Business Process Management Systems

In the rapidly evolving landscape of supply chain management, the emergence of Industry 4.0 technologies has ushered in a new era of transformation. This study explores the deep effects of Industry 4.0 on supply chains by analyzing the incorporation of state-of-the-art technologies. It offers a thorough conceptual framework for supply chain management's implementation of Industry 4.0, highlighting how it aligns with corporate goals, sector-specific requirements, and international best practices. This paper explores the integration of Industry 4.0 technologies into supply chain management, focusing on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. A qualitative research approach was adopted, consisting of a systematic literature review. The literature review covered key technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), big data analytics, blockchain, and augmented reality (AR) to understand their relevance in transforming supply chains. The findings highlight the potential of Industry 4.0 to improve visibility, agility, and resilience in supply chains, offering both theoretical insights and practical guidance for industry practitioners seeking to navigate the challenges of the digital era.

Objective: In the Fourth Industrial Revolution, advanced technologies are revolutionizing supply chains by enhancing data collection, processing, and analysis across material, financial, and information flows. This shift enables businesses to adopt intelligent supply chain processes with unprecedented efficiency. The integration of intelligent strategies and process-oriented approaches, supported by tools like Intelligent Business Process Management Systems (iBPMS), holds transformative potential for supply chain management, paving the way for Intelligent Supply Chain Management (iSCM) models. This study aims to identify the key dimensions and sub-dimensions of intelligent supply chain processes within the context of Industry 4.0 technologies.
Methods: The research employs a meta-synthesis methodology, systematically reviewing peer-reviewed literature and international publications from 2016 to 2025. Following strict meta-synthesis protocols, the study involved keyword screening, thematic evaluation, and iterative refinement, resulting in a curated selection of 62 high-impact journal articles and 4 seminal books. These sources underwent rigorous validation to ensure scholarly relevance before analysis.
Results: The findings identified 117 open codes related to intelligent supply chain processes, which were consolidated into 18 core codes and further classified into five key dimensions: (1) Intelligent Supply Chain Management (covering SCM and intelligent procurement); (2) Process Intelligent Automation (including automation approaches, intelligent processes, and equipment); (3) Process Management (focused on process-oriented approaches, systems, and modeling); (4) Technological Infrastructure (encompassing emerging technologies, ICT infrastructure, software maturity, and robotics); and (5) Macro & Structural Dimensions (addressing managerial, industrial, e-business, market, and organizational factors).
Conclusion: The study concludes that Industry 4.0 technologies—such as IoT, AI, blockchain, robotics, and big data analytics—facilitate advanced data-driven supply chain management. When integrated with iBPMS, these innovations enhance efficiency, agility, and end-to-end visibility, establishing a foundation for next-generation intelligent supply chains

Total quality management describes a philosophy of management that aims at exceeding the current as well as future stakeholder expectations through continuously improving process, goods, and services. However, even though total quality management enhances employee performance, many public organizations and more specifically Kenyatta National Hospital is experiencing deteriorating performance of the employees due to internal and external issues. Therefore, this study’s main objective was to find out the influence of total quality management strategies on employee performance in Kenyatta National Hospital. The study had four specific objectives which include; to determine the influence of customer focus on employee performance in Kenyatta National Hospital; to establish how employee involvement influences employee performance in Kenyatta National Hospital; to establish the influence of continuous improvement on employee performance in Kenyatta National Hospital; and to assess whether ...

After the spilt of TELEBRAS that started the consolidation of the Telecommunications in the Brazilian market, which goes through the reduction in the operational costs of the operators of Personal Mobile Service (PMS). The integration of the business processes with the outsourcing companies shall be considered as part of the Work Force Management (WFM) process that was transferred outside the operator's border. The outsourcing of work force should be used as main condition in reduction of these costs. This document presents a new model for implementation of the WFM associated with a Service level Agreement (SLA) with performance indicators and targets pre-established in a signed contract between the parties, and focused on the macro process for guarantee of quality in the enhanced Telecommunications Operation Map (eTOM). This model allows the process to manage outside the operator's borders by using resources B2B, WAP and SMS in external environment defined by the eTOM model, as for proper human resources and as well for outsourcing companies in a more collaborative form.

