Carlos Mendes

Microphytobenthic biomass assessment by pigment analysis: comparison of spectrophotometry and High Performance Liquid Chromatography methods

Samples of microphytobenthos from the Tagus estuary were analysed for photosynthetic pigments by spectrophotometry and High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC). Chlorophyll a values obtained with HPLC and spectrophotometry methods presented a highly significant positive correlation for both spectrophotometric methods used (with and without the correction for pheopigments), but this relationship depended on the type of sediment. We concluded that spectrophotometric methods give reliable Chl-a values, being suited for routine analysis, when a vast number of replicates is needed. However, for the correct estimation of pheopigments, HPLC analysis is indispensable. In the literature, Chl-a estimations are expressed per content (μg g−1) or concentration (mg m−2). We discuss the influence of sediment type on the results depending on the type of unit used, and propose a simple conversion factor based on sediment water content.

Implementing the Service Catalogue Management

The Service Catalogue is a fundamental need of Information Technology (IT) organizations because it describes in a formal document the available services that these organizations have to provide. The catalogue contains the respective Service Level Agreements (SLA) that should be met, setting expectations between clients and providers of services. The Service Catalogue is integrated with other processes, including Service Level, Financial, Demand and Request Management – all these perfectly described in the ITIL books. However, about 30% of IT Service Management (ITSM) projects do not finish as a result of poorly defined IT services. This research proposes some solutions that try to mitigate the risks of a service catalogue implementation. The proposed solutions include a service definition, its components, the roles involved in its management, an identification process and a lifecycle process. The proposal was implemented in a private company, where we identified the services that composite the service catalogue.

DEMO-Based Service Level Agreements

The services industry is currently the fastest growing part of economic activity in the world and some companies are changing their business models from product manufactures to service providers. However, the services quality is still affected by gaps identified two decades ago. One example of these gaps is when the service provider has a perception of what the customer expects that diverges from the real expected service. To solve this problem, we are working on a service quality approach based on the Enterprise Ontology theory. According to this theory, the operation of organizations is all about communication between social actors and their production. Based on it, a Service Level Agreement definition is given and a service quality specification solution is derived. We applied the solution in the Information Technology Division of a private bank and the solution showed to be mature enough to model the bank reality regarding service quality levels.

Analysis of Business Processes with Enterprise Ontology and Process Mining

This paper describes a business process analysis method that helps determining if a business process complies with the requirements put forward by enterprise ontology’s transaction pattern. The method starts by discovering the business process through the application of process mining techniques to the events that are generated by the applications that support the execution of the process. This step discovers the actual implementation of the process from its event trace. Next, the discovered process is analysed against enterprise ontology’s transaction pattern to determine whether the process complies with the structure and sequencing of its coordination and production acts. The paper shows that combining process mining with enterprise ontology contributes to the analysis of business processes, especially in terms of determining the boundaries of authority and responsibility of the process. The feasibility and the limitations of the method are discussed using a case study that analyses a semi-automated business process.

Extended DEMO-Based SLAs to Specify Customers’ Expectations

Currently the services sector gained ground to the manufacturing industry to become one of the most profitable sector and with the greater growth curve. However, the organizations who have been leading the market have a lack of strong conceptual foundation which contributes to the gaps that reduce the services quality.Due to this increase of the gaps became more difficult for the service providers and their customers to align their expectations about the services quality. We propose to reduce the gaps by formally specifying the SLAs, using as foundation the Enterprise Ontology theory. This proposal is a new version of the DEMO-based SLAs with a more complex structure of Service Level Agreement (SLA). We evaluated the new proposal’s version by gathering the feedback from experts in the area of SLAs specification. The feedbacks were rather positive since the interviewers agreed with the proposed SLA attributes.

Implementing a Request Fulfillment Process

Request Fulfillment, as the name implies, deals with service requests, defining the roles and activities needed to deliver services. Typically, this process delivers the goods and services that customers request through the service catalogue. Although the Request Fulfillment process is perfectly described in the ITIL books, these do not explain how to implement this process. In this research we propose some solutions to mitigate the risks of a Request Fulfillment process implementation. The proposed solutions include a service request definition, its components, the roles involved in its management, a lifecycle process and their relations with others concepts. The proposal was implemented in two private companies, including a software factory that provides services to several clients. In order to evaluate the solution effectiveness, we monitored 8 metrics proposed by the ITIL framework.

Automated Business Process Management

Business process management (BPM) activities can be divided into categories such as design, modelling, execution, monitoring, and optimization. Some of these activities are usually automated, mainly the first ones, where Automated Business Process Discovery (ABPD) solutions, also know as process mining, can automatically find process models (using unstructured, event-level logs). However, BPM usually involves several activities that are executed in different applications, which are not integrated with each other, or are even manually executed. This may involve the waste of resources and time, and eventually not applying BPM with full potential. We propose an integrated solution, that allows to complete the BPM cycle in a single application and with most of the steps automatically. This proposal was applied in practice in the context of a research project and the results are being integrated into a commercial product.

Objectifying Value Co-creation – An Exploratory Study

Understanding value co-creation has been identified has a critical research topic area due to the evolution on how customers design, produce and consume products/services. Moreover, there is a plethora of theory sources that address it and an apparent lack of alignment between them. In this exploratory study, we use enterprise engineering techniques, namely organizational modelling methodologies (DEMO and e3Value), to clarify the co-creation and co-design concepts. In order to do so, we extended the Flower Shop case with procedures that were identified in the literature as co-creation. The analysis of this case allowed us to objectify the co-design and co-production concepts by defining in which specific modelling patterns these concepts can be illustrated, in order to make them explicit and assert alignment with the business model. Furthermore, such analysis has supported specification of a generic co-creation (sub)organization which serves as a reference for alignment with service design and management knowledge areas.

Time-Driven Activity Based Costing as a Service

Due to the global economic and financial crisis the application of cost saving techniques now receives even more attention than before. Organizations are searching for new ways of cutting costs, specially Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) that due to their small size and market exposure need cost awareness and efficiency more than ever. However, efficient and accurate costing methodologies are out of reach for most SMEs, since these methodologies usually involve hiring expensive consulting firms. In this research we propose that costing should be offered as a service to reduce the cost of cost analysis. Our research proposal is a cloud-based costing system that offers costing as a service using Time-Driven Activity Based Costing (TDABC) methodology and the concept of Business Process Costing Templates that together reduce the cost of cost analysis, especially for SMEs. This proposal was demonstrated in three Portuguese organizations from different industries. The evaluation based on experts and practitioners’ feedback showed that the proposal has potential to contribute to the research problem.

Costing as a Service

Cost awareness and cost efficiency have always been major concerns to organizations from all industries but in the last few years its importance grew due to the global economic and financial crisis. Considering their small size and market exposure, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) need cost awareness and efficiency more than ever. However, efficient and accurate costing methodologies are out of reach for most SMEs. In this research we propose that costing should be offered as a service to reduce the cost of cost analysis. Our research proposal is a cloud-based costing system that offers costing as a service using Time-Driven Activity Based Costing (TDABC) methodology and the concept of Business Process Costing Templates. When combined, they reduce the cost of cost analysis, especially for SMEs. We used the Design Science Research Methodology (DSRM) to conduct our research. This proposal was demonstrated in three Portuguese organizations and evaluated with feedback gathered from interviews and results from the system instantiation in all organizations.