Nikola Vlahović

A global investigation of key turning points in business process maturity

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report on the results of research into the precedence of the maturity factors, or key turning points in business process maturity (BPM) implementation efforts. A key turning point is a component of BPM that stabilizes within an organization and leads to the next maturity level.Design/methodology/approach – Several years of data from over 1,000 companies in the USA, Europe, China, and Brazil that have completed a BPM assessment are analyzed to identify which components of BPM stabilize, when and in what order. Different analysis methods are employed in order to identify global commonalities and differences.Findings – The paper identifies key turning points from several different perspectives using several different approaches and develops some conclusions common to all methods used in this research.Research limitations/implications – The relationship between the components (dependencies) is only suggested but not statistically analyzed. Several data sets are also o...

An evaluation framework and a brief survey of decision tree tools

Over the last 50 years decision trees have been extensively used in numerous application areas by practitioners and academics alike. Decision trees are both a mathematical representation tool and a highly versatile graphic representation tool suited for modelling and visualisation of structured hierarchical concepts. Decision tree construction algorithms belong to supervised learning algorithms in the field of machine learning. Most prominent applications areas of decision trees are managerial sciences, knowledge engineering and data analysis. Variety of specific decision tree types is used: decision analysis trees, knowledge representation trees, classification and regression trees, decision forests, etc. Software tools for each of these types are available often borrowing from one decision tree concept to another. As a consequence, distinct features and capabilities of these tools make direct comparison difficult. Goal of this paper is to propose a framework for evaluation of available decision tree tools in relation to their foundation model. Brief survey of currently available decision tree tools will be given accordingly. Results may motivate more comprehensible studies of decision tree applications. Results may also motivate development of hybrid decision tree tools where sound combination of decision tree concepts can enhance functionalities and provide additional benefits to users.

Students’ readiness for informal learning using Web 2.0 services

The purpose of this paper is to recognise the role of web services on learning process especially on informal learning. Web 2.0 presents the new concept of web services that strongly promote the development of communication and interactivity between users. The technology is the same, but the way of use is different. New services such as services for social networks creation, wiki pages, tools for communication, etc., are developed. From educational aspect, the necessity of permanent learning increasingly relies on informal methods of accepting new knowledge and skills. Informal learning is a type of non-formal learning where person learns from everyday situations and problems. It is based on communication, interchange of ideas, acceptance and development of new knowledge and skills. Web 2.0 services present nearly an ideal way for informal learning development. User becomes an active participant in knowledge creation, knowledge interchange with other users, development of new cognitions and transforming these cognitions into new forms. The paper will present some of the results of a survey carried out at Faculty of Economy and Business about students’ inclination towards social networking, wiki, blog, video sharing and other services and their potential as informal learning tools.

Reaching inter-institutional business processes in e-Society

Reaching inter-institutional business processes in e-Society Each business enterprise strives to achieve the most efficient organization of its operations. While business enterprises can influence internal factors of organization, external factors are more rigid. Public organizations have less of an incentive to be efficient. Furthermore, their organization is less favorable since the decision making is centralized and highly formal (i.e. legislative). Adoption of business process orientation (BPO) paradigm, with an emphasis on the management of internal factors of organization, has provided business organizations with substantial savings and improvements in efficiency. However, external factors also have a high potential for improvement of efficiency. For instance, development of supply chains or value chains has proven that external factors can be harnessed to provide additional sources of competitiveness. Other external factors can also be used to improve the performance of individual organizations, an entire industry or economy as a whole. These synergic effects can be achieved through a unified and virtualized communication infrastructure, document exchange and conduct of business transactions. The goal of this paper is to present business environment properties in an e-Society that can be further developed to enhance integration between organizations and public institutions, which in turn can be used to create and manage inter-institutional business processes. This type of processes can promote e-business and e-business models to a new level of efficiency, making a whole industry or national economy comparatively more competitive in international markets.

Expert systems in curriculum of business studies of the Faculty of Economics and Business in Zagreb: A survey 2003 – 2007

In this paper authors present their experience in teaching expert systems as a topic of business studies at the Faculty of Economics and Business in Zagreb, as well as their approach to adjustment of technical topic to the interest of audience in social studies. Modifications of approach include heavy stress on practical work in the computer laboratory, project method of teaching and development of team work in order that students acquire competencies expected from economists in modern business environment. Statistics about students, their success in the course, their opionions and project grades are presented and analyzed in order to disclose good practices and guidelines for future work.