Two important areas have been in development lately: Business Process Management and Web Service Orchestration. In both of them, the objective is to integrate applications with web services interface through business process paradigm. A number of languages have been proposed with consensus being formed around BPEL (Business Process Execution Language). This dissertation presents a framework for BPEL processes analysis and verification through Pi-Calculus. Pi-Calculus is a process algebra with formal mechanisms for processes creation and activation; these processes communicate sending and receiving messages through channels using the synchronous rendezvous model. In this framework, the BPEL process is translated to a Pi-Calculus program, A Pi-Calculus Virtual Machine (MVP) receives a Pi-calculus program and executes all possible reactions, that is, it generates all execution paths possible to be taken. With this result, the properties such as high-level specification accomplishment, events ordering and deadlock freedom are verified. In practical terms, a tool of this sort can be part of a Business Process Management System (BPMS) to broaden test coverage during the analysis and implementation phases within a process life cycle. In these kinds of systems, a repairing mistake during the execution phase is more complex than in traditional systems.

This article presents a reflection on the role of Business Process Management and associated technologies on supporting/evolving current Accounting Information Systems. Although traditional Accounting Information Systems fulfill the need of financial reporting, collecting data from central databases and consolidating it, so that the information can be easily consumed by decisionmakers, they were not created bearing in mind the idea of performing business process oriented accounting. Organizations have always worked in a business process oriented way either implicit or explicit. Business Process Management adoption as a management practice has been gaining popularity in recent years, making sense an evolution of Accounting Information Systems towards a business process oriented accounting supported on a Business Process Management Suite. The benefits of this evolution include, among others, the flexibility and agility in business process redefinition, the empowerment of knowledge workers, the implementation of control points for data collection to produce real-time reports and alerts relating the use of financial and nonfinancial information, so that decision-makers can act on.

Este trabajo está enfocado en la descripción, modelamiento y rediseño del proceso de Prácticas Pre Profesionales de la ESPOL, utilizando el lenguaje de modelamiento BPMN con la ayuda del programa WebRatio como herramienta para poder implementar el modelo del proceso de negocio. En nuestro trabajo hemos generado dos versiones del modelo del proceso de negocio; un modelo As Is que se basa en una propuesta inicial del proceso de negocio presentada por el CEPROEM, y un modelo To Be que representa una propuesta mejorada del proceso elaborada por los autores de este trabajo. Con estos dos modelos queremos brindar una visión más clara de los objetivos y alcances a los que se quieren llegar con el proceso de Prácticas Pre Profesionales en la ESPOL.

The policy in dynamic load balancing, classification and function are variety based on the focus study for each research. They are different but employing the same strategy to obtain the load balancing. The communication processes between policies are explored within the dynamic load balancing and decentralized approaches. At the same time the computation processes also take into consideration for further steps. Multi-agent system characteristics and capabilities are explored too. The unique capabilities offered by multi-agent systems can be integrated or combined with the structure of dynamic load balancing to produce a better strategy and better load balancing algorithm.

This article presents a reflection on the role of Business Process Management and associated technologies on supporting/evolving current Accounting Information Systems. Although traditional Accounting Information Systems fulfill the need of financial reporting, collecting data from central databases and consolidating it, so that the information can be easily consumed by decisionmakers, they were not created bearing in mind the idea of performing business process oriented accounting. Organizations have always worked in a business process oriented way either implicit or explicit. Business Process Management adoption as a management practice has been gaining popularity in recent years, making sense an evolution of Accounting Information Systems towards a business process oriented accounting supported on a Business Process Management Suite. The benefits of this evolution include, among others, the flexibility and agility in business process redefinition, the empowerment of knowledge workers, the implementation of control points for data collection to produce real-time reports and alerts relating the use of financial and nonfinancial information, so that decision-makers can act on.

Cloud ERP solutions allow organizations of all sizes to support and coordinate key business processes by leveraging virtualization. Nevertheless, the implementation of cloud ERPs is not straightforward and there are significant issues that need to be taken into account when launching cloud ERP initiatives. To explore these issues, we conducted an in-depth systematic review of related research literature. We identified six key issues related to cloud ERP implementation: a) functionality fit, b) integration, c) data migration, d) organizational change, e) data security, and f) reliability. Furthermore, we mapped these issues to the different sizes of organizations. Based on this review, we identify two sociotechnical concerns that influence cloud ERP implementation: linking to the installed base to ensure continuity with the past and sustainability in the future. We argue that these two concerns have different implications for organizations of different sizes and we call for further empirical research.

