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

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

Capabilities of technology utilization and technology integration : Impact of 3D technologies on product development process and performance

Multi-functional technologies widely influence on organization and often require organizational technology integration capabilities to achieve the total effectiveness. Technology integration capability here implies not only utilizing technologies in the present setting of organizational environment but also reforming organizational process and structure towards total optimization. This paper aims to exam technology integration capabilities among Japanese and Chinese firms through questionnaire surveys regarding impact of 3D technologies on product development process and performance. The results indicated that Japanese companies improved their total performance with process reformation leveraged by 3D technologies; however, among Chinese companies, no significant relationships were observed among 3D technology usage, process reformation and the total performance improvement although they improve the partial performance such as manufacturability by utilizing the technologies. Chinese companies, which have a huge growing market and are on the process of rapidly improving their productivities without strong organizational inertia, could have enough advantage by utilizing technologies to improve the partial performance. On the other hand, Japanese companies, which compete in mature market and have already had highly efficient organizational process, could not find the merits of technology usage without technology integration capabilities. This would be regarded as disadvantage of process-advanced company that they cannot have enough incentive to introduce advanced technology and new entries have a chance to leap-frog the advanced companies in usage of technology in general.

Big data in higher education: an action research on managing student engagement with business intelligence

This research aims to explore the value of Big Data in student engagement management. It presents an action research on applying BI in a UK higher education institution that has developed and implemented a student engagement tracking system (SES) for better student engagement management. The SES collects data from various sources, including RFID tracking devices across many locations in the campus and student online activities. This public funded research project has enhanced the current SES with BI solutions and raised awareness on the value of the Big Data in improving student experience. The action research concerns with the organizational wide development and deployment of Intelligent Student Engagement System involving a diverse range of stakeholders. The activities undertaken to date have revealed interesting findings and implications for advancing our understanding and research in leveraging the benefit of the Big Data in Higher Education from a socio-technical perspective

Identifying immersive environments’ most relevant research topics: an instrument to query researchers and practitioners

This paper provides an instrument for ascertaining researchers’ perspectives on the relative relevance of technological challenges facing immersive environments in view of their adoption in learning contexts, along three dimensions: access, content production, and deployment. It described its theoretical grounding and expert-review process, from a set of previously-identified challenges and expert feedback cycles. The paper details the motivation, setup, and methods employed, as well as the issues detected in the cycles and how they were addressed while developing the instrument. As a research instrument, it aims to be employed across diverse communities of research and practice, helping direct research efforts and hence contribute to wider use of immersive environments in learning, and possibly contribute towards the development of news and more adequate systems.The work presented herein has been partially funded under the European H2020 program H2020-ICT-2015, BEACONING project, grant agreement nr. 687676.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Creating the strategic learning environment at City University London

Purpose: This paper describes the creation of a new approach to the implementation of educational technologies at a UK Higher Education Institution. Driven by changes in technology, an evaluation of the virtual learning environment (VLE) provided the opportunity to reassess the application of technology to the curriculum. However, such an evaluation and subsequent implementation is not about technology but a social process of negotiation and stakeholder engagement. The narrative of the evaluation is explored to offer lessons to other institutions. Design/methodology/approach: The paper takes a story telling approach as this enables greater emotional engagement with the reader as well as the description of the social and organisational aspects of such a VLE evaluation. This approach enables the difficulty of change in complex organisations, such as a University, to be addressed more fully. Findings: Key lessons from the evaluation of the VLE and resulting creation of the strategic learning environment (SLE) are drawn which can be of use to other institutions. The main finding is the fact that such evaluations and implementation of educational technologies are not about technical factors but about opportunities and threats presented by such technologies to the educational experience. These findings also inform future development of the SLE at the institution. Originality/value: This paper will be of interest to institutions that are undertaking evaluation exercises of their educational technology provision as well as those that are implementing new technologies or considering large scale organisational change