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

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 and implementation of preventive-maintenance practices in Nigerian industries.

A methodology for the development of PM using the modern approaches of FMEA, root-cause analysis, and fault-tree analysis is presented. Applying PM leads to a cost reduction in maintenance and less overall energy expenditure. Implementation of PM is preferable to the present reactive maintenance procedures (still prevalent in Nigeria

A Case for Co-Ops

abstract: Abstract A Case for Co-Ops (AC4CO) is a digital media outreach project that is intended to explore methods for increasing the impact of sustainability solutions, by helping to translate research implications into practical approaches for sustainable business design. The goal for this project is to increase public awareness regarding latent sustainability benefits offered by the proliferation of worker-owned social enterprises. In effort to achieve this goal, AC4CO pulls together a collection of information and resources regarding the design of worker-owned business models that implement social and environmental safeguards. This collated outreach material is hosted on a dedicated website, which decentralizes solutions by making educational material accessible to a diverse audience. Notably, AC4CO features edits from exclusive one-on-one interviews with leading academic scholars from the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at ASU, who share their expert understanding of various sustainable business practices. Each expert offers insight into an integral piece within the constellation of considerations that are involved in the design of sustainable social enterprise models – from procurement policies to waste reduction strategies. Parallel to these interviews, AC4CO also showcases the design process for an emerging, sustainable worker cooperative, by highlighting the incubation of a local beverage business called Together We Brew. This incubation process was directed by fellow sustainability solutions graduate student, Nick Shivka, in collaboration with his ASU project partners, on behalf of their incubator program’s pilot cohort of worker-owner recruits. Weaving these aspects, AC4CO’s video components synthesize fundamental research-based knowledge of solution strategies into plainly spoken dialogue and augments the discussion with tangibility that is delivered through a visual narrative. This narrative lends plausibility to the task of designing business solution strategies, by providing viewers a look into the process as peers work together to figure out how to structure a cooperative business model that can present viable economic opportunity, while also promoting social equity and environmental protection. By stripping away scientific research jargon and simultaneously presenting a visual rendering of a theory of change, AC4CO’s approach frames the content of the video components in a way that enables an inclusive vision to be shared with a broad working-class audience. This method is intended to foster popular appeal, by distilling complex and varying issues into concise key points, while following a clear and coherent storytelling strategy for sustainability solutions. Functioning as a call to action, these video components serve a critical role in the overall digital media outreach project by piquing the curiosity of viewers and inspiring them to engage with the website to learn more. In doing so, the video components support the website’s central mission of providing a consolidated anthology of educational and resource tools, as a strategy for encouraging workers to join the movement by creating new sustainable and worker-owned social enterprises around the United States