While researching integration aspects of cloud Business Process Management Systems (BPMS) with on-premises applications, authors have identified various scenarios that cannot be effectively addressed using existing integration solutions and patterns. Mobile Agents (MAs) were proposed as the technology addressing these integration challenges [1]. During the research, existing MA platforms were analyzed what led to conclusion that none of them is fully addressing specific requirements of end-users in BPM scenarios. As a result, a new approach for designing and executing mobile agents was proposed. This approach is based on workflows and enables end-users having no programming skills to design MAs what is critical in BPM scenarios [2]. In addition existing researches cover different scenarios of how intelligent agents can be used in BPM space, however these do not address specific aspects of MA integration with cloud BPMS, what is critical for proposed solution. During analysis of this subject, authors have identified required integration components, and are proposing an algorithm that allows to determine how these components should be implemented based on technical specification of cloud BPMS. AgentWF prototype provides a sample implementation of all components, and demonstrates how MA system should be integrated with cloud BPMS using proposed approach. Proposed approach is extendable and may be reused for integrating MAs with cloud systems in other domains as well.

The policy in dynamic load balancing, classification and function are variety based on the focus study for each research. They are different but employing the same strategy to obtain the load balancing. The communication processes between policies are explored within the dynamic load balancing and decentralized approaches. At the same time the computation processes also take into consideration for further steps. Multi-agent system characteristics and capabilities are explored too. The unique capabilities offered by multi-agent systems can be integrated or combined with the structure of dynamic load balancing to produce a better strategy and better load balancing algorithm.

Managing a large-scale distributed engineering project needs skilled, motivated and committed personnel. Unified and aligned working methods are needed. Project alignment is the process of ensuring that key stakeholders share a common understanding of the project mission, goals, objectives, tactics, work processes and plans and have the required competences and skills. Based on current advances in the area of collaborative networked organisations, project management and Internet web 2.0 technologies, we have identified further needs and opportunities for development in the area of Collaborative Project Management. The Project Alignment Booster is a set of software services used to promote collaborative project management. The tool has been developed to suit industrial requirements in the area of large and complicated engineering project management. The paper reports the results of developing a toolkit to support collaborative project alignment.

The paper presents personal experiences from the development and application of automation solutions, mainly in industrial environments, on six different decades spanning from late 1960’s to early 2010’s and relates them to their historical context. During the covered period tremendous developments occurred in both methodologies and enabling technologies. During and after the Second World War, significant achievements related to automation theories were developed and presented by e.g. Bellman, Wiener and Pontryagin. Also the enormous development of the information technology started after the war. During the described period, the automation field changed from pneumatic based single loop solution to fully digitalised automation with software as a main enabler. In many cases, is the solutions are globally distributed. In addition to a description of concrete solutions in a chronologic order, their impacts are presented. The paper is concluded by a presentation of lessons learned also ...

Competitive organizations are facing a variety of problems as a result of advances in management techniques as well due to the delay in the introduction of these in business management models. One of the biggest and critical problems for competitiveness in the globalised market is the creation of a technological infrastructure for real-time decision-making. But the combination of technologies, such as Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Web Services (WS) and Information Architecture (IA), promises to revolutionize the way in which organizations compete, speeds up decision-making, and take leverage of market opportunities. However, these technologies still face challenges that need to be overcome. Based on the literature review, the scope of this article is to discuss the main issues and the development of organizational modeling technologies, and presenting an online and real time business architecture framework.

Effective implementation of projects is determined by the application of project management competencies. In construction projects, most projects fail to meet their objectives. The purpose of this study was to explore the determinants of effective implementation of projects financed by commercial banks in Kenya. The specific objectives were to establish the role played by stakeholder management, strategic training, project support and monitoring and continuous improvement on project implementation at Kenya Commercial Bank. The study was based on the stakeholder theory and systems theory. Descriptive case study design was applied in this study. The study targeted 81 project managers, assistant project managers and project supervisors responsible for design, implementation or rollout of the KCB Plaza construction project. Primary data was collected using questionnaires through drop-and-pick-later method was utilized to administer the questionnaire. Data analysis was done through descr...

The Kenyan media sector has become very volatile following increased liberalization of the sector, the much technological appreciation, heightened competition and also the rapid changes in the consumer buyer behaviors. The available opportunities have overwhelmed the threats in the sector therefore providing market growth a possibility in the sector. All these have made media groups in Kenya find it hard to identify sets of competitive strategies that would ensure that it earns and sustains its competitive strategies. In Kenya media sector to be successful one need to identify sets of competitive strategies that would both identify and sustain competitive strategies. It’s impossible for broadcasting media groups to insulate itself against the major environmental changes affecting the sector and also to shy away from market segmentation and targeting in the present century. Poor cost efficiency practices and also lack of positioning can post serious failures towards identification of...

