Towards an understanding of the integrative relationship between Business Process Management and Enterprise Resource Planning Systems

Lack of clarity regarding the scope and integration of business process management and enterprise resource planning are recurring themes. This results in difficulties in understanding relationships between the two constructs. Business processes are constellations of activities fundamental to organizations and must be managed like all other organizational resources. Continual changes in organizations’ environments make it imperative that business processes constantly adapt at the strategic level in order to execute organizational strategies at the operational level. At both levels managed process-oriented activities are believed to reduce operating costs, increase customer satisfaction and enable faster response to changes in the organizations’ environment. When considering enterprise systems it is necessary to take into account business process management together with enterprise resource planning. They are not inseparable but to talk of just one is to see only half the picture. The objective for this paper is to explore the desired integration between business process management and enterprise resource planning systems under the lens of several relevant theories

Business benefits and challenges of a multiple ERP landscape

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are complex software systems which are expensive and risky to implement. Yet many organisations still struggle to produce strong business cases and the post implementation of ERP and the benefits that accrue to organisations is under studied. While ERP systems were designed to replace most business applications with one centralized system, organisations are increasingly implementing multiple ERP systems. In a multiple ERP landscape, there is less clarity on what benefits can accrue to organisations and whether the ERP investment is justified. This paper describes some ERP implementation challenges which an organisation with a multiple ERP landscape experienced and identifies the drivers for a multiple ERP landscape, it then compares published business benefits from organisations who have a traditional single ERP landscape to business benefits identified at the organisation. This single case study was performed at a financial services organisations in South Africa. This interpretive qualitative research followed a predominantly deductive approach. Fewer benefits accrued to the organisation with a multiple ERP landscape when compared to benefits from a traditional single ERP landscape and the differences are described in this paper. The study found that the achievement of strategic, organisational and infrastructural benefits are substantially compromised. The study contributes to post ERP implementation research and ERP benefits research. The findings will assist organisations when considering the business case for different ERP landscapes

Management und IT: Tagungsband zur AKWI-Fachtagung vom 16. bis 18.09.2012 an der Hochschule Pforzheim

Wirtschaftsinformatik befasst sich mit allen Themen, die an der Schnittstelle zwischen Informatik und Betriebswirtschaft anzutreffen sind. So geht es in der Wirtschaftsinformatik – basierend auf dem Wissen und dem Verstehen der betriebswirtschaftlichen Konzepte und Anwendungen – insbesondere darum, IT-Systeme für die betriebliche Praxis zu entwickeln, einzuführen und zu betreiben. Eine wissenschaftliche Fachtagung, die den Titel „Management und IT“ trägt, setzt an einer solchen Beschreibung der Wirtschaftsinformatik an

Simulation of intracardiac electrograms around acute ablation lesions

Radiofrequency ablation (RFA) is a widely used clinical treatment for many types of cardiac arrhythmias. However, nontransmural lesions and gaps between linear lesions often lead to recurrence of the arrhythmia. Intracardiac electrograms (IEGMs) provide real-time information regarding the state of the cardiac tissue surrounding the catheter tip. Nevertheless, the formation and interpretation of IEGMs during the RFA procedure is complex and yet not fully understood. In this in-silico study, we propose a computational model for acute ablation lesions. Our model consists of a necrotic scar core and a border zone, describing irreversible and reversible temperature induced electrophysiological phenomena. These phenomena are modeled by varying the intra- and extracellular conductivity of the tissue as well as a regulating zone factor. The computational model is evaluated regarding its feasibility and validity. Therefore, this model was compared to an existing one and to clinical measurements of five patients undergoing RFA. The results show that the model can indeed be used to recreate IEGMs. We computed IEGMs arising from complex ablation scars, such as scars with gaps or two overlapping ellipsoid scars. For orthogonal catheter orientation, the presence of a second necrotic core in the near-field of a punctiform acute ablation lesion had minor impact on the resulting signal morphology. The presented model can serve as a base for further research on the formation and interpretation of IEGMs

The importance of amino-N for humus formation studied by comparing amino-N input to the soil and soil total nitrogen content in long-term experiments

Humus formation is thought to depend directly on carbon input. Referring to earlier studies we tested the role of amino-bound nitrogen (amino-N) input to the soil using data of 10 long-term experiments with different fertilization and crop rotation treatments. In 8 out of the 10 experiments there was a significant positive correlation between the amino-N input and soil total N content. This correlation was much stronger than the one of total N input and soil N content, indicating that amino-N was more important for soil N accumulation than total N input. Amino-N from farmyard manure seems to be more effective in this respect than amino-N from other organic fertilizers

Rationale and Design of the Leipzig (LIFE) Heart Study: Phenotyping and Cardiovascular Characteristics of Patients with Coronary Artery Disease

We established the Leipzig (LIFE) Heart Study, a biobank and database of patients with different stages of coronary artery disease (CAD) for studies of clinical, metabolic, cellular and genetic factors of cardiovascular diseases.The Leipzig (LIFE) Heart Study (NCT00497887) is an ongoing observational angiographic study including subjects with different entities of CAD. Cohort 1, patients undergoing first-time diagnostic coronary angiography due to suspected stable CAD with previously untreated coronary arteries. Cohort 2, patients with acute myocardial infarction (MI) requiring percutaneous revascularization. Cohort 3, patients with known left main coronary artery disease (LMCAD).We present preliminary results of demographics and phenotyping based on a 4-years analysis of a total of 3,165 subjects. Cohort 1 (n=2,274) shows the typical distribution of elective coronary angiography cohorts with 43% cases with obstructive CAD and 37% normal angiograms. Cohorts 2 and 3 consist of 590 and 301 subjects, respectively, adding patients with severe forms of CAD. The suitability of the database and biobank to perform association studies was confirmed by replication of the CAD susceptibility locus on chromosome 9p21 (OR per allele: 1.55 (any CAD), 1.54 (MI), 1.74 (LMCAD), p<10(-6), respectively). A novel finding was that patients with LMCAD had a stronger association with 9p21 than patients with obstructive CAD without LMCAD (OR 1.22, p=0.042). In contrast, 9p21 did not associate with myocardial infarction in excess of stable CAD.The Leipzig (LIFE) Heart Study provides a basis to identify molecular targets related to atherogenesis and associated metabolic disorders. The study may contribute to an improvement of individual prediction, prevention, and treatment of CAD

Fabrication of a Silicide Thermoelectric Module Employing Fractional Factorial Design Principles

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