Ahmad Suhaimi Baharudin

RFID applications in Hajj management system

Millions of Muslims go to Mecca every year to perform their Hajj (Pilgrimage). Managing of Hajj activities is a very complex task on Saudi Arabian authorities and Hajj organizers due to the large number of pilgrims, the specific geographical area for the movement of pilgrims and the short period of Hajj. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology can be used in various applications during Hajj season to provide good solutions for many problems and contribute in overcoming many difficulties. This paper describes the potential applications of this new emerging technology in new field like Hajj and then proposes architecture for RFID-based Hajj management systems and communication network for data sharing.

Failure factors of The Malaysian IT technopreneurship

Information Technology (IT) technopreneurships in Malaysia have contributed to the nations economy. The entrepreneur creates, promotes and markets new Information Communication Technologies (ICT) products and services to both markets local and abroad to fulfill the demand from customers. It will help the country to enhance its economic and lead to produce more job opportunities for people. However, there are still many newly established IT technopreneurs that found themselves either failed right at the start-up or during the maturity of the businesses. These could be due to either both the internal or external factors, or even a combination of both factors. This paper will further discussed the effect of the both factors and then later, it will proposed a research framework for IT technopreneurships failure. The researcher proposed the factors based on studies of related papers and journals. There are several factors that affect the success of the Malaysian IT technopreuneurship including internal factors and external factors. Thus, there is a need to manage both factors in balance so as to ensure IT technopreneurs success.

Big Data Analytics in the Malaysian Public Sector: The Determinants of Value Creation

Big data analytics is a crucial pillar of organisational success. Today’s organisations need to leverage the troves of big data to achieve competitive advantage over their competitors. This is only possible by extracting valuable meaning from the vast amount of data. Big data analytics is the tool used for this value extraction. This research in progress aims to help Malaysian public organisations leverage the BDA capabilities to improve their performance and provide better services for citizens. The research proposed a modified DELTA model, and after exploratory interviews with MAMPU officials, factors believed to be highly influential in the Malaysian context were added such as knowledge sharing and job turnover.

Service network security management (SNSM) framework, a solution to SOSE security challenge

SOSE is a novel software development paradigm that results in flexible, loose-coupled and end-to-end applications. However, the adoption of this innovation is slowed by security challenge. Apparently, the use of only TLS (transport layer security) security technique for SOSE systems is inappropriate because it provides only point-to-point security support to the communicating parties. While, an end-to-end security mechanism is necessary to effectively secure SOSE applications. Consequently, this paper provides SNSM framework, a solution to SOSE security challenge by integrating many technologies including OASISs web service security standard, W3Cs XML digital signature and XML encryption standards into SOAP envelope to ensure end-to-end security at the message level. In the implementation of the framework, proxy service, a virtual service hosted in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) was used to enforce security services as a Quality of service (QOS) requirement. The results show that SNSM framework recorded 10 millisecond average response time above unsecured service, whereas, the TLS secured service has the largest average response time.

The Determinants of Problem Solving Tools Adoption in SME in Manufacturing Sector in Malaysia

In Malaysia, Manufacturing Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) are very important as they contribute the second highest GDP to the nation and the products that are produced bring good reputation to the country. However, in order for Malaysia’s manufacturing SME to stay competitive in all circumstances, daily problems must be rectified effectively. Hence the Problem Solving Tools (PST) are recommended to the SMEs to help them solve a range of problems that they face and help them stay competitive in the fierce environment; however, the adoption rate is not very satisfying. This research focuses on the complexity and organizational resources factors that influence the adoption of PST in Malaysia. The two factors are taken from the Technological, Organizational and External Environmental (TOE) framework which is widely adopted in the research of organizations. The analysis of the data is carried out using the Smart PLS 3.0 tool to test the hypothesis of the research.

An Evaluation of Factors Influencing Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Malaysia to Adopt E-commerce

E-Commerce adoption among Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Malaysia is low, is 28 % among 965 participants involved into e-Commerce activities (ACCCIM 2012). There are two research questions (RQ) used to achieve research objective, RQ1: What is the level of e-Commerce adoption; RQ2: Which factors have influence to e-Commerce adoption. This research proposes a framework with three variables named perceived benefits, management support and government support to investigate the potential factors influence e-Commerce adoption. The unit of analysis for this research is focus on manufacturing sector, which converts basic raw materials into daily tangible products. There are 71 of datasets valid and used for analyze. The statistical results are generated by using SmartPLS statistical software package. Among these observed variables: management support and government support have positive influencing power to e-Commerce adoption. The Beta value and R squared are calculated, the R 2 value is 0.624, which is 62.4 % of variance in e-Commerce adoption can be explained with management support and government support. In organization, top managements performed as change agent in the organization, positive motivation from management level will reduce the employees’ resistance towards innovative technologies, hence it will increase the organization operation. Based on the statistical result, it shows that the proposed research model has a strong predictive power and is useful in explaining the factors which also has some influencing power to SMEs to adopt e-Commerce. As a conclusion, the research objectives are achieved and identified the potential factors that influence to e-Commerce adoption in Malaysia.

