Risky business: when a CRM vendor masqueraded as an ERP specialist

Taking a social shaping perspective we unpack the development trajectory of a packaged software product to show, that contrary to mainstream accounts, design is not completely specified a-priori and that the process continues throughout implementation, and use. We show how developers, in this case third party vendors, can continue to engage in shaping packages during implementation and also how users contribute to the development effort. In particular, we illustrate how a customer relationship management package application targeted at a particular organisational function was configured to make an enterprise wide system and the key role of the vendor in this effort. To do this we refer to a 3- year qualitative field study of an expanding United Kingdom based consultancy company undergoing extreme ICT related change. This empirical research is used to explore an often ignored phenomenon, that of the role of vendors in appropriating ICTs and the potential risks they bring. Through this, we highlight the plight and responsibilities of low-level organisational actors in this process in cognisance of the fact they usually have a minor role in ICT selection but become a major player in dealing with vendors at the implementation stage when the devil is truly in the detail. The risks we identify relate to: vendor sales pitches of products as specifically related to their capabilities and the products they put forward; the calling upon of organisational resources by vendors; vendor knowledge of the application are and the actual ‘social’, ‘technical’ and ‘organisational’ capabilities of vendors to deliver a working product. We also point to the risks managers in vendor and consumer organisations create by placing their staff in difficult conditions within appropriation processes. The implications of our work centre on the need for further research related to: vendor/developer risks of packaged software, custom and open source projects; notions of professionalism and ethics in the software industry and project working conditions

Power, ERP systems and resistance to management accounting: a case study

This paper reports an intensive longitudinal case study carried out in a Portuguese manufacturing organisation in which attempts to promote change through management accounting were made in recent years. In a first pilot visit to the organisation, two puzzling observations were made. Firstly, and particularly in the manufacturing area of the organisation, management accounting systems introduced in recent years were not being used in everyday interactions and practices. Secondly, a newly introduced ERP system was having no apparent impact on management accounting or on the work of management accountants. We found that these observations were related to issues of power. There were different and conflicting conceptions of which rules should be followed in the manufacturing area, and strategic attempts to enact those conceptions (or to resist alternative ones). This paper draws on the insights of the Circuits of Power (Clegg, 1989a) in order to explain, in theoretically informed manner, the puzzling observations in the case.

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

HR Shared Services (HRSS): Model and Trends

[Excerpt] The findings of this research project are based on interviews with 44 Human Resources (HR) leaders across 39 national and international companies within 15 industries ranging from manufacturing to consulting services. The interviews ranged from 45 minutes to one hour, and sought to understand models, best practices, and trends. The interview included questions about employee experience, technology, and the integration between HR Shared Services (HRSS) and the overall HR Organization. To provide background information and data, the HR leaders answered a short survey, giving details about the structure of their HRSS, locations, areas of HR that had work performed in the shared services organization, systems, and technology capabilities

The role of information systems in human resource management

Persistency of the organization, competitive advantage and realization of extra profit, in contemporary environment, are directly connected with balance of the resources available to the firm. One of the key issues of successful business is human resource management and that process is under great influence of modern information technology. Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS) are systems used to collect, record, store, analyze and retrieve data concerning an organization’s human resources, but it is not merely reduction of administrative procedures. The importance of HRIS system is multifaceted, ranging from operational assistance in collecting, storing and preparing data for reports, simplifying and accelerating the processes and controlling the available data, reducing labour costs for HR departments, and providing timely and diverse information to the management of the company, based on which it is possible to make quality strategic decisions related to human capital. The aim of this paper is to highlight the importance of HRIS and to give a comprehensive insight of the subject. Special focus in the paper will be on companies in Serbia, which have started to apply this concept, but in most situations not widely, but just partially. They must be aware that positive results can be expected only if this subject is approached in the right wayHuman resource management, information systems, HRIS, ERP

Bubbles and denaturation in DNA

The local opening of DNA is an intriguing phenomenon from a statistical physics point of view, but is also essential for its biological function. For instance, the transcription and replication of our genetic code can not take place without the unwinding of the DNA double helix. Although these biological processes are driven by proteins, there might well be a relation between these biological openings and the spontaneous bubble formation due to thermal fluctuations. Mesoscopic models, like the Peyrard-Bishop-Dauxois model, have fairly accurately reproduced some experimental denaturation curves and the sharp phase transition in the thermodynamic limit. It is, hence, tempting to see whether these models could be used to predict the biological activity of DNA. In a previous study, we introduced a method that allows to obtain very accurate results on this subject, which showed that some previous claims in this direction, based on molecular dynamics studies, were premature. This could either imply that the present PBD should be improved or that biological activity can only be predicted in a more complex frame work that involves interactions with proteins and super helical stresses. In this article, we give detailed description of the statistical method introduced before. Moreover, for several DNA sequences, we give a thorough analysis of the bubble-statistics as function of position and bubble size and the so-called $l$-denaturation curves that can be measured experimentally. These show that some important experimental observations are missing in the present model. We discuss how the present model could be improved.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, published as Eur. Phys. J. E 20 : 421-434 AUG 200

