Business Analytics-Based Enterprise Information Systems

Big data analytics and business analytics are a disruptive technology and innovative solution for enterprise development. However, what is the relationship between business analytics, big data analytics, and enterprise information systems (EIS)? How can business analytics enhance the development of EIS? How can analytics be incorporated into EIS? These are still big issues. This article addresses these three issues by proposing ontology of business analytics, presenting an analytics service-oriented architecture (ASOA) and applying ASOA to EIS, where our surveyed data analysis showed that the proposed ASOA is viable for developing EIS. This article then examines incorporation of business analytics into EIS through proposing a model for business analytics service-based EIS, or ASEIS for short. The proposed approach in this article might facilitate the research and development of EIS, business analytics, big data analytics, and business intelligence.     

基于用例的领域业务服务本体建模

业务服务本体的作用是规范化描述领域业务活动及其之间关系,形成领域业务的基本知识体系。如何让涉众参与本体的设计,是目前联合本体工程研究的热点问题。通过将概念建模时常用的用例图与迭代式本体构建方法相结合,一方面使用领域本体建立规范的业务模型,另一方面基于用例,从用户视角优化本体模型。该建模方法有助于对领域业务的全面理解,所得到的本体模型可满足不同涉众需求。     

Business processes in the agile organisation: a socio-technical perspective

This paper takes a cross-disciplinary view of the ontology of “business process”: how the concept is treated in the IS research literature and how related concepts (with stronger human behavioural orientation) from organisation and management sciences can potentially inform this IS perspective. In particular, is there room for socio-technical concepts such as technology affordance, derived from the constructivist tradition, in improving our understanding of operational business processes, particularly human-centric business processes? The paper presents a theoretical framework for understanding the role of business processes in organisational agility that distinguishes between the process-as-designed and the process-as-practiced. How this practice aspect of business processes also leads to the improvisation of various information technology enablers, is explored using a socio-technical lens. The posited theoretical framework is illustrated and validated with data drawn from an interpretive empirical case study of a large IT services company. The research suggests that processes within the organisation evolve both by top-down design and by the bottom-up routinisation of practice and that the tension between these is driven by the need for flexibility.     

Electronic Commerce Internet Strategies and Business Models-A Survey

Today, any doubts about possibilities of significant profits over the Internet are a distant memory. Such has been the proliferation of Internet-based business on the public network. But electronic commerce has turned out to be more difficult to master than previously assumed. For many, ventures have been less lucrative than expected. The problem is that integrating business models with technology is a multifaceted and largely open question (Shaw, et al. 1997). How do businesses of various sizes and industries actually start their Internet activity and how do their business models change over time? More specifically, how do their different Internet strategies play out? This article is the result of a survey of the Internet strategies and business models of 280 companies that sell products and services on the public network. The results show that electronic commerce has penetrated companies of all sizes. Based on this survey it is apparent that while many companies have participated in electronic commerce for years, their business models are still in their infancy stages.     

Mobile business models: organizational and financial design issues that matter

Designing viable mobile services and business models that capture value for all the organizations involved is a challenge. There are many design issues that can be taken into account, and it is often unclear what their ultimate effect is on the performance of a business model. This paper offers a framework for relating critical design issues to success factors and tests the causal relationship between these core concepts in the organizational and financial domain of mobile business models, based on an international survey among 120 practitioners and experts in the mobile Internet services domain, most of them from EU countries. According to our findings, addressing organizational design issues (i.e. partner selection, governance and relation management) leads to an acceptable division of roles among actors, while addressing financial design issues (i.e., pricing, division of investments and costs among partners) results in risk levels that are perceived to be acceptable. The level of profitability that is perceived to be acceptable is influenced indirectly by these design issues, because the relationships are mediated through the risk level that the actors involved perceive to be acceptable and through the way the roles are divided among the actors.      

An integration framework for product lifecycle management

The need for integrating business and technical information systems, allowing partners to collaborate effectively in creating innovative products, has motivated the design and deployment of a novel integration framework for product lifecycle management. The time is ripe for such an integration framework because of the convergence of three important developments, almost in a perfect storm: (1) maturity of standardized product data and meta-data models, and standardized engineering and business processes; (2) emergence of service-oriented architecture for information sharing; and (3) availability of robust middleware to implement them. These developments allow engineering and business objects and processes to be built or composed as modular pieces of software in the form of services that can communicate with each other and be used across different parts of a business. These modular software pieces can be reused and reconfigured in new ways as business conditions change, thereby saving time and money for companies. This paper describes the business and technical aspects of an integration framework for product lifecycle management using open standards and service-oriented architecture.     

Symbolic abstraction and deadlock-freeness verification of inter-enterprise processes

The design of complex inter-enterprise business processes (IEBP) is generally performed in a modular way. Each process is designed separately and then the whole IEBP is obtained by composition. Even if such a modular approach is intuitive and facilitates the design problem, it poses the problem that correct behavior of each business process of the IEBP taken alone does not guarantee a correct behavior of the composed IEBP (i.e. properties are not preserved by composition). Proving correctness of the (unknown) composed process is strongly related to the model checking problem of a system model. Among others, the symbolic observation graph based approach has proven to be very helpful for efficient model checking in general. Since it is heavily based on abstraction techniques and thus hides detailed information about system components that are not relevant for the correctness decision, it is promising to transfer this concept to the problem raised in this paper: How can the symbolic observation graph technique be adapted and employed for process composition? Answering this question is the aim of this paper.     