Performance-enhancing efforts in the manufacturing industry have centred on 'lean' principles and philosophies since the early 1970s. Lean principles, philosophies, tools and methods have also been significantly deployed to enhance performance in service processes within the manufacturing industry, as well as the process industry (e.g. inspection, maintenance and modification-related). It has been observed that when the main business is mostly centred on service-providing processes, significantly less effort is put into exploiting the use of lean approaches to enhance performance. Therefore, it is vital to investigate the potential of 'lean' concepts' implementation in a service-providing organisation. This manuscript is based on the value stream mapping and the value stream analysis (VSA) performed in a Polish telecommunication-industry-related service-providing company. A plain old telephone services-based case study is presented. The service-providing process is analysed in order to identify the current existing drawbacks and to propose improvements to enhance performance. Based on the current state value stream map and the VSA results, a future state value stream map was developed. Then, process efficiency was calculated in order to assess the level of performance improvement.

Adoption of strategic management practices has gained relevance among the county governments in Kenya. Counties are embracing strategic management practices even though they have been experiencing a number of obstacles due to a weak governance system in place. Most county government lack good governance systems to enable them operate strategically and also independently and this has affected their performance. The study was carried out with the main objective of finding out the effect of strategic management practices on the performance of Makueni County in Kenya. The specific objectives were to establish how; strategic formulation, strategic implementation, strategic evaluation and strategic control impacts performance of Makueni County. There has been poor budget implementation in these counties; in addition to corruption and wastage of resources. Makueni County is faced with high poverty levels and has failed to meet its revenue targets. This implies poor strategic management pra...

The cloud computing is a new computer model that provide computer services in the form of services on demand, accessible from anywhere, anytime and by anyone, the cloud computing are mainly used for the treatment of loads computer work very intensive and provide very large storage of data, these two objectives are combined with the third goal of potentially reducing management costs and use. In this paper, we present an architecture based on mobile agent for cloud computing, today most applications of cloud computing use the model "client / server" where the exchange is done by sending messages across the network , this model has the disadvantage of increasing the traffic on the network and requires a permanent connection. In this paper, we propose a new approach that uses mobile agents in cloud computing, our architecture is based on mobile agents that have kept the goal of security communication in cloud computing, we are relying on the ability of security of agents.

In this paper, we present and evaluate an architecture based on mobile agent for cloud computing, The cloud computing are mainly used for the treatment of loads computer work very intensive and provide very large storage of data, these two objectives are combined with the third goal of potentially reducing management costs and use, cloud computing is attractive to business owners as it eliminates the requirement for users to plan ahead for provisioning, and allows enterprises to start from the small and increase resources only when there is a rise in service demand. Today, most applications of cloud computing use the model "client / server" where the exchange is done by sending messages across the network is the most widely used model, This model has the disadvantage of increasing the traffic on the network and requires a permanent connection. In this paper, we propose a new approach that uses mobile agents in cloud computing, Our architecture is based on mobile agents that have kept the goal of communication in security in cloud computing. This work is essentially the proposal of an architecture that can respond to user needs through access to a cloud computing secure with mobile agents, we are relying on the ability of mobility and security agents.

Globally, University education is known to be essential for social, economic and political transformation of society. This recognition has caused heavy investment in this sector in Africa and Kenya in particular. However, this rapid expansion has brought many challenges in service delivery and customer satisfaction by universities. Among these is employee capacity that can add value to the strategic intent of the universities in the face of intense competition in the university training services value chain. Through a cross-sectional survey, this study evaluated the role of employee capacity and the strategic positioning of newly chartered public universities, with specific reference to Laikipia University in Kenya. Results indicate that employee capacity was crucial for sustainable competitive advantage of the University. It was apparent that the University had a workforce that had fairly good capacity to contribute to its strategic intent through their cooperation, commitment and ...

