Customer Relationship Management in a Public Cloud environment – Key influencing factors for European enterprises

Customer Relationship Management is crucial influencing factor for competitiveness in saturated markets. Public cloud-computing services for customer-relationship management provide many benefits. However, their usage in Europe is reluctant. Our research identifies several core and sub-influence factors and reveals how strong they are. Enterprises strive for covering risks in terms of safety and security. Further important influencing factors are functional completeness and integration into the existing environment. Our research provides new knowledge of the use of public cloud services in general and in particular for the use of customer relationship in a public cloud environment

Design of Dynamic Pricing Systems for Online-Retailer\u27s-Core Functionalities and Qualitative Insights

The intense competition in e-commerce makes many small- and medium-sized retailers striving for dynamic pricing. Therefore, the core functionalities of a dynamic pricing system are investigated using single case study research method. They embrace both external and internal factors for price calculation. First, there are functions to get external information such as price information from competing retailers. They provide important information for calculation and forecasting. Second, internal oriented functions exist, which analyse personal information such as the birthday in order to influence the buyers’ decisions in a positive way

Patients assess the patient's card: results of the survey among patients groups concerning the pilot project Patient's Card Koblenz/Neuwied

Since Summer 1995, a pilot project on patient's card is running in Neuwied/ Germany (Pilot Project Patient's Card Koblenz/ Neuwied). From February till March 1997 we carried out a telephone survey among local patients groups in Koblenz and Neuwied. The main aim of the survey was to find out, what do the patients groups know regarding the patient's card in general and regarding the local pilot project - and what is their attitude towards it. The results of our survey should be of interest for the introduction of patient-related card systems, because serious deficits in the information policy of the project initiators became evident

Empirical insights into the benefit from implementing smart contracts

Smart contracts are highly relevant due to their support for new decentralized business models and processes. We empirically investigate the benefit of implementing smart contracts. Our approach measures the benefit by capturing the impact of implementing smart contracts on processes directly. Thus, our research supersedes previous research that uses deductive approaches for deriving beneficial effects from technical and architectural properties of smart contracts and blockchains. We conduct a systematic approach using the aspects cost, quality, time and flexibility, and their impact on the four process phases interest, agreement, fulfillment, and assessment. Our research enables decision-makers to make decisions on implementing smart contracts more precisely. Furthermore, decision-makers become able to develop more target-oriented initiatives

Empirical Insights in the Current Development of Smart Contracts

Blockchain technology enables a lot of knowledge possibilities in an even more digital business environment. Besides the well-known bitcoin application, another implementation so called smart contracts recently arised. Smart contracts profit from the blockchain mechanism benefits (e.g., transaction security). A huge advantage of smart contracts is, that they provide trust between transaction partners without integrating a third party. Practice has already noticed their advantages and implementing smart contracts more and more into their business. However, research is still under development and a common scientifical foundation is still missing. Particularly, research lacks in empirical and practical findings. This paper responds to that gap. Conducting an expert study relevant data was collected and analyzed regarding empirical standards. The results we found and present in this on-going research paper give insights about basic aspects, challenges in the implementation as well as the use cases of smart contracts

A cost calculation model for determining the cost of business process modelling projects

Ilmenauer Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsinformatik Nr. 2013-01 / Technische Universität Ilmenau, Fakultät für Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Institut für Wirtschaftsinformatik ISSN 1861-9223 ISBN 978-3-938940-43-3Business process management projects in general and modelling projects in particular still have a lack of practical and scientifically sound method of cost accounting. In this work, an integrated cost model is presented, which provides a method to determine project modelling cost ex-ante and ex-post respectively.

Optimal Route Assignment in Large Scale Micro-Simulations

Traffic management and route guidance are optimization problems by nature. In this article, we consider algorithms for centralized route guidance and discuss fairness aspects for the individual user resulting from optimal route guidance policies. The first part of this article deals with the mathematical aspects of these optimization problems from the viewpoint of network flow theory. We present algorithms which solve the constrained multicommodity minimum cost flow problem (CMCF) to optimality. A feasible routing is given by a flow x, and the cost of flow x is the total travel time spent in the network. The corresponding optimum is a restricted system optimum with a globally controlled constrained or fairness factor . This approach implements a compromise between user equilibrium and system optimum. The goal is to find a route guidance strategy which minimizes global and community criteria with individual needs as constraints. The fairness factor L restricts the set of all feasible routes to the subset of acceptable routes. This might include the avoidance of routes which are much longer than shortest routes, the exclusion of certain streets, preferences for scenic paths, or restrictions on the number of turns to be taken. Most remarkably is that the subset of acceptable routes can also be interpreted as a mental map of routes. ()cx1L> In the second part we apply our CMCF algorithms in a large scale multi-agent transportation simulation toolkit, which is called MATSIM-T. We use as initial routes the ones computed by our CMCF algorithms. This choice of initial routes makes it possible to exploit the optimization potential within the simulation much better then it was done before. The result is a speed up of the iteration process in the simulation. We compare the existing simulation toolkit with the new integration of CMCF to proof our results

3D Hydrogels Containing Interconnected Microchannels of Subcellular Size for Capturing Human Pathogenic Acanthamoeba Castellanii

3D Hydrogels Containing Interconnected Microchannels of Subcellular Size for Capturing Human Pathogenic Acanthamoeba Castellani