Conceptual Modeling for E-Business and the Web

Advancements in information and communication technology pave the way for a new class of business systems: e-commerce systems. These systems differ from traditional business systems in that they almost constitute the business rather than that they merely support the business of an organization. As a consequence, business and technology issues are intertwined in such a way that it is not sufficient anymore to consider them in isolation. For this reason, we argue that an integrated approach to ecommerce system development is required with which we can assess the impact of a business model on the information system and vice versa. In our approach, which we call e 3 -VALUE, an e-commerce system is considered from three architectural areas: business value, business process, and software architecture area. These three architectural areas cater for the needs of the various stakeholders involved in the development process at such an abstraction level that qualitative assessments can be made without getting buried by details. A scenario-based technique, represented by Use Case Maps (UCM), is used to relate the different architectural levels. The e 3 -VALUE approach is illuminated by means of an elaborated case study. Although it is too early to draw definite conclusions from this and other case studies that we have conducted, we did learn some important lessons. The first important lesson is that the case studies suggest that e-commerce systems can indeed be assessed qualitatively at a high level of abstraction as provided by the three architectural areas. The second important lesson is that an integrated approach can reveal organisational consequences that are not obvious from a business model alone.

2014

7 3 0 8 | P a g e O c t o b e r , 2 0 1 6 w w w . c i r w o r l d . c o m

Information Technology and Management

Venture capitalists typically require that you can explain the business model in the time it takes the lift to get to the tenth floor. Implementation typically takes years. There is a disproportionate large amount of focus on what constitutes an innovative new business model compared to implementation since most e-business failures are attributed to failures in implementation. Obviously, there is a significant lack of knowledge of factors leading to successful implementation among those responsible for practical implementation of e-business models. E-business models or IT-systems for inter-organizational purposes cannot be implemented exclusively following the traditional guidelines in the IS/IT literature. Development methods are very different from earlier, there are many more stakeholders, and the environment is much more dynamic. The paper suggests a framework highlighting important implementation factors derived from four different disciplines; venture capitalist experiences, business process reengineering, diffusion theory and system development. The contribution of the paper is a classification of implementation factors in a framework that identifies the technological, the organizational, and the market related factors relevant for implementation of e-business models.

International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 1999

Drawing on the results of the case study, we discuss the potential of Dynamic Process Modelling to support assessment of E-Comm business value.

software.ucv.ro

Sigecom Exchanges, 2001

This paper introduces an extension to UML that takes care of web page navigation using the OO-Method, dynamic prototyping, and a new way of specifying the navigation design. Furthermore, a software production process for e-commerce applications design is described. This process is driven by an Object-Oriented Web-Solutions Modeling approach (OOWS), which provides mechanisms to deal with the development of web-based applications. In the proposed process, a system is completely specified using object-oriented conceptual modeling techniques to capture properly the specific functionality of an e-commerce application. We place special emphasis on a navigational model that provides abstraction primitives to capture and represent navigational semantics. With such an extended conceptual model, system functionality and navigational features are described within a unified framework. Once the system specification is completed (problem space level), a strategy to obtain the software components that will constitute the final software product (solution space level) is defined. We briefly discuss how to map these abstraction primitives to e-commerce applications in order to be able to go from the problem space to the solution space in a structured, automated way.

2005

Traditional business methods are taking a drastic turn and changing to digitized businesses. Information and communication technology is being integrated into orthodox business practices and giving birth to e-business. E-business in turn, is looking up to e-business models for dynamic integration. The e-business concept was first explored. It was broken down into its smaller entities to make for a clearer and better understanding. Components of an electronic business were identified, and e-commerce was understood to be a subset of e-business. It was established that for a business to be e-business enabled, it required information and communication technology (ICT) to be integrated into its brick and mortar business practice. This showed that the e-business concept was not replacing traditional business practices but improving on it. The e-manufacturing business practice was also researched. This practice was found to be in essence e-business, but in the manufacturing context. It showed that e-manufacturing made for a dynamic integration of the complex manufacturing business practice in real-time. It linked shop floors to top floors, as well as all the other areas of the whole manufacturing supply chain. Adequate relevance was established for designing e-business and e-manufacturing models. This was achieved through rigorous literature review as well as a questionnaire survey. A hypothesis design and test based on the literature review was made to ascertain what models are utilized and in what context. Currently used models in different company sectors were discovered, and their subsequent benefits identified. Also reasons behind the adoption of the different models in the firms investigated were identified. Barriers associated with the ebusiness practice as well as the implementation of an e-business model were also identified.  Investigate the implication and practice of e-business models in manufacturing industries  Investigate the effectiveness of e-business models.  Identify the risks and potential pressure points of utilizing these models.  Investigate how beneficial e-business models are to business practices.  The methods of research employed in this study were:  Extensive literature review of related work carried out on similar areas.  Literature analysis leading to the identification of currently used models.  Hypothesis design and test based on the literature review.  Questionnaire survey  Analyzing the obtained data to further identify and find out the subsequent benefits arising from the utilization of these models. Chapter 2 provides a generic background of the e-business practices as opposed to the traditional way of doing business. It explains the basic differences between e-business and ecommerce (which is commonly confused with each other), their competencies, and the technologies that drive them. The chapter discusses the components of an e-business and the relationship Business Intelligence, Customer Relationship Management, Supply Chain Management, and Enterprise Resource Planning has with e-business. 10 Chapter 3 discusses the e-manufacturing concept and how it evolved. Comparison was made between e-manufacturing and brick and mortar manufacturing. The benefits realized by integrating e-business practices into the manufacturing process were enumerated, and the Internet was identified to be one the major reasons for this change. Chapter 4 Defines models, business models and e-business models. The relevance of designing e-business models was explored. Improved communication and the better understanding of how a company operates were, amongst others, identified to be one of the reasons for developing e-business models. The chapter also defines and explains the framework an effective e-business model should take and currently used e-business models identified. Chapter 5 discusses the questionnaire survey and analysis. Based on the literature, questionnaires were designed to further investigate the usage and implementation of ebusiness models in companies. A measurement system by which the identified models could be assessed was employed, and this was based on the structure that a dynamic and profitable e-business and e-manufacturing model should have, namely, the product innovation, the infrastructure of a firms network and partners, the customer relationship and the financial aspect of the firm. Analysis of the received data was carried out and conclusion drawn. Chapter 6 concludes the study as well as recommends certain areas to be improved on.

2004

As a means of contributing to the achievement of business advantage for companies engaging in e-business, we propose a requirements engineering approach that incorporates a business strategy dimension. We employ both goal modeling and Jackson's Problem Frames approach to achieve this. Jackson's context diagrams, used to represent the business model context, are integrated with goal-models to describe the complete business strategy. We leverage the paradigm of projection in both approaches while maintaining traceability to high-level business objectives as a means of simultaneously decomposing both the optative and indicative parts of the requirements problem, from an abstract business level to concrete system requirements. We integrate use of role activity diagrams to describe business processes in detail where needed.