Effects of two national environmental factors on e-commerce functionality adoption: a cross-country case study of a global bank

In order to offer new services and gain competitive advantages, e-commerce has been widely adopted, particularly in the banking industry. Unfortunately, despite the growing adoption of e-commerce in the banking industry, the issue that web-based B2C e-commerce functionality adoption varies between banks or a bank's branches across nations has not received sufficient attention. Many factors affect e-commerce functionality adoption. However, two national environmental factors (information infrastructure and demographics) are particularly important because they relate to the availability of technologies in use and the characteristics of customers, respectively. This research conducts a cross-country case study of a global bank's Beijing (China), Chicago (USA), and Dubai (UAE) branches to investigate how the two national environmental factors affect e-commerce functionality adoption. The specific objectives are to discover how information infrastructure (measured by number of PCs per 1000 people and Internet access cost) and demographics (measured by population composition and income) affect e-commerce functionality adoption of the global bank's three branches. Secondary data were collected for information infrastructure and demographics; additionally, focused interviews with these three branches' IT and business managers provided sources for answering ‘how’. The key finding demonstrates that the differences in e-mail ordering and online shopping adoptions between these branches are mainly attributed to proposed factors of population composition and Internet access cost, and the new factor of individual credit reference system. This research contributes to theory development in this emerging important research subject.     

A security evaluation approach for information systems in telecommunication enterprises

In recent years, information systems in telecommunication enterprises have been characterised by boundary expansion and increase of departmental-level applications. These changes increase the complexity of security evaluation and pose new challenges to enterprises' information security. Taking into account the behaviour characters of system users, we put forward a system security evaluation approach based on access paths. This approach can help evaluators and users find out potential security risks without figuring out the boundary of systems explicitly. It has no special requirements for system scale and can be used in the evaluation of enterprise-level and departmental-level systems. This paper also presents the formal definition of access path and related evaluation rules.     

A support methodology for EAI and BPM projects in SMEs

This paper presents a support methodology that facilitates the analysis of shared information between applications. The contemporary needs of information systems within companies rely on the integration of different applications. As a consequence, integration projects called EAI (enterprise application integration) and BPM (business process management) have arisen. These projects need support methodologies to facilitate the process of information integration. The aforementioned methodology also helps companies to align management applications with their business processes and to define the integration of the company's information systems.     

Contextual factors affecting the integration of enterprise systems in post-merger oil and gas companies

This study examines the contextual factors of the external business environment, organization, information systems, and enterprise system software as they affect integration of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems after a merger or acquisition in the oil and gas industry. A multiple case study method using primary and secondary data revealed: ERPs are operational necessities rather than strategic differentiators; best practice adoption is a viable alternative that supports successful integration of cultures and knowledge from two experienced organizations; schedules are extended when best practices from both companies are consolidated into a single instance; consolidation facilitates Sarbanes-Oxley compliance and lowers the cost of ownership; imposing acquirer systems on targets facilitates timely decision-making and shorter schedules.     

The adaptive approach for storage assignment by mining data of warehouse management system for distribution centres

Among distribution centre operations, order picking has been reported to be the most labour-intensive activity. Sophisticated storage assignment policies adopted to reduce the travel distance of order picking have been explored in the literature. Unfortunately, previous research has been devoted to locating entire products from scratch. Instead, this study intends to propose an adaptive approach, a Data Mining-based Storage Assignment approach (DMSA), to find the optimal storage assignment for newly delivered products that need to be put away when there is vacant shelf space in a distribution centre. In the DMSA, a new association index (AIX) is developed to evaluate the fitness between the put away products and the unassigned storage locations by applying association rule mining. With AIX, the storage location assignment problem (SLAP) can be formulated and solved as a binary integer programming. To evaluate the performance of DMSA, a real-world order database of a distribution centre is obtained and used to compare the results from DMSA with a random assignment approach. It turns out that DMSA outperforms random assignment as the number of put away products and the proportion of put away products with high turnover rates increase.     

An approach for formalising the supply chain operations

Reference models play an important role in the knowledge management of the various complex collaboration domains (such as supply chain networks). However, they often show a lack of semantic precision and, they are sometimes incomplete. In this article, we present an approach to overcome semantic inconsistencies and incompleteness of the Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) model and hence improve its usefulness and expand the application domain. First, we describe a literal web ontology language (OWL) specification of SCOR concepts (and related tools) built with the intention to preserve the original approach in the classification of process reference model entities, and hence enable the effectiveness of usage in original contexts. Next, we demonstrate the system for its exploitation, in specific – tools for SCOR framework browsing and rapid supply chain process configuration. Then, we describe the SCOR-Full ontology, its relations with relevant domain ontology and show how it can be exploited for improvement of SCOR ontological framework competence. Finally, we elaborate the potential impact of the presented approach, to interoperability of systems in supply chain networks.     

Improving data quality during ERP implementation based on information product map

ABSTRACT

Poor Data Quality (DQ) is amajor culprit in the failure of ERP implantation. Previous DQ solutions focus more on technical approaches, ignoring the importance of seeking the root causes. Therefore, this paper proposes aprocess-driven DQ monitoring framework by Information Product Map (IPMAP). First, IPMAP is applied to visualizethe manufacturing process of critical information products. Then, the potential deficiencies that may arouse DQ problems are examined from the aspects of process and human. Finally, the corresponding DQ improvement strategies are put forward and validated in case study. The results indicate that the framework provides helpful guidance for promoting ERP DQ.     

Industry-oriented enterprise resource planning

General purpose enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems have problems such as complex configuration processes, low adaptation to specific industries, and an extensive implementation time period. In order to alleviate these issues, this paper proposes the concept of industry-oriented ERP (IERP) and a component-based approach to IERP development. This paper also presents the framework of developing IERP in which business process modelling and software reuse are employed as primary methods to improve the operability of component-based IERP. The framework consists of five layers including server layer, team work supporting layer, IERP construction and customisation layer, reusable assets and toolset layer, and the IERP system instance layer. These layers as well as their relationship with each other are also discussed.     

Learn not to learn–a way of keeping budgets and deadlines in ERP projects?

This paper takes as its point of departure the conflict between the project as an organisational form for time-limited task execution and the project as an organisational form for triggering knowledge development and learning. The aim of the paper is to explore how knowledge developed in ERP projects can be managed, as well as to identify potential influences on the management of knowledge developed in the project process. Qualitative data has been collected through interviews, document studies, and participant observations. The paper presents evidence that problems of keeping to budgets and timelines in ERP projects can depend on the fact that knowledge developed in the project process is also exploited in the project process. In order to bridge the conflict between the project as a time-limited form for task execution and an organisational form for knowledge development and learning, three tentative strategies for exploiting knowledge developed in the project process are suggested.     

CIOs' perspectives of critical success factors in ERP upgrade projects

Enterprise resource planning systems have required significant upgrades in the 21st century as many of the systems obtained prior to 2000 have become outdated due to vendor changes. SAP and Oracle have emerged as dominant vendors, and SAP has announced discontinuance of support in the future for its primary R/3 system. This study reports interviews with the chief information officers (CIOs) of 15 institutions that have undergone (or are undergoing) enterprise system upgrades, with focus on discussion of major critical success factors for ERP upgrade projects.