An Information and Cooperation Portal for Supporting Public Authorities and Organizations with Safety and Security Responsibilities Before and During Large Public Events

Large public events are quite common and lead to peak usage of urban transport systems. Clear planning and communication processes which involve relevant parties for event management, traffic and security issues are needed due to the increasing number and complexity of events. When planning an event, overall organizational and technical issues as well as the preparation for unexpected incidents are asked for to plan for maximum safety and security. Within the research project VeRSiert1, a web-based information and cooperation portal was designed for the region of Cologne and implemented for these purposes. Its intention is to support collaboration of the participating organizations prior to, during execution and post-event analysis of a large public event, while taking into account unplanned risks ranging from storms to acts of terrorism.

uRun

This article presents a framework which enables end users to create small, sharply focused mobile services directly on a mobile device. By this, end users are no longer only consumers of mobile services; they also become producers and providers of mobile services. The domain of mobile health and fitness applications has been chosen to demonstrate the feasibility of the approach. The article presents the underlying platform for easy creation of mobile services and describes the implementation of a Web-based editor for easy mobile service creation as well as our solution to access device capabilities out of Web applications.

A Study on Relationships Among Software Engineering Capabilities in Japan Using Panel Analysis

To understand how software engineering capabilities relate to IT vendors’ business performance and business environment, the author designed social research on software engineering excellence (SEE) and administered it in 2005, 2006 and 2007 with the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. The author measured the SEE survey results with regard to seven factors including service science characteristics: deliverables, project management, quality assurance, process improvement, research and development, human development, and contact with customers. This paper integrates 233 responses to the SEE surveys into a new database and identified 151 unique IT firms. Based on the results of the panel analysis, most SEE factors for a year had significant positive influences on the same factors the next year. Three paths existed to improving the level of deliverables through project management, quality assurance and research and development. Some SEE factors had significant positive influence on different factors in the following year diagonally. Some negative paths existed, implying that effort put toward a particular factor did not pay off during the research. These efforts may have longer-term effects on other SEE factors. In comparison to the overall structure, stratified analysis on the relationships among the seven factors suggested that year-to-year relationships of the independent vendors tend to be strengthened due to enhancement of series correlation.

A Method for the Management of Service Innovation Projects in Mature Organizations

The ability to design innovative services is an important capability for organizations in the 21st century. Although innovation is the fundamental force to create a sustainable business, many organizations, especially mature organizations, struggle to develop innovative services. This paper offers a method for managing service innovation projects in mature organizations. The method is described using the elements of method engineering. Its relevance is evaluated through an exploratory case study at the intersection of business and IT, focusing on a German financial services provider that sought to develop new IT-based service innovations. Information technology plays a major role as an enabler for a broad range of innovative services, and IT organizations are in a unique position to design services in collaboration with business units to address evolving customer requirements. The key finding of this case study is that while processes, methods, and tools are important for managing service innovation projects, socio-technical aspects such as context, environment, team management, and project setup also are essential for the successful design of innovative services. The current literature provides rudimentary guidance in these areas, yet a thorough description of these factors and their integration into a complete method has not yet been documented.

MoBiFlow

Web-based problem solving environments provide sharing, execution and monitoring of scientific workflows. Where they depend on general purpose workflow development systems, the workflow notations are likely far too powerful and complex, especially in the area of biology, where programming skills are rare. On the other hand, application specific workflow systems may use special purpose languages and execution engines, suffering from a lack of standards, portability, documentation, stability of investment etc. In both cases, the need to support yet another application on the desk-top places a burden on the system administration of a research lab. In previous research the authors have developed the web based workflow systems Calvin and Hobbes, which enable biologists and computer scientists to approach these problems in collaboration. Both systems use a server-centric Web 2.0 based approach. Calvin is tailored to molecular biology applications, with a simple graphical workflow-language and easy access to existing BioMoby web services. Calvin workflows are compiled to industry standard BPEL workflows, which can be edited and refined in collaboration between researchers and computer scientists using the Hobbes tool. Together, Calvin and Hobbes form our workflow platform MoBiFlow, whose principles, design, and use cases are described in this paper.

Service Oriented Innovation Management

In this paper, the author introduces the idea of service oriented innovation management into the scientific discussion and gives an outlook on possible application. In this paper, the SOA-principles are adopted and applied in the field of innovation management with several stakeholders involved in the innovation process. Furthermore, a use case is presented in form of a management concept for an innovation center in the creative industries.

Value-Adding to Public Services Through the Adoption of Lean Thinking

This paper describes an investigation into alternative management models applied to public call centres operations with the aim of delivering significant added value to the overall public firm. Call centres offer significant potential for value creation. However, in practice they are often created as mechanistic organisations and managed in such a way is to inhibit value creation. An investigation in a UK city council was carried out through the means of a case study using both qualitative and quantitative methods to collect data from directors, middle-managers and employees to evaluate the development of a lean thinking type of call centre. The results indicate that by implementing the lean thinking approach to the design of call centre service operations significant, but often counter-intuitive, benefits can be created. Lean thinking was found to yield improvements in service performance, value work productivity, and employees’ affective commitment. Evidence on lean value-added to the public call centres is very limited, this paper addresses this shortcoming.

The Impact of E-Retail Environment Characteristics on E-Satisfaction and Purchase Intent

The purpose of this research is to determine the key dimensions of e-retail environment characteristics which affect consumer e-satisfaction and purchase intent and to examine the mediating role of e-satisfaction and the moderating effects of consumers’ previous e-shopping experience on the relationship between e-retail environment characteristics and consumer responses. The study focused on young adults ranging in age from 18 to 25. The results showed that convenience, customization, security/privacy, web appearance and entertainment value were the key characteristics of e-retail environment impacting e-satisfaction. E-satisfaction fully mediated the effects of e-retail environment characteristics on online purchase intent. Prior e-shopping experience was found to moderate the relationships among the key dimensions of e-retail environment, e-satisfaction, and e-purchase intent. The findings of this study add to the existing literature on e-service quality by focusing on e-retail environment characteristics beyond products and prices, and further by providing e-retailers with practical implications as to how they can improve their website environments for successful e-retailing business.

Creating Effective Customer Solutions

Global competition and declining margins have made enterprises in diverse industries increasingly aware that assuring low cost as well as high product performance and quality is no longer sufficient for long-term success. Integrating products and services into customized solutions can help firms to gain competitive advantage. Based on 11 in-depth interviews with managers from solution providers and an exploratory survey with 45 solution providers, this paper derives a value creation process as well as a set of critical activities and pitfalls within each step. Selling solutions requires relational processes between customer and supplier comprising analysis/consulting, design/configuration, implementation/delivery, and support/operation. To better understand the relational process, this perspective was adopted on creating solutions in order to identify crucial routines and activities. Two main capabilities within this process can be identified: customer interaction and project management. Both capabilities are required in order to deliver more effective as well as efficient solutions.

Service Quality Evaluation Method for Community-Based Software Outsourcing Process

Community-based software development is a promising model to help reduce the pressures such as development costs, human resources access, new market development, and building business competencies. But the big concern is how to ensure the quality of the outsourcing service. In this paper, a service quality evaluation method for community-based software outsourcing process has been proposed. A service quality indicator model with three layers and five dimensions is explained and applied to community-based software outsourcing service supported by Call-For-Implementation (CFI) platform. The calculation method for each quality indicator is demonstrated in detail. A prototype is developed to support the evaluation process and exhibit results of quality evaluation for the community-based software outsourcing based on CFI. This prototype not only measures and displays the status of service quality in real-time, but also provides history data to guide software outsourcing process management.