Extending IT infrastructures in the service sector organisations through enterprise resource planning – a telecom case study

Copyright @ 2012 ISEing.Service Sector Organisations (SSOs) 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. As a result, the authors exhibit that it is of great significance to investigate this area within SSOs. In so doing, this paper thus focuses on the ERP critical success factors from five different categories 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. These factors are validated through an in-depth qualitative single case study based research. The findings from the literature and empirical demonstrate that most of the factors influencing the decision making process for ERP adoption and implementation are highly significant with exception to few that have either low or medium importance

How Information Technology Capabilities Influence Organizational Innovation: Exploratory Findings from Two Case Studies

This paper is based on research-in-progress that examines how a firm’s information technology (IT) capabilities affect its ability to innovate. Prior research has identified five dimensions of IT capability and three activities related to innovation. The current research draws on these themes and examines the interplay among these factors. We used a multiple case study method and studied innovation activities at three case sites. The findings so far have revealed that the different aspects of IT capability do indeed affect an organization’s ability to innovate and influence the innovation process in different ways. The paper explains how and why this is so, and identifies areas for further enquiry

Identification and ranking of relevant criteria for the selection of Software as a Service

Software as a Service (SaaS) is a model for the provision of application software that allows them to be seen as a service rather than a product. A main challenge for organizations is to understand which applications in their portfolio are more appropriate to deploy in this way. This paper proposes an approach based on the Delphi method to identify and rank the relevant criteria for the selection of applications. The results show that the Delphi method is a flexible tool that allows the expansion of knowledge, by identifying relevant criteria to the problem not foreseen by the researcher, and by providing a ranking of importance of those criteria.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Towards a Business Process Managment Maturity Model

Business Process Management (BPM) has been identified as the number one business priority by a recent Gartner study (Gartner, 2005). However, BPM has a plethora of facets as its origins are in Business Process Reengineering, Process Innovation, Process Modelling, and Workflow Management to name a few. Organisations increasingly recognize the requirement for an increased process orientation and require appropriate comprehensive frameworks, which help to scope and evaluate their BPM initiative. This research project aims toward the development of a holistic and widely accepted BPM maturity model, which facilitates the assessment of BPM capabilities. This paper provides an overview about the current model with a focus on the actual model development utilizing a series of Delphi studies. The development process includes separate studies that focus on further defining and expanding the six core factors within the model, i.e. strategic alignment, governance, method, Information Technology, people and culture

Decisions in software development proyects management: an exploratory study.

Given the importance of software in today's world, the development of software systems is a key activity that requires complex management scenarios. This article explores the implications of hard decisions in the context of software development projects (SDPs). More in deep, it focuses on the emotional consequences of making hard decisions in IT organisations. Complex SDPs involve a great variety of actors. This fact entails morale, feelings and emotions, which play an important role for communication, interaction and, ultimately, decision making. The aim of the article is twofold. First (Study 1), to identify which are the most important hard decisions in SDPS. Second (Study 2), to study the influence of emotions on decision-making processes (Study 2). Findings show the complex emotional consequences and difficulties that managers must face in hard decision-making processes.Publicad

Using the Delphi Technique to Identify BPM Capability Areas

Organizations increasingly recognize the need to adopt a process orientation as a means of approaching challenges such as globalization, Enterprise Systems implementations or alternative improvement perspectives. A comprehensive understanding of the operational capacity to support and extend BPM strategies is critical to this endeavour. To this end, organizations require appropriate frameworks, which assist in identifying and evaluating their BPM capabilities. The development of maturity models has long been recognized as a means of assessing capabilities within a given domain. However, due to the idiosyncratic structure of many of the more than 150 available maturity models they can not be translated into tools that are embraced and applied by practitioners. To address this issue, the Delphi technique has been adopted during the development of a maturity model for Business Process Management. This paper presents the design and conduct of the Delphi Study series including the major outcomes being definitions of the six factors critical to BPM (i.e. Strategic Alignment, Governance, Methods, Information Technology, People and Culture) and the identification of capability areas whose measurement is seen to be necessary for assessing the maturity of these factors

Digital Capability Dissected

There is a growing interest in digital innovation and transformation among the researchers and practitioners. It has been recognised that being “digital” is not all about digital data and information technologies. The notion of “digital capability” has been increasingly embraced, but definitions of this concept have remained vague and elusive. A salient research question remains: what is digital capability? This question is explored in this paper from theoretical and practical perspectives in the form of a conceptual construct: the Digital Capability Framework (D-CaF). The framework distinguishes six levels and seven dimensions of digital capability. It is intended to provide a foundation to plan and execute digital capability driven innovation and transformation initiatives. Further, it helps identify and prioritise the research areas of high impact for further studies

Estudos Delphi com Q-Sort sobre a web: a sua utilização em sistemas de informação

A utilização de ferramentas web como suporte à recolha de dados de investigação, nomeadamente no que se refere a questionários é cada vez mais frequente pelas vantagens que apresenta. Sendo especialmente relevante no que se refere aos prazos das respostas e aos custos do processo. No entanto, existem estratégias que devem ser aplicadas para que as taxas de resposta possam também beneficiar com estas tecnologias. Neste trabalho vamos descrever uma experiência bem sucedida com a utilização de uma ferramenta para suportar um Delphi com Q-Sort para recolha de opiniões de um painel de especialistas em serviços de informação online. Para o efeito foi desenvolvida uma ferramenta eDelphi de modo a suportar a recolha de dados baseada na utilização conjunta do Delphi e da Q-Sort. Além da ferramenta um dos aspectos importantes deste artigo é a utilização destas técnicas conjuntamente para recolha de dados organizados em rankings

Determinantes do sucesso de adopção e difusão de serviços de informação online

A crescente difusão da Internet na sociedade, nas empresas e na administração pública, tem conduzido ao aparecimento de cada vez mais serviços que utilizam este meio de interacção. Nos últimos anos tem tido grande desenvolvimento o comércio electrónico e o governo electrónico. A adopção e difusão de serviços de informação online são muitas vezes mal sucedidas, apesar da mobilização de muitos recursos humanos e financeiros para a sua implementação. Compreender melhor os determinantes do seu sucesso na sua adopção e difusão é a motivação desta investigação. A metodologia seguida teve por base a utilização de um painel de especialistas que responderam em três rondas a um estudo Delphi com Q-Sort, cujo objectivo foi determinar quais os factores a ter em conta quando se pretende avançar para a implementação de um serviço de informação online. A solução proposta é discutida à luz de outras teorias como o TAM, TRA, UATAUT e outras que nos permitem conhecer melhor a adopção de TI em geral e dos serviços de informação online em particular. Um outro dado importante deste estudo é utilização conjunta do Delphi e da Q-Sort para recolha de dados organizados em rankings