Marco R. Spruit

Web 2.0 in the CRM domain: defining social CRM

Businesses are becoming more customer-centric and see a need to address customers more individually. An opportunity is identified in Web 2.0 technologies. Both CRM and Web 2.0 have been researched broadly in the past years, but not their potentially successful combination, which we call ‘social CRM’. It is a CRM strategy which encourages customer collaboration and involvement. Based on empirical research we found that Web 2.0 services add value in every domain of the CRM environment, depending on the type of service at hand. Most value is added in the marketing domain of CRM. Social networks, blogs, and multimedia sharing add most value across all domains. This research defines social CRM and presents a new model that depicts the fundamental aspects of social CRM in four layers. We conclude with suggestions for further research in this emerging research domain.

A Framework for Process Improvement in Software Product Management

This paper presents a comprehensive overview of all the important areas within Software Product Management (SPM). The overview has been created and validated in collaboration with many experts from practice and the scientific community. It provides a list of 68 capabilities a product software organization should implement to reach a full grown SPM maturity. The overview consists of the SPM Competence Model that shows the areas of importance to SPM, and the SPM Maturity Matrix that lists all important activities within those areas in a best practice implementation order. SPM organizations can use this matrix to map and improve their SPM practices incrementally.

Towards healthcare business intelligence in long-term care

This research contributes to the domain of long-term care by exploring knowledge discovery techniques based on a large dataset and guided by representative information needs to better manage both quality of care and financial spendings, as a next step towards more mature healthcare business intelligence in long-term care. We structure this exploratory research according to the steps of the CRoss Industry Standard Process for Data Mining (CRISP-DM) process. Firstly, we interview 22 experts to determine the information needs in long-term care which we, secondly, translate into 25 data mining goals. Thirdly, we perform a single case study at a Dutch long-term care institution with around 850 clients in five locations. We analyze the institutions database which contains information from April 2008 to April 2012 to identify patterns in incident information, patterns in risk assessment information, the relationship between risk assessments and incident information, patterns in the average duration of stay, and we identify and predict Care Intensity Package (ZZP) combinations. Fourth and finally, we position all data mining goals in a two-by-two matrix to visualize the relative importance of each goal in relation to both quality of care and financial state of care institutions.

Understanding users' behavior with software operation data mining

Software usage concerns knowledge about how end-users use the software in the field, and how the software itself responds to their actions. In this paper, we present the Usage Mining Method to guide the analysis of data collected during software operation, in order to extract knowledge about how a software product is used by the end-users. Our method suggests three analysis tasks which employ data mining techniques for extracting usage knowledge from software operation data: users profiling, clickstream analysis and classification analysis. The Usage Mining Method was evaluated through a prototype that was executed in the case of Exact Online, the main online financial management application in the Netherlands. The evaluation confirmed the supportive role of the Usage Mining Method in software product management and development processes, as well as the applicability of the suggested data mining algorithms to carry out the usage analysis tasks.

The Situational Assessment Method put to the test: Improvements based on case studies

This paper presents an improved Situational Assessment Method (SAM) for Software Product Management (SPM). The improvement is the result of an evaluation process, of which one of the cases is included in this paper. The SAM is tool which allows product managers to evaluate and improve their processes in an incremental manner. It does this by determining which capabilities the organization has currently achieved, and what capabilities should be achieved. A gap analysis can then be performed which results in an advice to implement specific capabilities. This advice includes suggestions for method fragments (best practices) which the organization can use to achieve the capabilities.

Developing a Reference Method for Knowledge Auditing

Knowledge management was regarded as the discipline of the 21 st century but it has yet to bear all of its fruits. The expectations are high but a number of barriers limit the effects of knowledge management initiatives. A serious problem is the lack of measures to prepare the ground for the successful implementation of knowledge management initiatives. A promising solution to this problem is the area of auditing knowledge. But the theory and the techniques behind it are not yet mature. The following paper is presenting the development of a complete knowledge audit method that could serve as a standardized method for auditing knowledge. The proposed method was constructed by comparing/integrating 13 knowledge and information audit methods. The analysis of the existing methods was based on the notion of method engineering and the new method was applied and validated in a Dutch telecommunications company.

General practitioners’ attitudes towards decision-supported prescribing: An analysis of the Dutch primary care sector:

The use of multiple drugs by patients increases the risk of medical problems. Clinical decision support could assist general practitioners with prescribing but is underused. This article aims to investigate the attitudes of general practitioners towards using decision support systems. A survey was distributed among 500 Dutch general practitioners. Virtually all 184 respondents indicated having a clinical information system, while only 21 percent indicated having a decision support plug-in; this correlated with their use of medical formularies. Only use of one of the medical formularies correlated with the number of recognized underprescription problems. General practitioners’ attitudes toward a newly proposed system aiding them with polypharmacy prescribing were mainly positive (57%); the perceived usefulness correlated with output quality (p = .000), time investment (p = .000), and financial stimuli (payability: p = .000 and reimbursement: p = .015) but not with job relevance. Dutch general practitioners are thus likely to adopt the proposed system under the conditions that it improves prescription quality and does not require extensive investments of time or money.

Web 2.0-based webstrategies for three different types of organizations

Lately, web technology has gained strategic importance. It can be seen in the growing number of organizations that realize the importance of a proper webstrategy in this globalization era, where distributed work environment, knowledge-based economy and collaborative business models have emerged. The phenomenon of web 2.0 technologies has led many internet companies and communities, such as Google, Amazon, Wikipedia, and Facebook, to successfully adjust their webstrategy by adopting web 2.0 concepts to sustain their advantage and reach their objectives. As a consequence, interest has risen from more traditional organizations to benefit from web 2.0 concepts in enhancing their competitive advantage. This paper discusses the influence of web 2.0 concepts in the webstrategy formulation for organizations with differing requirements, characteristics and objectives. The research categorizes organization types into Customer Intimacy, Operational Excellence and Product Leadership, based on the Value Disciplines model.

Historical Data Analysis through Data Mining From an Outsourcing Perspective: The Three-Phases Model

The process of historical data analysis through data mining has proven valuable for the industrial environment. There are many models available that describe the in-house process of data mining. However, many companies either do not have in-house skills or do not wish to invest in performing in-house data mining. This paper investigates the applicability of two well-established data mining process models in an outsourcing context. The authors observe that both models cannot properly accommodate several key aspects in this context; therefore, this paper proposes the Three-phases method, which consists of data retrieval, data mining and results implementation within an organization. Each element is presented as a visual method fragment, and the model is validated through expert interviews and an extensive case study at a large Dutch staffing company. Both validation techniques substantiate the authors’ claim that the Three-phases model accurately describes the data mining process from an outsourcing perspective. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-0279-3.ch017

MOBILE BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE: KEY CONSIDERATIONS FOR IMPLEMENTATIONS PROJECTS

The new generation of mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, is enabling employees to access business insights anytime, anywhere. This trend in Business Intelligence (BI) is popularized under the term mobile BI. Various studies indicate a strong increase in the adoption of this technology. However, mobile BI implementations remain unexplored and unsupported by implementation methods. By devising a Mobile BI Implementation (MOBII) framework, this study aims to fill in this research gap. A systematic literature review revealed the following major implementation themes: (1) value creation, (2) application deployment, (3) information security, (4) workforce mobilization, (5) information delivery and (6) device management. Moreover, expert interviews revealed twenty key considerations, which are also included in the framework. Using a single case study the MOBII framework was successfully evaluated and its practical applicability was demonstrated by adapting an actively used BI implementation method.