Rainer Alt

Business Networking Systems: Characteristics and Lessons Learned

A model of demand for the Internet and other information sources is presented that treats the Internet as a production factor employed in producing benefits of search. Based upon the premise that the Internet is most efficient at providing information about functional attributes and price, several propositions are developed about its use and its impact on the use of other information sources. The model is supported by empirical evidence, using the example of Internet deployment in the search for a new automobile.

Successful use of e‐procurement in supply chains

Purpose – Electronic support of internal supply chains for direct or production goods has been a major element during the implementation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems that has taken place since the late 1980s. However, supply chains to indirect material suppliers were not usually included due to low transaction volumes, low product values and low strategic importance of these goods. Dedicated information systems for streamlining indirect goods supply chains have emerged since the late 1990s and subsequently have faced a broad diffusion in practice. The concept of these e‐procurement solutions has also been described broadly in the literature. However, studies on how companies use these e‐procurement solutions and what factors are critical to their implementation are only emerging. This research aims to explore the introduction of e‐procurement systems and their contribution to the management of indirect goods supply chain.Design/methodology/approach – Chooses a two‐part qualitative approac...

Enterprise application integration-the case of the Robert Bosch Group

Today, most organizations are using packaged software for their key business processes. Enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain management (SCM), customer relationship management (CRM) and electronic commerce (EC) systems enable organizations to improve their focus of using information systems (IS) to support their operational and financial goals. This article argues that the need to integrate these packaged software applications with each other as well as with existing or legacy business applications drives the need for a standardized integration architecture to more flexibly implement new business processes across different organizations and applications. To illustrate the components of such an architecture, a case study undertaken at the Robert Bosch Group provided necessary empirical evidence. The Robert Bosch Group has evaluated different enterprise application integration (EAI) systems to achieve a standardized integration architecture. The article describes a reference architecture and criteria for the classification of EAI systems which are derived from different integration approaches.

Enterprise Application Integration Systems and Architecture : The Case of the Robert Bosch Group

Today, most organisations are using packaged software for their key business processes. Enterprise resource planning, supply chain management, customer relationship management and electronic commerce systems enable organisations to improve their focus of using information systems to support their operational and financial goals. This article argues that the need to integrate these packaged software applications with each other as well as with existing or legacy business applications drives the need for a standardised integration architecture to more flexibly implement new business processes across different organisations and applications. To illustrate the components of such an architecture, a case study undertaken at the Robert Bosch Group provided necessary empirical evidence. The Robert Bosch Group has evaluated different enterprise application integration (EAI) systems to achieve a standardised integration architecture. The article describes a reference architecture and criteria for the classification of EAI systems which are derived from different integration approaches.

Developing an integration architecture for process portals

Many companies still use portals to mange link lists or to present HTML pages to an anonymous group of users. This paper argues that a portals benefits strongly depend on its personalisation along the individual user processes. Besides customer profiles and histories relevant design issues are also the operational collaboration processes and the link of the embedded services to the internal and/or external providers in the upstream supply chain. These process portals not only require an in-depth process analysis, but also the efficient integration of heterogeneous applications on the information systems level. The goal is to provide an integrated, role-based and process-oriented access to all relevant applications. For this purpose integration architectures add one layer to existing application architectures and need to be linked to existing process and application architectures. In view of an estimated growing diffusion of process portals, this article argues that the available approaches to integration architecture in the literature and in practice do not adequately address inter-organisational requirements, and develops an extended architecture model. The components required to implement this architecture are illustrated using an example of a major automobile manufacturer.

Social-Customer-Relationship-Management (Social-CRM)

The interaction between Internet users is at the heart of the Social Web, which has seen a rapid growth in recent years. According to current estimations, more than 1.2 billion Social Media users exist worldwide (eMarketer 2012) with some 29.6 million in Germany (Destatis 2012). While a majority (74 %) of the German population was online in 2010 (Initiative D21 2011), more than half (64 %) of this share was also active in the Social Web (Faktenkontor 2011). This social activity combines a passive part (e.g., the consumption of content in forums) and an active part (e.g., the production of content by users) (Parker and Thomas 2012). Although widespread end-user devices, such as PCs and laptops, constitute the primary access technologies, the diffusion of mobile technologies, in particular smartphones, is expected to foster a further growth of locationand context-specific postings. Indeed, two in five Social Media users already access these services via mobile devices (Nielsen 2011). For businesses, the Social Web means a challenge in the area of customer relationship management (CRM). Social Web users not only share private information (Foster et al. 2010), but also use the Social Web to search for products or to share recommendations and experiences with friends or other users (Tripp and Grégoire 2011). From a CRM perspective, this represents a shift from the traditional indirect customer contact through sales representatives, customer advisors, and call center agents towards a direct customer contact with consumers. Remarkably, more credibility is attributed to the postings and opinions of other users than to corporate communication: in a survey among 4,230 German Internet users, a mere 22 % trusted corporate communications, whereas the majority (67 %) felt more inclined to believe information from private contacts (Faktenkontor 2011). On the one hand, the Social Web enables companies to learn about opinions, experiences, and developments which may be useful to develop and improve products. In addition, escalating discussions in the Social Web may have negative impact on a company’s image and often come to corporate attention by accident. On the other hand, companies may communicate and interact directly with consumers, either in campaigns or for service purposes. Currently, most companies lack a systematic strategy and organization for their Social Web activities, and establishing a profile page or membership on a social network is often regarded as sufficient. However, the Social Web is an additional communication channel to potential customers and requires the definition of company-wide policies, strategies, processes, and information systems (IS). Based on a collection of application examples, this paper motivates the main activities of Social CRM and the IS which are necessary to tap the potentials of interactive “one-to-one” relationships with many customers. For example, knowledge from the Social Web may enrich existing market data with insights from consumers, and ultimately also enhance the reach and the effectiveness of customer interaction. Thus, Social CRM activities have the potential to increase customers’ identification with a company or a brand, to improve the information quality of campaigns with statements or classifications from other users and to make the interaction more interesting by employing appropriate location-based loyalty and incentive mechanisms. Overall, the Social Web is turning into a competitive necessity for CRM, particularly in sectors with end-customer contact.

