economy where for instance suppliers, manufactures and retailers are working together in order to minimise the cost and maximise efficiency. One of the technologies that has become a buzz word for many businesses is business process management or BPM. A business process comprises activities and tasks, the resources required to perform each task, and the business rules linking these activities and tasks. The tasks may be performed by human and/or machine actors. Workflow provides a way of describing the order of execution and the dependent relationships between the constituting activities of short or long running processes. Workflow allows businesses to capture not only the information but also the processes that transform the information - the process asset (Koulopoulos, T. M., 1995). Applications which involve automated, human-centric and collaborative processes across organisations are inherently different from one organisation to another. Even within the same organisation but over time, applications are adapted as ongoing change to the business processes is seen as the norm in today’s dynamic business environment. The major difference lies in the specifics of business processes which are changing rapidly in order to match the way in which businesses operate. In this chapter we introduce and discuss Business Process Management (BPM) with a focus on the integration of heterogeneous BPM systems across multiple organisations. We identify the problems and the main challenges not only with regards to technologies but also in the social and cultural context. We also discuss the issues that have arisen in our bid to find the solutions

Human Resource Outsourcing in the Municipality Administration on the Example of Municipality of Varna

The present stage of social development is characterized by dynamic uncertainty. Both business organizations and public sector organizations are under pressure, driven by the necessity to perform their key activity in terms of continuous requirements for cost cutting and penury of time and human resources. The complexity of modern organizational processes has led to emergence of service providers able to manage effectively the reallocation of labour flows and to offer effective solutions for human resource management (HRM). These functions relate to outsourcing human resources (HR functions outsourcing), just one of the various outsourcing of business processes

Utilisation of ANFIS in analysing impact of cost structure on Croatian maritime companies development

The modern approach to growth analysis and development of enterprises includes the analysis of defined business models progressively. One of the essential factors of any business model is the cost structure, mostly intended to analyse and define better the processes of transferring value to the customer, maintain customer relationship and generate revenue. An analysis of the costs incurred in these processes should facilitate the effective definition of key resources, key activities and key partnerships. Modern theory distinguishes two types of business models from a cost perspective: a cost-driven model and a value-driven model. The cost-driven model is focused on minimizing costs wherever possible and such an approach has the propensity to create and maintain the lowest possible cost structure using low-cost value propositions. The value-driven model is focused on value creation and superior value propositions. The aim of this research, by using Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) approach, is to create models for analysing the impact of cost structure on sustainable development and business survival with respect to selected financial indicators. Based on clustering methods, model creation is preceded by a search of the link between the business performance indicators and parameters that increase or decrease a particular cost component. The sample for creation of the model is based on financial data of five maritime Croatian companies obtained through four business years. Thus, by analysis of the companies’ business operations based on such created models it is possible to define the limits, namely the degrees of increase or decrease of a particular type of cost at which companies achieve sound business growth and development. Consequently, the management of a company is enabled to form effective business strategies. Such strategies in modern context imply innovation in business, new technological processes, efficient stock management, and improved relationships with customers and suppliers

Analysis, Selection, and Implementation of a Case Management System for Local City Government Attorney\u27s Office

This paper focuses on the business analysis, selection, and implementation of a case management system for a local government City Attorney\u27s Office which is a document management system in addition to calendaring, notes, tasks, and billing. Their current system relies on paper document organization and as well as some electronic documentation in a simple file folder structure on a windows network file server. A business analysis review demonstrated the need for a cost effective automated business system to support and manage daily business processes, automate document creation and filing, track deadlines and tasks, and comply with new document retention and discovery requirements. In addition to the automation of business processes, the document management system added a layer of security to document access as well as control over document retention and destruction in accordance with new federal regulations. Most importantly, the time and cost savings added by the case management system has allowed the City Attorney\u27s Office to add civil litigation to their services

A Survey on Evaluation Factors for Business Process Management Technology

Estimating the value of business process management (BPM) technology is a difficult task to accomplish. Computerized business processes have a strong impact on an organization, and BPM projects have a long-term cost amortization. To systematically analyze BPM technology from an economic-driven perspective, we are currently developing an evaluation framework in the EcoPOST project. In order to empirically validate the relevance of assumed evaluation factors (e.g., process knowledge, business process redesign, end user fears, and communication) we have conducted an online survey among 70 BPM experts from more than 50 industrial and academic organizations. This paper summarizes the results of this survey. Our results help both researchers and practitioners to better understand the evaluation factors that determine the value of BPM technology

ANALISIS PENGELOLAAN PENGETAHUAN DENGAN ASIAN PRODUCTIVITY ORGANIZATION - ASSESSMENT TOOLS PADA PERUSAHAAN PERKEBUNAN INDONESIA

Various changes that occur in the current business environment requires an organization/company to survive and adapt to various changes that occur in the business environment. So companies can survive in the business environment, they must innovate products, expand markets, improve service quality, improve production processes, improve organizational systems, and make cost savings. A company needs to view knowledge as a valuable and strategic resource. With good knowledge management, organizational resources are not easily imitated by business competitors. Knowledge management in this study uses the APO Assessment Tools framework to assess the maturity level of knowledge management of plantation companies. APO Assessment Tools have 7 categories, namely leadership, processes, people, technology, knowledge processes, learning and innovation, and the results of knowledge management. The results showed that knowledge management in plantation companies in Indonesia was approaching maturity

Enabling situational awareness of business processes

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to explore the ways of integrating situational awareness into business process management for the purpose of realising hyper automated business processes. Such business processes will help improve their customer experiences, enhance the reliability of service delivery and lower the operational cost for a more competitive and sustainable business. Design/methodology/approach: Ontology has been deployed to establish the context modelling method, and the event handling mechanisms are developed on the basis of event calculus. An approach on performance of the proposed approach has been evaluation by checking the cost savings from the simulation of a large number of business processes. Findings: In this research, the authors have formalised the context presentation for a business process with a focus on rules and entities to support context perception; proposed a system architecture to illustrate the structure and constitution of a supporting system for intelligent and situation aware business process management; developed real-time event elicitation and interpretation mechanisms to operationalise the perception of contextual dynamics and real-time responses; and evaluated the applicability of the proposed approaches and the performance improvement to business processes. Originality/value: This paper presents a framework covering process context modelling, system architecture and real-time event handling mechanisms to support situational awareness of business processes. The reported research is based on our previous work on radio frequency identification-enabled applications and context-aware business process management with substantial extension to process context modelling and process simulation. © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited