ALBIS

The evaluation of the alignment level existing between a business process and the supporting software systems is a critical concern for an organization, as the higher the alignment level is, the better the process performance is. Monitoring the alignment implies the characterization of all the items it involves and definition of measures for evaluating it. This is a complex task, and the availability of automatic tools for supporting evaluation and evolution activities may be precious. This chapter presents the ALBIS Environment (Aligning Business Processes and Information Systems), designed to support software maintenance tasks. In particular, the proposed environment allows the modeling and tracing between business and software entities and the measurement of their alignment degree. An information retrieval approach is embedded in ALBIS based on two processing phases including syntactic and semantic analysis. The usefulness of the environment is discussed through two case studies.

Analyzing Enterprise System Post-Implementation Use of Manufacturing Processes in Greek SMEs

This exploratory study assesses the maturity of the use of manufacturing processes by Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) which run enterprise information systems (ESs). The chapter considers a reference set of manufacturing best practice processes and analyzes which of these processes are used and which are not on a sample of 15 Greek SMEs. It explores the causes of process non-use from the ES implementer’s perspective. The analysis shows that several production planning, scheduling, execution, and costing processes, which could in principle add value to the sample companies, are not used, even after 7 years on the average of ES operation. Most deficiencies can be attributed to the companies’ lack of process-specific knowledge. An implication is that the analysis of the use of detailed processes should be part of the process and ES maturity assessments, and should precede the evaluation of higher-level business process orientation metrics.

On Selection, Implementation, and Operations of ERP Systems

This chapter gives recommendations for selecting, implementing, and operating ERP systems. It is not intended to be a complete guideline for introducing ERP. Instead, the authors indicate special aspects that are important from their point of view. The chapter addresses practitioners who are responsible for selection, implementation, and operations of ERP systems, especially IT and project managers. General process models are given for the two main IT projects of this domain, ERP system selection and ERP system implementation. The main structure of the chapter matches the phases of these projects. The authors’ suggestions stretch from project management, business process reengineering, application development, reporting, and customizing to choosing hardware and key users, data migration, and user training. While other publications give rather general advice, recommendations in this chapter are selected to be use-oriented and easy to apply. The recommendations do not depend on any particular ERP system.

E-Government Simulation Tool for Accounting Education

This chapter describes a simulator used by accounting students to mimic the official process of filling out a Personal Income Tax form. According to the Portuguese law, this form describes the amount of the employees’ Personal Income Tax withheld within a company, which must be submitted periodically to the Portuguese Tax Administration. This process is accomplished through an E-government tool accessed by only authorized company staff, which makes it impossible for accounting students to use it. This presents an obstacle for students who are learning about accounting because they cannot experiment with the “real” process in the courses they are studying. By using the proposed simulator that imitates the behavior and interface of the official tools, students can “learn by doing.”

Methods for Quality Assessment in Enterprise VoIP Communications

In the last few years there has been a dramatic development in voice communications technology with a significant move towards Voice over the Internet Protocol (VoIP). However, since IP was primarily designed for best-effort networking technology, good quality conversation and intelligibility are not always guaranteed. In this chapter, the authors address the most relevant methods used to evaluate the voice quality in the communications context of modern enterprises, where VoIP is used as an emerging technology with impact in their activity. Relevant factors for service providers and enterprises using VoIP technology are described, such as those related to the measurement of intelligibility and with impact on the overall voice communications quality. In addition, the most important voice quality evaluation methods recommended by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) are presented in this chapter, along with the main features that can be used to improve voice communications. Fundamental concepts behind voice quality evaluation models are highlighted, such as intrusive, non-intrusive, objective, subjective, and parametric methods. After addressing the most relevant theoretical and methodological aspects, a recent application of voice quality monitoring for VoIP communications is described as the result of a research and development project. After its successful implementation, this monitoring system is now fully operational and integrated in voice quality assessment equipment currently in the market.