The Knowledge Application and Utilization Framework Applied to Defense COTS: A Research Synthesis for Outsourced Innovation

Purpose -- Militaries of developing nations face increasing budget pressures, high operations tempo, a blitzing pace of technology, and adversaries that often meet or beat government capabilities using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies. The adoption of COTS products into defense acquisitions has been offered to help meet these challenges by essentially outsourcing new product development and innovation. This research summarizes extant research to develop a framework for managing the innovative and knowledge flows. Design/Methodology/Approach – A literature review of 62 sources was conducted with the objectives of identifying antecedents (barriers and facilitators) and consequences of COTS adoption. Findings – The DoD COTS literature predominantly consists of industry case studies, and there’s a strong need for further academically rigorous study. Extant rigorous research implicates the importance of the role of knowledge management to government innovative thinking that relies heavily on commercial suppliers. Research Limitations/Implications – Extant academically rigorous studies tend to depend on measures derived from work in information systems research, relying on user satisfaction as the outcome. Our findings indicate that user satisfaction has no relationship to COTS success; technically complex governmental purchases may be too distant from users or may have socio-economic goals that supersede user satisfaction. The knowledge acquisition and utilization framework worked well to explain the innovative process in COTS. Practical Implications – Where past research in the commercial context found technological knowledge to outweigh market knowledge in terms of importance, our research found the opposite. Managers either in government or marketing to government should be aware of the importance of market knowledge for defense COTS innovation, especially for commercial companies that work as system integrators. Originality/Value – From the literature emerged a framework of COTS product usage and a scale to measure COTS product appropriateness that should help to guide COTS product adoption decisions and to help manage COTS product implementations ex post

Multi Agent Systems in Logistics: A Literature and State-of-the-art Review

Based on a literature survey, we aim to answer our main question: “How should we plan and execute logistics in supply chains that aim to meet today’s requirements, and how can we support such planning and execution using IT?†Today’s requirements in supply chains include inter-organizational collaboration and more responsive and tailored supply to meet specific demand. Enterprise systems fall short in meeting these requirements The focus of planning and execution systems should move towards an inter-enterprise and event-driven mode. Inter-organizational systems may support planning going from supporting information exchange and henceforth enable synchronized planning within the organizations towards the capability to do network planning based on available information throughout the network. We provide a framework for planning systems, constituting a rich landscape of possible configurations, where the centralized and fully decentralized approaches are two extremes. We define and discuss agent based systems and in particular multi agent systems (MAS). We emphasize the issue of the role of MAS coordination architectures, and then explain that transportation is, next to production, an important domain in which MAS can and actually are applied. However, implementation is not widespread and some implementation issues are explored. In this manner, we conclude that planning problems in transportation have characteristics that comply with the specific capabilities of agent systems. In particular, these systems are capable to deal with inter-organizational and event-driven planning settings, hence meeting today’s requirements in supply chain planning and execution.supply chain;MAS;multi agent systems

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

In order to maintain in a market economy with the competition becoming increasingly tough, with consumer preferences and demands more sophisticated and diverse, a company must manage in the best possible way the relations with the existing and potential customers to know their preferences, attitudes, purchasing behaviour, motivations, in order to attract the proper clients for their company products. These goals may be achieved by implementing a strategy called “Customer Relationship Management”, which aims to identify the potential customers, observing their needs, attract them through a special offer and obtaining their enthusiasm. A key element of a CRM strategy is communication using as many possible ways with current and potential customers, in order to attract them and to become loyal.customer attraction, loyalty, CRM, strategy

Discovering Windchill® Investigation of the Windchill® PLM System

This Master Thesis contains the whole development process of a basic-intermediate and advanced product lifecycle management (PLM) course for university students. The basic course has been written by Pol Rebenaque we worked together and after he has done the basic part about PLM and integrated between PLM and Creo 2(one of CAD module). I continue working on this course in advance level by investigating about other modules integrating CAD software and Microsoft Office in Windchill as well as the links with enterprise resource planning (ERP). First, theory about PLM is introduced to the readers. Afterwards, the necessary material to teach the course, including the planning of each lecture, the theory, the exercises or even the slides is presented. In this course students learn what PLM is and they work with a specific PLM software called Windchill, with which students learn how to manage a project, all kind of documents and especially to work with CAD data