E-Business Adoption Framework in the Hospitality Industry

While the hospitality industry in the Kenyan Coast has adopted Information and Communication Technology (ICT), application of the same is limited to internal operations and control. The industry’s e-business adoption lags behind similar industries such as tours and travel. Earlier research in e-business adoption does not suggest intervention for improvement of Small and Medium Enterprises’ (SMEs) status and lacks focus on any specific industries. The aim of this chapter is to address this gap by analyzing the Kenya Association of Hotelkeepers & Caterers’ (KAHC) e-business readiness using a three-interrelated-level framework; namely, firm level, market and industry, and institutional and regulatory levels. This chapter presents results of an ongoing project that we are currently working on, related to one of the authors’ graduate degree research program that began in 2008. In this research, we adopt a survey approach that is supplemented by case studies of other countries’ implementations from literature. Findings show that the hospitality industry at the Kenyan coast is not ready for e-business adoption and we develop a framework to help facilitate readiness. The findings imply that as a competitive strategy, establishments which have been competitors need to become collaborators; and KAHC and its membership need to adopt e-business to not only remain competitive, but also to survive. The findings are beneficial to KAHC and the Kenyan government in evaluating the status of e-business readiness as well as adoption in similar industries. Other developing countries can also adopt the framework.

Business Semantics Alignment for Business Process Model Integration

Business process modeling has become an accepted means for designing and describing business operations. However, due to dissimilar utilization of modeling languages and, even more importantly, the natural language for labeling model elements, models can differ. As a result, comparisons are a non-trivial task that is presently to be performed manually. Thereby, one of the major challenges is the alignment of the business semantics contained, which is an indispensable pre-requisite for structural comparisons. For easing this workload, the authors present a novel approach for aligning business process models semantically in an automated manner. Semantic matching is enabled through a combination of ontology matching and information linguistics processing techniques. This provides for a heuristic to support domain experts in identifying similarities or discrepancies.

Business Intelligence and Data Mining

Whenever decision makers find out that they want to know more about how the business works and progresses, or why customers do what they do, then data miners are summoned, and business intelligence is to be built or altered. Data mining aims at retrieving valid, interesting, explicable connection between key factors for either operative reporting or supporting strategic planning. While data mining discovers static connections between factors, business intelligence visualizes relevant data for decision makers in order to make them identify fast changes and analyze precisely business states. In this chapter, the authors give a short introduction for data oriented decision support systems with data mining and business intelligence in it. While these techniques are widely used in business processes, there are much more bad practices than good ones. We try to make an attempt to demystify and clear the myths about these technologies, and determine who should and how (not) to use them.

E-Business Modeling Languages

This chapter gives an overview of modeling languages used for modeling business environment, abstract workflows, executable business processes, and business data. The languages are either abstract that primarily serve the purposes of business modeling or executable that can be run in a business process engine. The business process modeling languages BPMN (Business Process Modeling Language) and BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) are in the center of the discussion; however, the core concepts and application area of other languages are given as well. An important part of business modeling is the description of business collaboration and the format of business information exchanged. XML based data modeling languages are used for describing such contracts. Throughout the chapter the focus is on the underlying concepts of these languages rather than the syntax.

Towards Understanding the Intention to Use and Continuance Usage Intention of E-Filing System in Malaysia

E-Government actually represents a higher quality, cost effective government services and a better relationship between citizens and governments. Research on e-government is taking a new phase nowadays, with research focusing more to evaluate the continued usage intention by the citizens rather than the initial intention. Continuance intention is defined as one’s intention to continue using or long term usage intention of a technology. Previous researchers have found a mixed result on the influence of perceived risk towards intention to use and continuance usage intention. Therefore, this case study aims to examine the moderating role of perceived risk on continuance usage intention of e-filing system by taxpayers in Malaysia. The primary discussion in this case study concerns on the e-Filing system in Malaysia, followed by the challenges and barriers for e-government continuous adoption, impacts of e-government failures, and concluded with future research directions.