Effective implementation of projects is determined by the application of project management competencies. In construction projects, most projects fail to meet their objectives. The purpose of this study was to explore the determinants of effective implementation of projects financed by commercial banks in Kenya. The specific objectives were to establish the role played by stakeholder management, strategic training, project support and monitoring and continuous improvement on project implementation at Kenya Commercial Bank. The study was based on the stakeholder theory and systems theory. Descriptive case study design was applied in this study. The study targeted 81 project managers, assistant project managers and project supervisors responsible for design, implementation or rollout of the KCB Plaza construction project. Primary data was collected using questionnaires through drop-and-pick-later method was utilized to administer the questionnaire. Data analysis was done through descr...

The interest of this study is to determine the reasons for unsuccessful implementation of EProcurement in the county governments in Kenya. It focused on the Nairobi county government, which is guided by the Public procurement procedures. With the use of a short form questionnaire, the data was collected from a population sample of the Top managers of the institution and middle level operations staff. This was used to establish the pertinent factors that affect successful implementation of electronic procurement process in public institution. The business environment within which the county government operates is very volatile; the political anxiety, cartels, competition from the private sector, technological advancement, and global changes are some of the challenges that have greatly affected the success of the council’s operations. Whereas the people of Nairobi and Kenya at large expect nothing but efficient and reliable services from the county government, smooth process managemen...

This paper proposes a novel method for the structuring of the knowledge of a service process in order to be processed by lightweight declarative computing infrastructures. Through the identification of self-similarities in the process, the flow of the structured information and the sequence of activities performed in the process are easily implemented by means of cyber-physical systems technologies, in order to timely meet the customer/stakeholder's requirements. The study was performed in a telecommunication service providing organization. Service teams create a collaborative network. With the use of the CPS proposed in this work they can communicate problems and disseminate solutions. This methodology uses the information of a set of performance indicators of the service organization to achieve a better control of the effectiveness and the bottlenecks in the supply network. The methodology is borrowed from the mechatronics field and it is prone to a natural extension and reuse for the similar information structures in manufacturing processes.

This paper proposes a novel method for the structuring of the knowledge of a service process in order to be processed by lightweight declarative computing infrastructures. Through the identification of self-similarities in the process, the flow of the structured information and the sequence of activities performed in the process are easily implemented by means of cyber-physical systems technologies, in order to timely meet the customer/stakeholder's requirements. The study was performed in a telecommunication service providing organization. Service teams create a collaborative network. With the use of the CPS proposed in this work they can communicate problems and disseminate solutions. This methodology uses the information of a set of performance indicators of the service organization to achieve a better control of the effectiveness and the bottlenecks in the supply network. The methodology is borrowed from the mechatronics field and it is prone to a natural extension and reuse for the similar information structures in manufacturing processes.

Globally, University education is known to be essential for social, economic and political transformation of society. This recognition has caused heavy investment in this sector in Africa and Kenya in particular. However, this rapid expansion has brought many challenges in service delivery and customer satisfaction by universities. Among these is employee capacity that can add value to the strategic intent of the universities in the face of intense competition in the university training services value chain. Through a cross-sectional survey, this study evaluated the role of employee capacity and the strategic positioning of newly chartered public universities, with specific reference to Laikipia University in Kenya. Results indicate that employee capacity was crucial for sustainable competitive advantage of the University. It was apparent that the University had a workforce that had fairly good capacity to contribute to its strategic intent through their cooperation, commitment and ...

This article presents a reflection on the role of Business Process Management and associated technologies on supporting/evolving current Accounting Information Systems. Although traditional Accounting Information Systems fulfill the need of financial reporting, collecting data from central databases and consolidating it, so that the information can be easily consumed by decisionmakers, they were not created bearing in mind the idea of performing business process oriented accounting. Organizations have always worked in a business process oriented way either implicit or explicit. Business Process Management adoption as a management practice has been gaining popularity in recent years, making sense an evolution of Accounting Information Systems towards a business process oriented accounting supported on a Business Process Management Suite. The benefits of this evolution include, among others, the flexibility and agility in business process redefinition, the empowerment of knowledge workers, the implementation of control points for data collection to produce real-time reports and alerts relating the use of financial and nonfinancial information, so that decision-makers can act on.

Even though Kenya has been praised for its robust economy and that is set to become one of the top five fastest-growing in sub-Saharan Africa, manufacturing output remains low compared to other sectors. Kenyan manufacturers have registered stagnation and declining profits of over $330 million annually and government loses of $67 million in potential tax revenue for the last five years due to contingencies. It is estimated that manufacturing companies have lost 70 per cent of their market share in East Africa and this has resulted in some firms announcing plans to shut down their plants and shift operations to Egypt. The general objective of the study was to establish the influence of strategic contingent organizational factors on performance of large manufacturing firms in Kenya by reviewing organizational structure as the study variable with legal and regulatory environment as the moderating effect. The study adopted a mixed research design of cross-sectional research design and de...

