Ravi Seethamraju

Role of process knowledge in business process improvement methodology: a case study

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse the importance and role of process knowledge in the business process (BP) improvement methodology with the help of a case study.Design/methodology/approach – The approach takes the form of a literature review that highlights the challenges and issues in the existing BP improvement methodologies. An in‐depth case study that has embarked on a major BP improvement initiative that emphasizes individual and collective process knowledge in a real‐life complex organization is presented.Findings – The paper confirms that BP improvement is, in fact, a complex, knowledge‐intensive, collaborative process that consists of a set of coordinated, contextualized knowledge management processes. The design of the “to‐be” process in this study is a knowledge co‐creation process that uses collaborative exploration of different scenarios and contexts. Compared with the traditional BP improvement methodologies where the main emphasis is on the design of a new process model, the...

Business process management: a missing link in business education

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse the inadequacies of current business education in the context of “process”. It presents an analysis of the background to business processes in historical perspective and posits the significance of business management for todays business education. It argues the importance of business processes and business process management (BPM) in the context of the current and emerging information technologies (IT) and business education and highlights its ability to offer a missing link between business, IT and strategy.Design/methodology/approach – The approach involves analysis and review of the literature and analysis of secondary data.Findings – Even though business processes have been the subject of formal study from multiple perspectives for a long time, since the start of industrial age, processes still are not well understood, left unmanaged and poorly executed. With business schools teaching primarily function specific and narrow and IT schools focused on na...

Adoption of Software as a Service (SaaS) Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems in Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs)

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are now offered on the cloud under the Software as a Service (SaaS) model. For small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), this is considered the best opportunity to take advantage of the capabilities of an ERP system without the investment and management costs associated with the on-premise model. Using a cross-sectional field study conducted across four case study organizations, this study investigated the determinants and challenges in the adoption of SaaS ERP systems by SMEs. The study found that the determining factors in deciding to adopt SaaS ERP are software vendor’s reputation in the market, software fit to the business, the potential willingness of the vendor to support the customer throughout the product life cycle, the vendor’s participation in co-creation of value for customers and the generic benefits of implementing an integrated ERP system. With switching considered a costly option, accounting shift of capital costs to operating expenses is considered advantageous by firms. Competitive pressures faced by the enterprise, external factors, concerns about data security and system performance have no influence on adoption decision, according to this study. Change management and increasing the effectiveness of use are challenges, but the willingness of the software vendor to work with organizations’ requests for changes and improvements and the continuous co-creation of value through improved product offerings is reassuring to the firms in the post-implementation phase.

Influence of group formation choices on academic performance

With its multidisciplinary and applied foci, team‐working skills are seen as especially critical in business courses in general and in business information systems courses in particular, and are specifically incorporated into desired graduate attributes by many universities. Past research has focused on the benefits of group working but little work has been conducted to examine the relative contribution of group formation choices on academic performance. This paper reports on a study that develops and validates a data‐collection instrument and identifies four underlying factors that influence formation of groups: convenience, social cohesion, task management and technical skills/knowledge. The results thus suggest that academic performance is influenced by the skills and knowledge of individual members, potential social cohesion among the group members and the task management ability considered at the group formation stage. The study notes that while how a group is formed influences ultimate academic performance, how the group operates is also an important factor.

Understanding Knowledge-Intensive, Practice-Oriented Business Processes

In order to create new opportunities for competitive differentiation, organisations are starting to shift their focus from transactional operational business processes (BPs) to other types of processes that cannot be easily replicated. Their key ingredients are human knowledge, experience and creativity that cannot be standardised, prescribed and easily acquired. While Business Process Management (BPM) research and practice will remain focused on highly structured operational BPs for quite some time, there is a need to better understand other types of BPs, especially their knowledge aspect. This is expected to lead to new knowledge management strategies and processes designed to better leverage human capital to ensure continuous improvement of business processes. This paper focuses on knowledge-intensive, practice-oriented BPs. It describes an exploratory case study of a complex practice-oriented BP in a large, multi-unit organization and illustrates how our research findings expand current BPM boundaries, especially in the area of BP improvement methodologies.

Impact of e-commerce on business process redesign and integration

This paper reports on a study of the impact of e-commerce initiatives on business process changes and shows why some organisations carry out simple automation of business processes instead of redesigning them for gaining process efficiencies. Implementation of e-commerce helped the organisations in moving towards standardisation by uncovering variety and lack of process standardisation within and between various business units. Previous efforts of redesign in the context of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system implementations, the extent of involvement of external partners, and the general variability of information maintained by numerous legacy systems are factors influencing the extent and nature of process changes.

Intention to Use a Mobile-Based Information Technology Solution for Tuberculosis Treatment Monitoring – Applying a UTAUT Model

There are 2.2 million cases of tuberculosis (TB) in India, with an economic burden of

Effectiveness of Using Online Discussion Forum for Case Study Analysis

3 billion per year. Efficient monitoring of TB treatment is critical and the Indian Government’s current reliance on a pen and paper system for monitoring patients’ adherence to treatment is neither effective nor scalable. Employing the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology model (UTAUT) as its theoretical foundation, this study investigates the factors influencing the acceptance and use of a mobile-based IT solution for TB treatment monitoring. Data was collected from a survey of healthcare professionals working in TB treatment clinics and analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling. Four constructs in the UTAUT model, effort expectancy (EE), facilitating conditions (FC), performance expectancy (PE) and social influence (SI) – were found to significantly and positively influence healthcare professionals’ behavioral intention to use the proposed mobile-based IT solution, and explained 56% of the variance. Importantly, our study validates the predictive capabilities of the UTAUT model in public health service delivery context in a developing country.

Assessing Strategic Readiness for Healthcare Analytics: System and Design Theory Implications

Business schools are exploring new pedagogical approaches to learning in order to deal with challenges such as increased class sizes, limited funding support, and difficulties in facilitating and encouraging active participation and learning among a diverse cohort of students. This paper reports on a study of the effectiveness of a pedagogical approach that blends online discussion board and case study. Analysing quantity and quality of online postings and comparing accounting students’ performance with previous cohort, this study observes a significant improvement in student learning. Appropriate design and delivery strategies and clear assessment criteria for assessment and use have provided an effective learning vehicle for students, helped them overcome their own language related barriers, and encouraged them to participate in a nonthreatening environment. This approach further complemented the benefits of peer-to-peer learning and case study pedagogy. Reported increase in workload for students and marking load for academics and measuring the value of learning, however, are some of the challenges that need further attention by researchers.

Adoption of SaaS enterprise systems — A comparison of Indian and Australian SMEs

The adoption of analytics solutions in hospitals is a recent trend aimed at fact-based decision making and data-driven performance management. However, the adoption of analytics involves diverse stakeholder perspectives. Currently, there is a paucity of studies that focus on how the practitioners assess their organizational readiness for health analytics (HA) and make informed decisions on technology adoption given a set of alternatives. We fill this gap with our study by designing a strategic assessment framework guided by a DSRM approach that iteratively extends our past artifact. Our approach first entails the use of many in-depth case-studies, as well as embedded experts from the industry to inform the objective setting and design process. These inputs are then supported by two multi-criteria decision-making methods. We also evaluate our framework with healthcare practitioners for both design validity and future iterations of this project. Implications of our work for theory of design and action are also highlighted.