The real SAP® Business one cost : a case study of ERP adoption in an SME

This paper reports on a UK based service management Small and Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) that invested into SAP® Business One. The action research case study highlights the real cost and difficulties faced in moving to the one single SAP system and the process that was followed in order to identify third-party vendors that can integrate or customise SAP® Business One. This paper highlights the additional costs required to ensure a ‘fit-for-purpose’ solution to close the gap between strategic needs and the existing SAP Business One solution. The gap itself is illustrated by highlighting 10 key functionalities expected by the given service management SME. The actual implementation cost of the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) was found to be approximately double the initial SAP costs. The real costs involve time for, among other things, process reengineering, strategic decision making, software add-ons, staff-training, project-management and software maintenance

User acceptance of SaaS ERP considering perceived risk, system performance and cost

The use of cloud solution to support ERP system has become the priority of many organizations to stay competitive in the current global world. This research will be focusing on the user acceptance of SaaS ERP (SAP ByDesign) in a global construction tool provider considering perceived risk, cost and system performance. Due to many unique variables, the purpose of this research is to analyze and investigate issues related to acceptance of SaaS in the construction tool provider companies. The results of this research can help both organizations and researchers to build a fundamental level on understanding how these factors that can predict the user acceptance of SaaS ERP in a global construction tool provider company which significantly beneficial. 80 users ranging from executive and higher management level globally were targeted. SAS Enterprise Guide 5.1 was used to analyze respondents' data and SAS dataset was then run by SAS Enterprise Guide 5.1 to produce descriptive analysis, Cronbach alpha, factor analysis and PLS-SEM will be used to analyses the responses and each hypothesis will be tested based on the data consolidated. Lastly, Partial Least Square- SEM will be performed to summarize and give an analysis of the research model propose

MODEL-DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT OF SERVICEORIENTED BUSINESS APPLICATION SYSTEMS

The industrial development of real-world business applications that are based on service-oriented architecture (SOA) is subject to technological and organizational requirements. The paper describes an approach that tackles these requirements by ideas from model-driven development (MDD). The approach consists of a metamodel accompanied by modeling guidelines, a governance process ensuring that these guidelines are kept, and a modeling tool to support model creation and governance process. The successful application of the presented approach during the development of SAP’s Business byDesign solution shows that the benefits of MDD in software industry lie beyond code generation and outweigh modeling effort

Business Models of Platform as a Service (PaaS) Providers: Current State and Future Directions

Cloud Computing, Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) are terms that denote new developments in the software industry that are completely changing the way software is produced, consumed, and distributed. In particular new PaaS business models have a disruptive effect on existing business models and require thorough business model innovation in the software industry. Despite their impact, PaaS business models have not been considered in a sufficient manner in literature yet. The paper at hand contributes to this gap by providing an overview of typical characteristics of PaaS based on a systematic literature review, a classification model of existing PaaS business models based on case studies and an overview of the current state and future development directions of PaaS

Using Real Options in ERP-Systems for Improving Delivery Reliability

Today’s machinery and equipment industry is a highly volatile market, giving rise to frequently instable and inapprehensiblebuyer-supplier-relationships and to turbulences with respect to reliability of deliveries. With this paper we propose a minimalinvasive approach how to overcome existing capability limitations in production planning, scheduling and procurement ofERP-systems by using real options as means for coordinating the divergent interest of buyers and suppliers. Following thedesign research paradigm, we first describe how real options can be integrated in a contemporary ERP-system. In asupplemental evaluation, the attitude toward using this approach is discussed. This final discussion provides insights whethercompanies in the machinery and equipment industry are willing to adopt our real options approach, or if they prefer the use ofother, not necessarily IT-enabled, means for handling the poor delivery reliability

Virtual Team Role Play Using Second Life for Teaching Business Process Concepts

This paper describes the use of a virtual world environment to facilitate a role play assignment for buying and selling Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software solutions in a distributed environment. The exercise involved the use of Second Life to facilitate the virtual presentation and meeting among the vendors and the purchaser of the software. Students playing vendors and purchase roles were organized into teams who meet, collaborate, and negotiate business transactions in the virtual environment. The aim of the experiment was to introduce students to properties of ERP-systems which are the most common software systems used by businesses, and at the same time introduce tools for virtual team collaboration in an international setting between students in Norway and Australia. This paper reports the experiences from the students' and teachers' perspectives and we give recommendations regarding the use of Second Life in role-playing exercises