This article presents a reflection on the role of Business Process Management and associated technologies on supporting/evolving current Accounting Information Systems. Although traditional Accounting Information Systems fulfill the need of financial reporting, collecting data from central databases and consolidating it, so that the information can be easily consumed by decisionmakers, they were not created bearing in mind the idea of performing business process oriented accounting. Organizations have always worked in a business process oriented way either implicit or explicit. Business Process Management adoption as a management practice has been gaining popularity in recent years, making sense an evolution of Accounting Information Systems towards a business process oriented accounting supported on a Business Process Management Suite. The benefits of this evolution include, among others, the flexibility and agility in business process redefinition, the empowerment of knowledge workers, the implementation of control points for data collection to produce real-time reports and alerts relating the use of financial and nonfinancial information, so that decision-makers can act on.

Adoption of business process improvement strategies are now a concern of most organisations. Organisations are still facing challenges and finding transient solutions to immediate problems. The misalignment between IT solutions and organisational aspects evolves across space and time showing discrepancies. Unfortunately, existing business process approaches are not according with continuous business process improvement involving business stakeholders. Considering this limitation in wellknown Business Process (BP) methodologies, this paper presents a comparative study of some approaches and introduces agility in the Business Process and Practice Alignment Methodology (BPPAM). Our intention is to present observed problems in existing approaches and introduce agility in our proposal to address features, like the alignment between daily work practices and business process descriptions, in a simple and agile way.

This paper aimed at analyzing “Factors Affecting Effective Implementation of Training Programs in Tanzania‘s Parastatal Organizations, the case of TANESCO, Dar The study was consistently guided by following objectives: to find out whether Tanesco has workable annual training program; to identify whether the yearly training program. Supported by a Corresponding budget; to find out whether there are procedures for describe the social factors constraining effective implementation of training Program at TANESCO;to identify measures taken by TANESCO to address employees social factors limiting effective implementation of training prog employees was drawn using both simple random and purposive sampling methods. Data were collected by questionnaires, interviews, and documentary reviews. Both quantitative and qualitative methods analysis. The study revealed number of factors that may negatively affect effective implementation of training programs in parastatal organizations; these factors a...

Despite the over-emphasized introduction of new strategies, firms are still recording minimal performance and competition rate. This therefore raises the question on whether these firms implement the intended strategies or not. On the other hand, Micro Finance Institutions (MFIs) have continually faced tremendous challenges despite their vital role in the country’s economy. These firms face high range of competition from already established financial institutions such as the commercial banks. The strategies introduced by these firms have however not bared much fruits since their competitiveness still remains minimal. It is against this backdrop that the study sought to establish the influence of strategy implementation on the competitiveness of MFIs in Kenya. Specifically, the study sought to find out the influence of resources allocation, roles and responsibilities, leadership styles and organizational structure on the competitiveness of MFIs in Kenya. The study employed descriptiv...

The advancements enabled by the transfer of information via computers and technology are readily observed in the ease with which business is conducted across regional and international borders. The role of ICT in procurement to ensure that organizations are being conducted accordingly and services are delivered respectively in line with the progress of information technology. The development of procurement efficiency through ICT projects have increased in many organizations to ensure that overall needs of customers in business requirements are fulfilled. The study adopted a descriptive research approach to collect primary data. A pilot study was conducted to pretest the validity and reliability of instruments for data collection. The study involved the use of questionnaire method to collect data. Census survey was used to select a total of 74 respondents With the help of the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) regression analysis was done and the results were used to test...

Most organizations effect employee separation programme with an aim of improving productivity and performance, increase competitiveness, decrease costs and improve quality. However, a number of separation processes in several Parastatals have negated this position. Some unexpected undesirable results have attracted both theoretical and practical experts’ attention to the output of separation and the main questions involved in managing separation. The study sought to determine the influence of method of separation on the performance of the selected Parastatals in Kenya. The study analyzed six Parastatals in Kenya. Qualitative data was collected using questionnaires from 96 employees of the affected Parastatals. Regression analysis and independent t-test was used to analyze the data. A questionnaire was used to collect data from ninety six employees sampled through stratified random sampling. Linear regression and independent t-test were used to test the relationship between the indep...