The business model portfolio as a strategic tool for value creation and business performance

The number of organisations that operate multiple business models continues to increase. However, operating multiple business models can be complex, as they often need to be harmonised within a broader portfolio due to their interdependencies. This complexity is exacerbated by the increasing role of digital technology and data – enabling new opportunities but also coming with related paradoxes. This paper examines the growing body of literature on business model portfolios revealing that they are evolving into a strategic tool for value creation and business performance. While there are concomitant value opportunities arising from complementarities and synergies, there are also paradoxes emerging from tensions that need to be considered. Employing a developmental literature review, we present a synthesis of recent empirical case studies to gain insight into the management of business model portfolios. Firstly, we identify different strategic intents: diversifying, sensing, and complementing. Secondly, we distil different themes for value opportunities and paradoxes and categorise them according to a business model framework. Thirdly, we identify and discuss the role of digital technologies and data for business model portfolios. Overall, we contribute to an emerging stream of studies on multiple business models in relation to strategy, innovation and technology. By adopting a holistic perspective on the management of business model portfolios, we explore strategic intent, value opportunities and paradoxes, and discuss how portfolios can play a role in strategic management and planning.     

A semantic repository approach to improve the government to business relationship

A major objective in business interactions consists in enhancing the business perspective over service provision by developing strategies and tools to provide support in the selection of services according to the value they have for businesses. This means providing a way to determine the value of services according to specific business criteria, and conceive technologies that support the sharing of knowledge involved in service provision. In this paper we present an approach based on semantic repositories. The repository enables a business perspective over service provision, based on the association between services and business processes, and is related to the problem of supporting businesses in the value-driven service selection. This perspective is addressed in the paper by exploiting expressive semantic representations and reasoning. An ontology for representing relevant semantic properties of services and processes is provided, and an algorithm for value-based service selection is presented. Two real life case studies show the effectiveness of the approach.     

The constituents of business interaction––generic layered patterns

In order to perform business modelling as apart of information systems development, there is a need for frameworks and methods. The paper proposes a framework for business interaction based on a language/action perspective. The framework is an architecture of five generic layers. The first layer concept is ‘business act’, which functions as the basic unit of analysis. The following four layer concepts are ‘action pair’, ‘exchange’, ‘business transaction’, and ‘transaction group’. The framework is inspired by a similar framework constructed by Weigand et al. The paper makes a critical examination of this framework as a basis for the proposed framework.     

电子商务的一种参考模型

This paper proposes a six-layers reference model for E-Commerce, including infrastructures, science tech-niques, elementary services ,business strategies ,business modes and society environment layer. Main classifications and some concrete entities in each layer are given. Because an explicit ,machine-readable specification for each layer would help E-Commerce participants to exchange their concepts easily and implement them effectively or even automatically,some issues on introducing ontology into the reference model are also discussed.     

基于本体聚类的面向业务用户服务发现模型

现有的基于语义的服务发现机制都存在着缺陷和不足，该文提出一种面向业务用户的、基于本体聚类的Web服务发现模型，应用本体聚类算法对领域本体和Web服务进行分层管理，实现了以业务用户为中心的设计思想。     

智慧家庭服务系统过程建模与设计

智慧家庭服务系统是现代服务计算和云计算环境下服务系统的新形态和新应用,对智慧家庭服务业务过程的分析、建模与设计问题进行了研究。介绍了智慧家庭的新理念,提出了智慧家庭服务系统的体系结构。在详细分析家庭服务业务过程基础上,提出了基于BPMN建模语言的智慧家庭服务过程建模方法。最后以具有典型性的采购服务为例,建立了服务过程模型,并给出了设计与实现方案。     

An integrated approach based on execution measures for the continuous improvement of business processes realized by services

ContextOrganizations are rapidly adopting Business Process Management (BPM) as they focus on their business processes (BPs), seeing them to be key elements in controlling and improving the way they perform their business. Business Process Intelligence (BPI) takes as its focus the collection and analysis of information from the execution of BPs for the support of decision making, based on the discovery of improvement opportunities. Realizing BPs by services introduces an intermediate service layer that enables us to separate the specification of BPs in terms of models from the technologies implementing them, thus improving their modifiability by decoupling the model from its implementation.ObjectiveTo provide an approach for the continuous improvement of BPs, based on their realization with services and execution measurement. It comprises an improvement process to integrate the improvements into the BPs and services, an execution measurement model defining and categorizing several measures for BPs and service execution, and tool support for both.MethodWe carried out a systematic literature review, to collect existing proposals related to our research work. Then, in close collaboration with business experts from the Hospital General de Ciudad Real (HGCR), Spain, and following design science principles, we developed the methods and artifacts described in this paper, which were validated by means of a case study.ResultsWe defined an improvement process extending the BP lifecycle with measurement and improvement activities, integrating an execution measurement model comprising a set of execution measures. Moreover, we developed a plug-in for the ProM framework to visualize the measurement results as a proof-of-concept prototype. The case study with the HGCR has shown its feasibility.ConclusionsOur improvement vision, based on BPs realized by services and on measurement of their execution, in conjunction with a systematic approach to integrate the detected improvements, provides useful guidance to organizations.     