The Ecological Industrialism Bet

The sustainable growth dilemma requires providing well-matched prosperity to current citizens, aimed at preserving suited life-quality standards. Currently, civilization intentionally alters the surrounding wilderness. The changes include using biological sources (agricultural revolution) and energy supplies (industrial revolution) purposefully promoted and performed by men. The modern growth decisively exploits skilful provisions acquired from fossil and fissile earth stocks, through totally technical and non-conservative ways. The instant disadvantages of this are paid by contamination, inexorably altering the bio-sphere. The engineer’s doings in the new millennium have to cope with ecological quality objectives, curbing the industrialism practices, in view to provide visibility of all induced changes and to apply the responsible recovery measures. Here, the overview of the state of the art is shown, in particular addressing the design of “product-service” items, deliberately considering the early specifications for the lifecycle and the dismissal phases, and the integration prerequisites in the supply chain management, explaining the usefulness of network aids and the connected commercial modifications. The challenge is extraordinary and involves socio-cultural aspects, too. The discussion, although offering sketchy images, concerns technical suggestions, basically limited to assessing the life cycle eco-coherence as total company challenge. The business design conditions embed compulsory legal issues, requiring worldwide management.

A New Methodology for Business Process Improvement

Information flows across the organization are complex, and procedures employed to understand, share, and control organizational knowledge and experiences should be properly supported by collaborative environments. Nevertheless, few collaborative methodologies have been proposed to describe and evolve business processes. In the future, business processes models should be the result of cross-team and cross-departmental collaboration, with involved business people sharing their personal knowledge and formalizing it. This chapter focuses on a methodology for business process discovery and the importance of integrating local information into coherent and sound process definitions. Business Alignment Methodology (BAM) is a methodology that provides guidance about how organizational practices and knowledge are gathered to contribute to business process improvement against current BPM approaches.

A Decision Support System for ERP Implementation in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

This study investigates the implementation of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) and the role played by certain Critical Success Factors (CSFs) in implementation. Based on primary data collected, the relationship between the variables of time, cost, and achievement is formulated for each CSF. A simulation model based Decision Support Systems (DSS) is developed to assist resource allocations in ERP implementation, such as time and budget allocated to address each CSF. The DSS also facilitates making decisions to achieve more desired performance, measured by higher achievement, lower cost, and shorter implementation time. By drawing upon this model, the authors forecast how SME can better utilise and prioritise different CSFs and resources by choosing the best implementation strategy before real life implementation, thus saving time and money.

Risk Management Model in ITIL

ITIL is considered a framework of Best Practice guidance for IT Service Management, and it is widely used in the business world. In spite of this, ITIL has some gaps in Risk Management specification. This chapter approaches this problem in ITIL and compares IT risk management in ITIL to other IT Governance Frameworks. Despite ITIL stating that risk should be identified, measured, and mitigated, it is not clear on how to proceed (no concrete process is defined on how to deal with risk). To solve this, the authors propose to map the M_o_R risk management framework in ITIL, mapping every M_o_R process in ITIL, therefore adopting a strong risk management in ITIL, based on concrete guidelines, without changing the framework. In this chapter, the authors summarize the necessary guidelines and show a planning for future work.

ChronoFindMe

Social networks such as Facebook have grown exponentially over the past decade. This growth led to the exploration of new services that could enhance users’ experiences and constitute a driver for even more followers. With the proliferation of smartphones and the increasing search for applications that enable the sharing of experiences, social networks became eager to integrate into mobile devices, taking advantage of their impressive omnipresence and panoply of sensors. Amongst the sensors, the most notable are the localization sensors (GPS) that allow for the development of location-based services that use the geographical position to enrich user experiences in a variety of contexts, including location-based searching and location-based mobile interaction. ChronoFindMe enhances location-based services by adding a temporal component not present in current approaches. The authors allow information about past and future locations to be considered by defining an architecture that provides location-based services to users of social networks. This information includes data about time and space, which can be accessed through the social network or a specific mobile application, using privacy policies to assure users’ privacy.