The public sector is collectively the world’s largest service provider and thus any incremental improvement in public services positively impacts millions of people. Quality has become an immensely popular term where the organization of public service is concerned. Driven by growing customer expectations the efficiency and effectiveness of public service delivery is increasingly seen as key metrics of public sector performance. The main purpose of this study was to determine external factors influencing the delivery of quality services in public institutions. The study sought to establish the politico-legal, economic, socio-cultural and technological factors influencing the delivery of quality services at the department. The study population was obtained by use of stratified sampling of areas where immigration services are offered to the public. From the coast region the researcher sampled an airport, a seaport, a land border and the passport control office to be representative of a...

Supplier development is any effort a buying firm expends on a supplier to increase the performance and capabilities to meet the buying firm’s own short-term or long-term supply needs and generate favorable results. This study sought to address the influence of specific supplier development practices on a firm’s competitive advantage, and the analysis of the relationships between supplier development practices and firm’s competitive advantage in the context of Kenya’s telecommunication industry in particular Safaricom Limited. A descriptive design where questionnaires were sent to respondents was adopted. An analysis of the data collected was done to determine the extent to which the specific supplier development practices influence cycle times, cost delivery and quality. The analytical solutions of supplier development practices will help reinforce the theoretical expositions of the influence of specific suppler development practices on the competitive advantage of a buying organiza...

The new Kenyan constitution introduced devolution which saw development of the county governments across the country. The motive was to take government services close to the people and thus enhance development. In this regard, county governments have been coming up with various projects aimed at delivering service and promoting welfare of the common people. However, despite the tremendous efforts by the county governments to enhance development through these projects, their success has been sabotaged due to factors such as incompetent management, lack of enough funds as well as increased malpractices such as corruption. This has seen many projects by the county governments underperform and others collapse. It is on this background that the study sought to find out the influence of project leadership on successful completion of the county government projects. The study was guided by the specific objectives: To find out the influence of worker engagement on completion of county govern...

Even though Kenya has been praised for its robust economy and that is set to become one of the top five fastest-growing in sub-Saharan Africa, manufacturing output remains low compared to other sectors. Kenyan manufacturers have registered stagnation and declining profits of over $330 million annually and government loses of $67 million in potential tax revenue for the last five years due to contingencies. It is estimated that manufacturing companies have lost 70 per cent of their market share in East Africa and this has resulted in some firms announcing plans to shut down their plants and shift operations to Egypt. The general objective of the study was to establish the influence of strategic contingent organizational factors on performance of large manufacturing firms in Kenya by reviewing organizational structure as the study variable with legal and regulatory environment as the moderating effect. The study adopted a mixed research design of cross-sectional research design and de...

The policy in dynamic load balancing, classification and function are variety based on the focus study for each research. They are different but employing the same strategy to obtain the load balancing. The communication processes between policies are explored within the dynamic load balancing and decentralized approaches. At the same time the computation processes also take into consideration for further steps. Multi-agent system characteristics and capabilities are explored too. The unique capabilities offered by multi-agent systems can be integrated or combined with the structure of dynamic load balancing to produce a better strategy and better load balancing algorithm.

The policy in dynamic load balancing, classification and function are variety based on the focus study for each research. They are different but employing the same strategy to obtain the load balancing. The communication processes between policies are explored within the dynamic load balancing and decentralized approaches. At the same time the computation processes also take into consideration for further steps. Multi-agent system characteristics and capabilities are explored too. The unique capabilities offered by multi-agent systems can be integrated or combined with the structure of dynamic load balancing to produce a better strategy and better load balancing algorithm.

Business Process Management (BPM) encompasses the discovery, modelling, monitoring, analysis and improvement of business processes. Limitations of traditional BPM approaches in addressing changes in business requirements have resulted in a number of agile BPM approaches that seek to accelerate the redesign of business process models. Meta-models are a key BPM feature that reduce the ambiguity of business process models. This paper describes a meta-model supporting the agile version of the Business Process and Practice Alignment Methodology (BPPAM) for business process improvement, which captures process information from actual work practices. The ability of the meta-model to achieve business process agility is discussed and compared with other agile meta-models, based on definitions of business process flexibility and agility found in the literature.

