Developing an inter-enterprise alignment maturity model: research challenges and solutions

Business-IT alignment is pervasive today, as organizations strive to achieve competitive advantage. Like in other areas, e.g., software development, maintenance and IT services, there are maturity models to assess such alignment. Those models, however, do not specifically address the aspects needed for achieving alignment between business and IT in inter-enterprise settings. In this paper, we present the challenges we face in the development of an inter-enterprise alignment maturity model, as well as the current solutions to counter these problems

How can SMEs benefit from big data? Challenges and a path forward

Big data is big news, and large companies in all sectors are making significant advances in their customer relations, product selection and development and consequent profitability through using this valuable commodity. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have proved themselves to be slow adopters of the new technology of big data analytics and are in danger of being left behind. In Europe, SMEs are a vital part of the economy, and the challenges they encounter need to be addressed as a matter of urgency. This paper identifies barriers to SME uptake of big data analytics and recognises their complex challenge to all stakeholders, including national and international policy makers, IT, business management and data science communities. The paper proposes a big data maturity model for SMEs as a first step towards an SME roadmap to data analytics. It considers the ‘state-of-the-art’ of IT with respect to usability and usefulness for SMEs and discusses how SMEs can overcome the barriers preventing them from adopting existing solutions. The paper then considers management perspectives and the role of maturity models in enhancing and structuring the adoption of data analytics in an organisation. The history of total quality management is reviewed to inform the core aspects of implanting a new paradigm. The paper concludes with recommendations to help SMEs develop their big data capability and enable them to continue as the engines of European industrial and business success. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Correlating Architecture Maturity and Enterprise Systems Usage Maturity to Improve Business/IT Alignment

This paper compares concepts of maturity models in the areas of Enterprise Architecture and Enterprise Systems Usage. We investigate whether these concepts correlate, overlap and explain each other. The two maturity models are applied in a case study. We conclude that although it is possible to fully relate constructs from both kinds of models, having a mature architecture function in a company does not imply a high Enterprise Systems Usage maturity

ERP implementation for an administrative agency as a corporative frontend and an e-commerce smartphone app

This document contains all the descriptions, arguments and demonstrations of the researches, analysis, reasoning, designs and tasks performed to achieve the requirement to technologically evolve an managing agency in a way that, through a solution that requires a reduced investment, makes possible to arrange a business management tool with e-commerce and also a mobile application that allows access and consultation of mentioned tool. The first part of the document describes the scenario in order to contextualize the project and introduces ERP (Enterprise Resources Planning). In the second part, a deep research of ERP market products is carried out, identifying the strengths and weaknesses of each one of the products in order to finish with the choice of the most suitable product for the scenario proposed in the project. A third part of the document describes the installation process of the selected product carried out based on the use of Dockers, as well as the configurations and customizations that they make on the selected ERP. A description of the installation and configuration of additional modules is also made, necessary to achieve the agreed scope of the project. In a fourth part of the thesis, the process of creating an iOS and Android App that connects to the selected ERP database is described. The process begins with the design of the App. Once designed, it is explained the process of study and documentation of technologies to choose the technology stack that allows making an application robust and contemporary without use of licensing. After choosing the technologies to use there are explained the dependencies and needs to install runtime enviornments prior to the start of coding. Later, it describes how the code of the App has been raised and developed. The compilation and verification mechanisms are indicated in continuation. And finally, it is showed the result of the development of the App once distributed. Finally, a chapter for the conclusions analyzes the difficulties encountered during the project and the achievements, analyzing what has been learned during the development of this project

ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks: a literature review

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation is a complex and vibrant process, one that involves a combination of technological and organizational interactions. Often an ERP implementation project is the single largest IT project that an organization has ever launched and requires a mutual fit of system and organization. Also the concept of an ERP implementation supporting business processes across many different departments is not a generic, rigid and uniform concept and depends on variety of factors. As a result, the issues addressing the ERP implementation process have been one of the major concerns in industry. Therefore ERP implementation receives attention from practitioners and scholars and both, business as well as academic literature is abundant and not always very conclusive or coherent. However, research on ERP systems so far has been mainly focused on diffusion, use and impact issues. Less attention has been given to the methods used during the configuration and the implementation of ERP systems, even though they are commonly used in practice, they still remain largely unexplored and undocumented in Information Systems research. So, the academic relevance of this research is the contribution to the existing body of scientific knowledge. An annotated brief literature review is done in order to evaluate the current state of the existing academic literature. The purpose is to present a systematic overview of relevant ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks as a desire for achieving a better taxonomy of ERP implementation methodologies. This paper is useful to researchers who are interested in ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Results will serve as an input for a classification of the existing ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Also, this paper aims also at the professional ERP community involved in the process of ERP implementation by promoting a better understanding of ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks, its variety and history

Challenges and influential factors in ERP adoption and implementation

The adoption and implementation of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems is a challenging and expensive task that not only requires rigorous efforts but also demands to have a detailed analysis of such factors that are critical to the adoption or implementation of ERP systems. Many efforts have been made to identify such influential factors for ERP; however, they are not filtered comprehensively in terms of the different perspectives. This paper focuses on the ERP critical success factors from five different perspectives such as: stakeholders; process; technology; organisation; and project. Results from the literature review are presented and 19 such factors are identified that are imperative for a successful ERP implementation, which are listed in order of their importance. Considering these factors can realize several benefits such as reducing costs and saving time or extra effort