Thomas Puschmann

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.

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.

Process portals - architecture and integration

Process portals support the inter-organizational networking of businesses. They define function and content on the basis of the customer process and make them available to the user via a role-based and personalized interface. In spite of the growing relevance of process portals, their use in most businesses is still only at the beginning. A consistent architecture and integration model can help businesses with the introduction of process portals. This article argues that the available approaches to architecture from the relevant literature and from practice do not adequately address process portal requirements, and develops an extended architecture model. The steps required to implement this architecture are described in this article using the example of the Automobile Group.

Developing Customer Process Orientation - The Case of Pharma Corp

The pharmaceutical industry is in the midst of a fundamental transformation. Institutional regulations that have been in place for decades are being removed and competitive pressures force pharmaceutical companies to adopt customer oriented strategies. Information technology which has traditionally been applied to many processes in this industry is an important enabler for the interaction with key customer segments such as physicians and patients. However, developing and transforming customer relationships is merely a technological undertaking. Changes are required regarding strategy, processes as well as the systems architecture. To develop an integrated customer relationship management strategy this research draws on elements from established business redesign. The emphasis is on portals that bundle services for the patient’s and physician’s customer processes. This architecture framework has been elaborated in cooperation with nine companies and applied at a major pharmaceutical company.

Strategies for Business Networking

As the networking scenarios in Chapter 3 revealed, Business Networking provides a strategic concept enabling new and/or more efficient processes to be introduced by extending the application of IT to relationships a company has with its partners. A broad variety of strategies are under discussion, such as outsourcing, virtual organizing, electronic commerce or supply chain management. Apart from clarifying the value added of each conceptual approach, differentiation of strategies helps in deciding how strategic goals, such as strengthening an existing market position, can be achieved.

Service-Lifecycle-Management

Service-oriented architectures (SOA) are an intensively discussed architectural paradigm in science and practice. Originally grounding in software modularization efforts, SOA is increasingly part of the discourse on business models. For example, software providers no longer offer their solutions solely as complete packages, but rather allow customers to use them in parts or as a whole on a pay-per-use basis (Software as a Service, Platform as a Service). SOAs contribution within these business models is a flexibility gain obtained by abstracting from the underlying implementation. This abstraction leads to a decomposition of applications into fine-granular services. For example, a core banking system might offer a credit worthiness check, while a customer relationship management system processes the customer data. However, these applications are frequently based on different SOA models (e.g., SAP, Oracle). Consequently, increasing modularity causes higher complexity, due to heterogeneous service specifications, service development processes, service implementations, and operating models. Adding to this, often several suppliers with heterogenous SOA platforms are involved. Without a dedicated management of services along their life cycle (Service Lifecycle Management - SLM), additional alignment efforts would be necessary. Thus, the management of services as well as service portfolios arising from the modularization of monolithic applications plays an important role. However, SLM approaches are just as heterogeneous as the different applications and their SOA models. The numerous facets exhibit a clear dichotomy between technical and business-oriented approaches. This article suggests an integrated SLM model to overcome this dichotomy.