Fergal Carton

Project management: a case study of a successful ERP implementation

Purpose – The success rate of enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations is not high in view of the sums invested by organisations in these applications. It has often been indicated that a combination of inadequate preparedness and inappropriate project management have been responsible for the low‐success rate of ERP implementations. The purpose of this paper is to present a case study of a successful ERP implementation.Design/methodology/approach – In this paper, the authors use a case study of a very successful roll out of an ERP application in the Irish subsidiary of a UK multinational to investigate the validity of one of the most commonly cited project management frameworks, the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK), to ERP projects. Discussing each category of the framework in turn, the case data to illustrate where the PMBOK framework is a good fit or needs refining for ERP projects is used.Findings – It is found that, by and large, PMBOK, because it is a very broad framework, can sh...

A business value oriented approach to decision support systems

Abstract With an increased emphasis on cost reduction and device agnosticism, Chief Information Officers (CIOs) increasingly struggle to justify investments in technology, typically lacking a vision linking those investments (in applications, infrastructure or integration) with value to business decision makers. Without guidance from a proper model of custodianship for enterprise wide master data, both structured and unstructured, exploring and exploiting value from the information assets of the enterprise becomes problematic. This paper uses a case study on management decision-making in a corporate environment to illustrate the fragmentation of enterprise data models, and argues for a different approach to understanding the value of data in organisations, where enterprise data assets are conceptualised in their entirety rather than from within application silos. It is proposed that data access should be governed in a centralised and secure manner, such that decision support applications consuming that data can be created quickly and economically. In this scenario, CIO attention is re-dispositioned from infrastructure maintenance to business decision value.

Citizen participation in decision-making: can one make a difference?

Abstract Big Data promises benefits for society as well as business. Do policy makers know how best to use this scale of data driven decision-making in an effective way for citizens? Citizen participation is portrayed in literature as a key component in policy decision-making. Yet, this decision-making process to date is often driven by other stakeholders such as scientific experts, academic institutions, national and international governing bodies, to name but a few. Furthermore, there is scant literature on the best way to create policy for new technology, taking into consideration the voice of the citizen. The prevailing question, therefore, is what extent does citizen participation in decision-making make a difference to shaping policy for technology? Our paper explores an experimental method for citizens to make a difference to European policy decision-making on the future of technology and the impact on society. Employing a case study of Irish citizens as part of the CIMULACT (Citizen and Multi-Actor Consultation on Horizon 2020) project this paper reports a new methodology for gathering citizens’ perspectives on future decision-making policies on technology. The findings reveal key advantages and disadvantages to this methodology. This paper makes a number of contributions to both the academic and practitioner communities.

Digital selves and decision-making contexts: towards a research agenda

Abstract The self is increasingly digitised, manifesting as a number of identities, accounts or profiles related to engagement with social, public and commercial services. These identities are multiplied across the civic, social, commercial, professional and personal contexts of their use, and the vulnerabilities of this atomised citizen are not well understood. This paper discusses the intellectual, organisational and social trends that underpin the emergence of the digital self. Building on this, the paper conceptualises the nature of the digital self and the value exchange and decision-making contexts in which it resides and acts. The conceptualisation is discussed in order to articulate a proposed agenda of research questions for the decision support systems, information systems, and related research communities.

Improving customer oriented decision making through the customer interaction approach

Abstract An organisation that has a robust customer interaction approach can develop a more holistic understanding of its customers. This insight is crucial for reducing related uncertainty in management decision-making. Understanding of the customer is a basic tenet for supporting decision makers in taking the right decisions. The objective of this literature review is to learn about the evolution of the customer interaction approach. The customer interaction approach is stressed as a relationship channel between the customer and organisation. The emergence of the customer interaction approach is discussed in terms of four existing approaches to customer related quality improvement:Total Quality Management (TQM); Service Quality Frameworks (SERVQUAL), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and Customer Experience Management (CEM). This analysis indicates a number of key observations about CRM and CEM as the most recent customer interaction approaches. In the existing literature, CRM and CEM are well-defined. Distinctly, the relationship between CRM and CEM is complementary in nature. This means CRM promotes the management of customer data in a systematic way within a firm, while CEM reaches beyond the boundary of the organisation to support a holistic customer interaction approach underpinned by CRM data.