Teaching ERP systems: A Multi-Perspective View on the ERP System Market

In order to increase the diversity in IS education, we discuss an approach for teaching medium-sized ERP systems in university courses. Many of today’s IS curricula are biased toward a few large ERP packages. Nevertheless, these ERP systems are only a part of the ERP market. Therefore, this paper describes a course outline for an additional course on medium-sized ERP systems. Students had to study, analyze, and compare different ERP systems on their own during a semester. The seminar took place at three universities at the same time. The paper introduces a procedure model and a scenario for setting up similar courses at other universities. Furthermore, it discusses some of the students’ outcomes and evaluates the contribution of the course with regard to a practical but also academic IS education in a comparison of the three universities

Experiences While Selecting, Adapting and Implementing ERP Systems in SMEs: A Case Study

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are important for all kinds of enterprises. The selection and implementation of such systems are very difficult and many projects do not meet their expectations. While large companies have financial and human resources to engage in such a project, the situation for smaller sized enterprises is different. They have only limited budget, human resources and experiences. Hence, this case study describes an EPR selection and implementation project at a small-sized enterprise by analyzing the selection and implementation procedure and its critical success factors

EXPLORING THE BUSINESS VALUE OF SOFT SKILLS IN SOCIAL NETWORKS – A CONCEPTUAL EVALUATION APPROACH BASED ON CONSENSUS SCORING

Since the emergence of the Internet era in the early 1990s, many evaluation systems for the rating of various entities emerged. For example, at amazon.com people are able to rate books and transactions or to leave comments for other users. Although there is a wide variety of rating and evaluation mechanisms on the Internet, there are only few mechanisms for the evaluation of user skills in social networks. For many users online profiles displaying other people’s skills are increasingly important, e. g., when contracting freelancers or finding candidates for a job opening. However, current profiles found in social networks offer either unstructured free text that is hard to handle efficiently or simplistic rating schemes that do not convey meaningful information. In addition, it is unclear how trustworthy the information on the profile is. Hence, in this paper, we provide a novel approach for the evaluation of soft skills on the Internet. Our approach is based on a consensus measurement approach in social network services based on social graphs as a formalization of personal relationships among users

Automatic Identification of Structural Process Weaknesses – Experiences with Semantic Business Process Modeling in the Financial Sector

Business process reengineering (BPR) has been a core research topic for at least the last twenty years. As banks have realized the need to look on their business in a process-oriented way, they have been engaged in numerous business process reengineering projects to make their organizations more efficient. However, the success of BPR projects in banks varies significantly and it remains a challenge to systematically discover weaknesses in business process landscapes. Based on the Semantic Business Process Modeling Language (SBPML) this paper introduces a new approach for pattern-based automatic process model analysis, with a focus on identifying structural process weaknesses such as organizational process fragmentation, possibly unnecessary process complexity or multiple resource usage or other process inefficiencies. Additionally, this approach also allows for a benchmarking of different process path alternatives in the same process or among different processes. In this article, this approach is applied and evaluated in the financial sector, but it can possibly also be used in other domains. It contributes to a more efficient and more effective identification of possible weaknesses in process models in comparison to today’s manual analysis of process models

Exploring the diversity of ERP systems – An empirical insight into system usage in academia

Because of the increasing importance of ERP systems and their educational value, as well as the rapidly changing ERPmarket, many universities use or want to use ERP systems for their courses. The aim of these courses is to teach anddemonstrate different ERP related concepts and processes. To support these courses, some ERP manufacturers co-operateclosely with universities and offer their systems and resources for academic teaching. However, there are hardly anyempirical insights on system usage in academia. As an initial survey, we developed a questionnaire to determine the currentstatus of ERP system usage and integration in courses at IS chairs of German-speaking research-oriented universities. Among92 responding university chairs, 59 are teaching ERP topics. Of these 59 chairs, only 38 are teaching ERP systemspractically. Almost every university chair (35 out of 38) that is providing practical courses for students is using SAP

Developing a Taxonomy for Digital Platforms – A Conceptual Approach

Disruptive companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon transform economic and business activity. Faced with their growing economic importance, digital platforms are increasingly adopting essential functions in business and daily life. Discussions of platforms are extended by decisive aspects accompanying this development. Established economic, social, and organization theory show limitations in understanding and describing digital platforms. Researchers need a sophisticated conceptualization of the complex manifold perspectives to fully understand the dynamics of digital platforms and lead the development of platforms in the proper direction. To enable comparability of research results and uniform theory building, this study analyzes existing literature and conceptually develops a comprehensive taxonomy for digital platforms based on multi-faceted approaches. Our taxonomy consists of technological, economic, and socio-cultural perspectives with sixteen dimensions and corresponding characteristics analyzed in detail, which helps scholars classify and articulate the full range of digital platform specifications