Conformance checking of processes based on monitoring real behavior

Many companies have adopted Process-aware Information Systems (PAIS) to support their business processes in some form. On the one hand these systems typically log events (e.g., in transaction logs or audit trails) related to the actual business process executions. On the other hand explicit process models describing how the business process should (or is expected to) be executed are frequently available. Together with the data recorded in the log, this situation raises the interesting question “Do the model and the log conform to each other?”. Conformance checking, also referred to as conformance analysis, aims at the detection of inconsistencies between a process model and its corresponding execution log, and their quantification by the formation of metrics. This paper proposes an incremental approach to check the conformance of a process model and an event log. First of all, the fitness between the log and the model is measured (i.e., “Does the observed process comply with the control flow specified by the process model?”). Second, the appropriateness of the model can be analyzed with respect to the log (i.e., “Does the model describe the observed process in a suitable way?”). Appropriateness can be evaluated from both a structural and a behavioral perspective. To operationalize the ideas presented in this paper a Conformance Checker has been implemented within the ProM framework, and it has been evaluated using artificial and real-life event logs.     

Modeling and execution of event stream processing in business processes

The Internet of Things and Cyber-physical Systems provide enormous amounts of real-time data in the form of streams of events. Businesses can benefit from the integration of these real-world data; new services can be provided to customers, or existing business processes can be improved. Events are a well-known concept in business processes. However, there is no appropriate abstraction mechanism to encapsulate event stream processing in units that represent business functions in a coherent manner across the process modeling, process execution, and IT infrastructure layer. In this paper we present Event Stream Processing Units (SPUs) as such an abstraction mechanism. SPUs encapsulate application logic for event stream processing and enable a seamless transition between process models, executable process representations, and components at the IT layer. We derive requirements for SPUs and introduce EPC and BPMN extensions to model SPUs at the abstract and at the technical process layer. We introduce a transformation from SPUs in EPCs to SPUs in BPMN and implement our modeling notation extensions in Software AG ARIS. We present a runtime infrastructure that executes SPUs and supports implicit invocation and completion semantics. We illustrate our approach using a logistics process as running example.     

基于语义描述的Web服务工作流动态组合研究

传统静态工作流很难适应动态的、灵活的现代业务流程。近年来Web服务技术不断发展，使得工作流中的活动以Web服务形式的实现，而且工作流本身也可以以Web服务的形式被调用，特别是语义Web技术的发展，为计算机实现自动Web服务工作流提供了可能。本文基于本体论提出了一个半结构化工作流本体模型，并在此基础上设计了基于Agent技术的Web服务工作流系统。     

GMVN oriented S-BOX knowledge expression and reasoning framework

Global Manufacturing Virtual Network (GMVN) is a manufacturing architecture, which integrates all kinds of enterprises and production centers to construct and reconstruct agile supply network, and provides manufacturing services on unpredictable and fragmented market demand. However due to the geographical and cultural differences, and lack of a unified knowledge expressing and intelligent reasoning framework for GMVN, the system elements can not be integrated well. To achieve intelligent integration of the geographically dispersed worldwide manufacturing resource, capacity and service, the intelligent integration framework of Semantic Bill of X (S-BOX) is proposed by combining with the technologies of ontology, Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL), Bill of X (BOX). Using this framework, we analyze the characteristics, structure of GMVN system, and construct GMVN oriented S-BOX models which include the ontology structure models and the reasoning rules sets. With the ontology structure models, we can express the elements and the relationships of GMVN. And with the reasoning rules sets, the business characteristics of the GMVN systems will be transformed into the SWRL rules. Therefore, the integrated expression and intelligent reasoning of the manufacturing system elements can be realized in the semantic knowledge layer. Furthermore, an applied case of GMVN project is given to verify the validity of this method.     

From business to software: a B2B survey

In recent years business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce has been subject to major rethinking. A paradigm shift can be observed from document centric file-based interchange of business information to process-centric and, finally to service-based information exchange. On a business level, a lot of work has been done to capture business models and collaborative business processes of an enterprise; further initiatives address the identification of customer services and the formalization of business service level agreements (SLA). On a lower, i.e., technical level, the focus is on moving towards service-oriented architectures (SOA). These developments promise more flexibility, a market entry at lower costs and an easier IT-alignment to changing market conditions. This explains the overwhelming quantity of specifications and approaches targeting the area of B2B—these approaches are partly competing and overlapping. In this paper we provide a survey of the most promising approaches at both levels and classify them using the Open-edi reference model standardized by ISO. Whereas on the technical level, service-oriented architecture is becoming the predominant approach, on the business level the landscape is more heterogeneous. In this context, we propose—in line with the services science approach—to integrate business modeling with process modeling in order to make the transformation from business services to Web services more transparent.