José Luis Caro

Workflow: a solution for cooperative information system development

Workflow management includes concepts of special interest to the business organization field and for the automation of processes within a company. However, process modeling via workflow specifications and workflow management systems can be applied in any field where a workflow exists. The use of CASE tools provides a great increase in performance in information system development but, on the other hand, these tools do not support group work and make skipped steps possible in a methodology. Applying workflow management systems as a meta‐CASE tool together with the use of cooperative methodologies – that aim to capture user requirements – can help us to solve problems related to shortcomings in monitoring, controls, and audit information system development.

WORKFLOW TECHNOLOGY: AN APPLICATION FOR TOURISM MANAGEMENT

Workflow management is of great value for companies since today they have to confront a highly competitive environment, and are in need of reducing costs and swiftly developing new services and products. These demands cannot be met without reconsidering and optimising the way of doing business, developing policy and modifying information systems and applications. Workflow technology facilitates this constant evolution, providing methodologies and software to support: (i) the modelling of processes as workflow specifications, (ii) reengineering business processes in order to optimise them and (iii) workflow automation to generate an implementation from applications. Tourism related organisations and business, like any other type of enterprise, can benefit from this technology and obtain greater efficiency. This will translate into increased customer satisfaction and better efficiency in the developed processes. In this work we intend to apply workt1ow technology to the management of a hotel by identifying processes, tasks and methods employed in the hotel industry. First we will gain an understanding of the processes involved in hotel management and then model them, from the moment of booking in, to the customer checking out. Thus, our objectives are: (i) to introduce workflow technology and (ii) to apply it to the tourism sector, specifically to a botel.

Workflow Management Applied to Information Systems in Tourism

Nowadays, Workflow Management offers many advantages to the tourism industry due to the high degree of competition existing in this field and the need to quickly develop new products, offers, and services. This need for flexibility cannot be achieved without improving the processes involved in the information systems. Workflow technology facilitates this constant evolution, providing modeling methodologies and software to support all the processes taking place in a given company. This article studies the application of such technologies to businesses belonging to the tourism sector and focuses on the improvement of information systems to obtain higher customer satisfaction. To achieve this objective, a modeling methodology oriented toward customer satisfaction is presented. This is applied to the set of information systems involved in making a trip by plane and more specifically to aspects such as booking from intermediary companies and the information systems used by airline companies in airports.

Electronic Invoicing for a Hotel Management Computer Network System

The current work is part of a larger research and development project undertaken by the Department of Computer Languages and Science at the University School of Tourism in Malaga University, in collaboration with certain software development companies plus the support of more than fifteen hotels in Malaga and Almeria, Spain.

COMIS: Cooperative Methodology for Information Systems

This paper proposes a cooperative methodology for IS development, focusing on the end-users collaboration in the process, providing the training and tools required to obtain the characteristics of the processes in which he/she is involved and actively integrating the user in the IS development team. Each of the steps involved in IS development is coordinated by a Meta-CASE tool based on a Workflow Management System (WfMS).

Cooperative Techniques And Tools To Increase The Quality Of The Software In Tourist Companies

In this article we present methods for the analysis and design of Cooperative Object-oriented Information Systems. These methods enable companies to achieve competitive advantages, as well as increase the quality of software development. In addition, they involve users much more in the development of Tourist Information Systems. In order to accomplish the foregoing, it would be necessary to re-examine business organisational structure as well as the methods used in the development of Information Systems (IS).