Campus Management System

In recent years, integrated application systems became generally known in the sector of higher education as campus management systems (CMS). The focus is similar to concepts that have proven to be effective for integrated information management within companies in the form of enterprise resource planning (ERP) or merchandise planning and control systems: Data integration using a common database, integration of functions by avoiding redundant functions, and process integration by implementation of cross-functional activity flows. In connection with the diffusion of both Internet access and portal concepts an increasing importance of service has evolved. Accordingly, webbased self-service features support students, teachers, and others in performing their tasks (Pollock 2003). The overall goal in designing and implementing an integrated CMS is to advance both the efficiency and the effectiveness of the entire study organization, and as a consequence, improving the quality of teaching and learning. From the perspective of the university, the most important exogenous drivers for the emergence of CMS include: 1. The Bologna Process (an agreement among European governments on the unification of higher education), which added a significant amount of administrative work regarding the organization of courses and examinations. In particular, medium-sized and large universities are no longer able to handle the complexity of module combinations, the registrations of modules in several programs, or the calculations of credit points without any support of database application systems (Schilbach et al. 2009). As a result, the German Rectors’ Conference has recommended the universities to use suitable software, consistent with the objectives and instruments of the Bologna process (n. a. 2009). Furthermore, integrated application systems will avoid the known shortcomings of isolated solutions. 2. Universities face an increasing competition for students, academics and financial resources in both the national and the international context. Therefore, they need to improve the quality of both their services as well as their service delivery, for example within the framework of the Excellence Initiative of the German federal and state governments. In particular, future generations of students, who grew up in the Internet age, take electronic services such as e-learning or self-service for granted. Universities try to meet this demand by pursuing “eScience” strategies that aim to support all scientific fields and activities with new electronic media. According to Igel (2007, p. 70), this development will change both the internal and the external perception of higher education more fundamentally than many previously enacted laws and regulations. 3. In analogy to other industries standard software packages have emerged for the consistent support of higher education processes. They replace proprietary software which was developed for specific functional areas of higher education only. Commercial providers now offer a solution to a variety of users with the same or similar requirements. On the one hand this leads to more professional software development and maintenance processes, but on the other also to an increased dependency from the solution providers and the necessity to adapt the software to the individual university structures. Although a number of universities are currently replacing their existing systems by a CMS (Schilbach et al. 2009), the sector of higher education is only at the beginning, especially when compared to other industries. The identified drivers initially point to the well-known interaction between organizational and technological design: Integrated application systems are enablers of change for organizational structures in higher education whose design, in turn, determines the system’s benefits. Thus, a CMS implementation is not only a challenge for technological realization but also for the modification of the entire organizational system “university”.

Customer relationship management in the pharmaceutical industry

Customer centricity has long been a guiding principle for many businesses. However, it is usually limited to marketing existing products with as strong a customer focus as possible. Corporate strategy remains basically product-centered. Customers typically have a fractured view of an enterprise. Conversely the enterprise has only a splintered view of the customer, determined by different customer contact points, as customer information is usually locked in departmental silos. This article argues that trends like electronic commerce drive the need for a more customer-centric view. Customer relationship management, which is built on an integrated view of the customer across the whole organization is currently being discussed as an appropriate concept for achieving this. To illustrate the elements of the concept, a case study undertaken at a pharmaceutical company provides the necessary empirical evidence.

The rise of customer-oriented banking - electronic markets are paving the way for change in the financial industry

The banking industry has been a pioneer in adopting electronic markets with exchanges, clearinghouses, and multilateral trading facilities having become the backbone of today’s globally integrated financial transactions. While most banks use the services of these electronic markets to handle interbank processes, they still strive for bilateral relations in the field of customer-facing processes. This position paper argues that the financial crises, the changing behavior of customers, upcoming innovations based on information technology (IT) and financial services offered by non-banks are strong drivers towards more customer-orientation in the financial industry. A large variety of banking IT innovations has emerged and illustrates that traditional banks are expected to have less power to impede competition at the customer interface and in consequence need to re-position themselves. Building on these developments on the one hand and existing electronic market infrastructures in the banking industry on the other, the concept of a customer-oriented financial market infrastructure is proposed as a possible future solution. The impact is illustrated using a competitive analysis of the banking industry and analogies to the media industry where new entrants from the computing industry have caused disruptive changes. Besides describing the threat to existing banks, the position paper also discusses the perspectives for banks.

Templates-instruments for standardizing ERP systems

Todays large companies face significant challenges in the integration of differently configured ERP systems which have evolved within the last decade. These systems impede the flow of information along the value chain which is vital for supply chain management and holistic controlling processes. They also create implementation inefficiencies since learning and scale effects are not taken advantage of. Therefore, establishing standards for the harmonization of independent and distributed systems would have a profound positive competitive impact. This article describes the Template Handbook, a standardization approach which as developed and implemented in a project with a multinational company, the Robert Bosch Group. ERP templates establish interoperability by identically configuring individual ERP systems within a company. They are enablers for the automatic exchange of information between ERP systems and the multiplication of know-how obtained from multiple ERP implementations. A vital component for the development and the roll-out of the templates was the method which was elaborated in the project.