English Auction Issues in Mobile E-Commerce

Recently, agent technology is playing a dominant role in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), distributed computing, and Internet commerce. Agents are set to represent on behalf of customers and vendors in m-commerce to resolve the various issues in the near future. This chapter presents the various issues in m-commerce including issues in English auctions as the major focus that needs to be tackled to make m-commerce successful in the coming years. It provides solutions to some of the challenges by employing cognitive agents. It also presents architectures, techniques, and surveys of the auctioning process in mobile e-commerce.

Understanding Security in Consumer Adoption of Internet Banking

As a continually growing financial service of electronic commerce, Internet banking requires the development and implementation of a sound security procedure. The existing literature highlights security as the primary factor which determines the adoption of Internet banking technology. The secondary information on Internet banking development in Malaysia shows a very slow growth rate. Much literature states that Malaysian consumers strongly agree that they are slow to adopt Internet banking because of a lack of security and reliability of transactions over the internet. The major factors affecting the adoption of Internet banking in Malaysia involve security, risk, and trust. Since biometrics technology has also been implemented in certain government departments, the issues such as new and impossible to implement in other areas should not occur and technology is growing to enhance the security level of the authentication system. Clearly, in order to grow consumer Internet banking demands, banks must make key improvements that address these consumer concerns.

Electronic Retailing of Prepared Food in Australia

The advent and evolution of the Internet has dramatically transformed the way businesses used to operate. Modern businesses perform many transactions in an electronic environment and offer many advantages for both retailers and consumers alike. Electronic retailing has gained consumer acceptance as consumers are becoming increasingly confident in the application of their electronic processing skills. Many electronic retailers complement both off line and online practices to cater to the needs of their customers through effective logistics and supply chain management. This chapter provides information about the application of electronic retailing by Mitchell’s Quality Foods (MQF), into Lite n’ Easy (LnE) operating in Australia as a case study format. Critical drivers and barriers to electronic retailing particularly in the prepared food sector are discussed in detail. Furthermore, implications for practitioners are pinned down from the electronic business perspective with service-oriented solutions.

E-Business Investment Evaluation and Outsourcing Practices in Australian and Taiwanese Hospitals

In recent years, hospitals have come to realize that they can only compete with competitors through the efficient use of their IT/e-business resources. Hospital executives are becoming increasingly aware of challenges and opportunities in order to be more efficient and effective in delivering healthcare services to their patients. To remain competitive, hospitals must enhance and maintain their IT/e-business systems through both internal and non-internal sourcing activities. As in other industries, the management of outsourcing contracts has become one of the top key management issues for hospital executives during the last decade. Therefore, the main objectives of this study are: (1) to examine current practices and norms in managing and evaluating e-business investments and outsourcing contracts in Australian and Taiwanese hospitals; and (2) to identify key issues or challenges in managing and evaluating e-business investments and outsourcing contracts in Australian and Taiwanese hospitals. A key contribution of this study is the identification and examination of key e-business investment evaluation and outsourcing practice issues and challenges faced by the Australian and Taiwanese hospitals.

Tracking and Fingerprinting in E-Business

Online user tracking is a widely used marketing tool in e-business, even though it is often neglected in the related literature. In this chapter, the authors provide an exhaustive survey of tracking-related identification techniques, which are often applied against the will and preferences of the users of the Web, and therefore violate their privacy one way or another. After discussing the motivations behind the information-collecting activities targeting Web users (i.e., profiling), and the nature of the information that can be collected by various means, the authors enumerate the most important techniques of the three main groups of tracking, namely storage-based tracking, history stealing, and fingerprinting. The focus of the chapter is on the last, as this is the field where both the techniques intended to protect users and the current legislation are lagging behind the state-of-the-art technology; nevertheless, the authors also discuss conceivable defenses, and provide a taxonomy of tracking techniques, which, to the authors’ knowledge, is the first of its kind in the literature. At the end of the chapter, the authors attempt to draw the attention of the research community of this field to new tracking methods.