Strategic information systems planning for RFID implementation in Hajj management systems

The growing number of radio frequency identification (RFID) applications in various industrial fields makes the development of strategic information systems planning (SISP) for the implementation process is essential. Hajj (pilgrimage) sector is one of sectors that would benefit from RFID system implementation through several applications. Without a good plan for the implementation process, it would be difficult to reap a lot of benefits expected from the use of this technology. For this reason, this study proposed a model of SISP for RFID implementation in Hajj management systems. This model assists Hajj management authorities and any related Hajj organization wishing to implement RFID system to better understand and prepare for RFID implementation. It provides guidelines for RFID implementation in Hajj management systems with an emphasis on implementation issues that are needed to be considered such as RFID implementation scenario and RFID data sharing. We hope that the proposed model will provide Hajj organizers with knowledge needed for the implementation of RFID technology in Hajj management.

The impact of market orientation on manufacturing SME performance in Malaysia with the moderating effect of e-commerce

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are considered as the mainstay of any economy since they contribute towards employment and growth. However, although Malaysia is a fast developing country in South-East Asia [1], SMEs in manufacturing sector faces failures. Many studies have revealed that market orientation has positive impact on business performance. However, the literature is inconsistent; therefore, this article proposes to explore the effect of market orientation (MO) on manufacturing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and the moderating role of e-commerce on the relationship between the two constructs. This could help to enhance SME performance in manufacturing sector in Malaysia in order to avoid failure and maintain success. In addition, this study aims to enrich the literature concerning the effects of market orientation on SME success within the Malaysian context taking into consideration the moderating effect of e-commerce. To the best of the researcher knowledge, the current study is the first to examine such moderator on MO-performance relationship. Drawing upon resource based view theory, a research model is developed and need to be tested on manufacturing SMEs in Malaysia.

Fuzzy-Monte Carlo Simulation for Cost Benefit Analysis of Knowledge Management System Investment

Nowadays, knowledge management system is not doubtful as an important tool in an enterprise business process by reason of the effective knowledge management system can give a competitive advantage. Knowledge management system (KMS) is an information technology (IT) based system, which is developed to support and enhance the processes of knowledge creation, storage or retrieval, transfer, and application (Alavi & Leidner., 2001;Tseng, 2008). There are some benefits that can be achieved by implementing KMS such as increased employee productivity, better quality of a finished product, production and labor cost saving (M.-Y. Chen et. al, 2009; Wickhorst, 2002). Many managers know these benefits, but they are still vacillating to decide for investing KMS in their structure. This vacillation comes from consideration of budget and uncertainties or risk of economic constrained. In addition, the managers do not know how to analyze cost and benefit of KMS investment correctly. Without being able to make the analysis, managers cannot determine whether investing a KMS is worthwhile or a waste for the enterprise. Therefore, the costbenefit analysis of KMS investment is necessary in order to evaluate its attractiveness. The traditional cost-benefit analysis that always used in KMS and other enterprise information system (EIS) investment evaluation such as net present value (NPV), internal rate of return (IRR), and payback period (PB) seek to adopt a monetary unit as a basis of analysis, in which all non-monetary parameters are given monetary values (TBC, 1998; Tang and Beynon, 2005). However, it is observed in (Phillips-Wren et al., 2004) that most benefits associated with EIS like KMS are mostly intangible, which makes the use of traditional quantitative financial models heavily biased towards tangible costs and benefits. In an attempt to bridging the intangible towards tangible in the benefits related decision-making process, some enterprises analyze based on subjective judgement. This approach constantly in linguistic term contains ambiguity data that has a number of weaknesses (Uzoka, 2009) such as: inaccurate representation of the uncertainty lack of historical data, inability to understand completely and reproduce the results, poor explanation of a decision process and associated reasoning, a possibility of missing out important problem details for the evaluation, high probability of different experts producing different results without the