Major Indian ICT firms and their approaches towards achieving quality

Of the three basic theories of innovation: the entrepreneur theory, the technology-economics theory and the strategic theory, the third one seems to be highly appropriate for the analysis of recent growth of the information and communication technology (ICT) industry in many developing countries including India. The central measure for achieving quality by the various major Indian ICT firms is widely agreed to have been the adoption of Six Sigma Methodology and various other approaches like Total Quality Management (TQM), Supply Chain Management (SCM), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), etc. It is apparent that the main objective of the firms chosen has been to increase the pace of innovation activities, irrespective of their different areas of product specialisation. Its success also depends largely on the overall improvement in infrastructure, besides active market interaction. To enable both the above, a brief highlight on the establishment of interaction and learning sites (ILSs) in every regional State in India comes to the foreground. The chapter concludes with a mention of the elements observed to be missing among the firms under consideration, and, thereby, delineating the scope for their further improvement.

Implementing ERPII in customer facing organisations, an investigation of critical success factors

There has been a growing trend for customer facing organisations (CFOs) to turn to highly demanding information systems such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) in order to improve their interaction with customers. ERPII has the specific capabilities to deliver extended enterprise opportunities; however there have been widespread accounts of implementation failure leading to costly delays and even on occasion, bankruptcy. There is a lack of research available to business practitioners in terms of how to deliver a successful implementation in these situations and this research aims to address this issue. To achieve this, research has been undertaken using critical success factor (CSF) analysis. A case study was undertaken comprising of a project team placement within an ERPII implementation environment and follow-up interviews with the project team members were undertaken. In addition, a third piece of empirical research was undertaken consisting of interviews with consultant practitioners of supplier organisations. This research shows that CFOs implementing ERPII require specific CSFs to be addressed at different points within the implementation lifecycle. ‘Critical pathway steps’ have been recommended which emphasise the importance of post implementation training

Creating Value from Business Analytics Systems: A Process-oriented Theoretical Framework and Case Study

Business analytics can potentially create value and improve competitive advantage for firms. We argue that dynamic and operational capabilities, enabled by business analytics technology, lead to improved firm performance. We develop a process-oriented theoretical framework that explains how dynamic and operational capabilities interact over time to create value. We use the framework to explain how business value was achieved from business analytics systems in a case study at a financial institution. A number of implications of the study are discussed and suggestions for future work are provided

Investigating factors influencing the decision making process for ERP adoption and implementation: An exploratory case study

The rapid developments in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have resulted into a borderless business environment along with an amplified market competition. Traversing through such a trend globally, organisations have significantly focused on adopting and implementing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to automate their prime business processes, enhance organisational productivity with lower costs and prompt service delivery to fulfil consumer demands. Thus, ERP systems are considered as a principal source to provide imperative information vital for strategic decision making process. On the contrary, ERP systems adoption and implementation is also highly considered as a challenging and expensive process that not only requires rigorous efforts but also demands to have an exhaustive investigation of influential factors that are critical to the adoption and implementation of ERP systems. A plethora of research studies have been theorised exploring factors influencing the decision making process for ERP adoption and implementation; however, the authors claim that these studies are not filtered comprehensively in terms of the different perspectives. Notwithstanding, the implications of such research have yet to be assessed, leaving scope for timeliness and novel research. This paper thus focuses on the ERP critical success factors from five different perspectives such as: stakeholders; process; technology; organisation; and project based on the literature analysis. These perspectives comprise of 24 factors that are imperative for a successful ERP adoption and implementation, which are validated through a qualitative single case study based research. The empirical findings illustrate that these factor help realise significant benefits such as reducing costs and saving time or extra effort

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

Development of a knowledge management improvement project in a consulting firm

Estágio realizado na Deloitte e orientado pelo Doutor Jorge NadaisTese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Industrial e Gestão. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 201

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Evaluation: Diffusing CRM Benefits into Business Processes

Although CRM is one of the fastest growing management approaches being adopted across many organizations and particularly tourism and hospitality firms, the deployment of CRM applications has not always delivered the expected results while many CRM initiatives have failed. Consequently, the inability of CRM applications to deliver expected benefits has not only intensified the validity of previous findings and claims regarding the ICT productivity paradox, but it has also boosted current research. However, although the latter provides anecdotal evidence of the impact of ICT management practices on CRM effectiveness, there is a lack of empirical studies examining the relationship between CRM management and performance aspects. This study aims to fill in this gap by investigating the relation between firms’ CRM applications and exploitation with their ICT management practices and CRM benefits. The investigation and validation of the former are valuable, since it would enable managers to maximize CRM benefits by identifying and allocating the appropriate resources, time and efforts to CRM implementation. Relations are tested by gathering data from Greek tourism and hospitality companies. Findings provide useful practical suggestions for CRM evaluation and implementation strategies, while implications for future research are analyzed

Profiting from the Accumulation and the Assimilation of IT-based resources and capabilities: An Empirical Study in Small and Medium Enterprises

The capability of using Information Technologies (IT) based resources for improving business processes and enhancing the firm economic performance has long been investigated in large firms. Nevertheless, with the decreasing costs of IT solutions, also Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) may be able to accumulate and assimilate IT-based resources in order to increase their economic performance. This study applies two conceptual approaches (resource-based view and contingency-based view) to assess the strategic value of IT-based resources in SMEs. Fourteen hypotheses related to these approaches are developed and tested based on survey data collection from the CIOs of 373 SMEs to understand more clearly the entire process from the adoption of IT-based resources to the achievement of higher economic performance, through the development of IT-based capabilities. The influence of internal and environmental factors, and the features of the business environment where SMEs operate are investigated. Results indicate that the resource-based view and the contingency-based approaches provide complementary understanding of the strategic value of IT in SMEs, making five main contributions. First, SMEs that operate under particular environmental (low turbulence and high complexity) and internal conditions (where the IT managerial capabilities are developed) are more likely to adopt earlier IT solutions. Second, SMEs are more likely to develop IT-based capabilities that are internally oriented, rather than the externally oriented. Third, internally oriented IT-based capabilities are developed independently by the environmental conditions where the SME operates, while the externally oriented are developed not uniformly among industry types. Fourth, the features of the business environment in which SMEs operate influence the IT-based resources adopted and the IT-based capabilities developed. Finally, given industry-level differences in competitive environments, the value appropriation of capabilities that firms developed using IT depends on industry type, with SMEs operate in turbulent environments exhibiting lower profit returns, while in munificent environments exhibiting lower or higher profit returns according to the IT-based capability considere