This paper proposes a novel method for the structuring of the knowledge of a service process in order to be processed by lightweight declarative computing infrastructures. Through the identification of selfsimilarities in the process, the flow of the structured information and the sequence of activities performed in the process are easily implemented by means of cyber-physical systems technologies, in order to timely meet the customer/stakeholder's requirements. The study was performed in a telecommunication service providing organization. Service teams create a collaborative network. With the use of the CPS proposed in this work they can communicate problems and disseminate solutions. This methodology uses the information of a set of performance indicators of the service organization to achieve a better control of the effectiveness and the bottlenecks in the supply network. The methodology is borrowed from the mechatronics field and it is prone to a natural extension and reuse for the similar information structures in manufacturing processes.

Business Process Management (BPM) encompasses the discovery, modelling, monitoring, analysis and improvement of business processes. Limitations of traditional BPM approaches in addressing changes in business requirements have resulted in a number of agile BPM approaches that seek to accelerate the redesign of business process models. Meta-models are a key BPM feature that reduce the ambiguity of business process models. This paper describes a meta-model supporting the agile version of the Business Process and Practice Alignment Methodology (BPPAM) for business process improvement, which captures process information from actual work practices. The ability of the meta-model to achieve business process agility is discussed and compared with other agile meta-models, based on definitions of business process flexibility and agility found in the literature.

This paper proposes a novel method for the structuring of the knowledge of a service process in order to be processed by lightweight declarative computing infrastructures. Through the identification of self-similarities in the process, the flow of the structured information and the sequence of activities performed in the process are easily implemented by means of cyber-physical systems technologies, in order to timely meet the customer/stakeholder’s requirements. The study was performed in a telecommunication service providing organization. Service teams create a collaborative network. With the use of the CPS proposed in this work they can communicate problems and disseminate solutions. This methodology uses the information of a set of performance indicators of the service organization to achieve a better control of the effectiveness and the bottlenecks in the supply network. The methodology is borrowed from the mechatronics field and it is prone to a natural extension and reuse for the similar information structures in manufacturing processes.

Accounting Information System (AIS) is a technique of gathering, storing, recovering and reporting financial information to relevant stakeholders to guide business decisions. The primary functions of the IS are to detect and correct fraudulent dealings while also providing financial information to guide managerial decision making to improve performance and profitability. The main components of AIS are the people using the system, operational guiding protocols, software and hardware involved. The accountants perform the daily data entries to maintain the stored information. As such, AIS is a critical component that enhances internal control and company performance. The data allows the managers to adopt new strategies to sustain the dynamic environment to allow them to gain the competitive edge over rivals.

With the introduction and advancement of mobile cloud computing, endless opportunities for the provision of mobile phone services have ensued. Mobile cloud computing technology has brought about a breakthrough in information management by enabling the use of central servers which act as hosts, to deliver the required services, providing flexibility and reliability to mobile users. Due to the dynamic nature of mobile devices, and various constraints such as limited bandwidth however, the use of a traditional central server for these devices continues to prove problematic, with a number of issues including congestion and server failure occurring time and time again, while the demand for mobile cloud services continue to rise. This research project seeks to address these problems by presenting an alternate approach for service management in mobile cloud infrastructures. This research presents a decentralized model that takes inspiration from the flocking behavior of birds since birds are known to interact locally to produce a global behavior without a central point of authority. Three variations of the proposed model were developed to support how mobile devices interact for service provision. As an exemplar case study, a simulation of mobile users participating in the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics where multimedia contents are provided and consumed as services was performed. Additionally, experiments were conducted to evaluate the three variations of the models based on their performance on the set out aim. The results from the experiments indicate that the proposed mechanism was quite practicable since the mobile devices are able to select and provide services in a decentralized manner. The research has shown that mobile devices can be configured to provide their services in a decentralized manner while considering social issues.

This article presents a reflection on the role of Business Process Management and associated technologies on supporting/evolving current Accounting Information Systems. Although traditional Accounting Information Systems fulfill the need of financial reporting, collecting data from central databases and consolidating it, so that the information can be easily consumed by decision-makers, they were not created bearing in mind the idea of performing business process oriented accounting. Organizations have always worked in a business process oriented way either implicit or explicit. Business Process Management adoption as a management practice has been gaining popularity in recent years, making sense an evolution of Accounting Information Systems towards a business process oriented accounting supported on a Business Process Management Suite. The benefits of this evolution include, among others, the flexibility and agility in business process redefinition, the empowerment of knowledge workers, the implementation of control points for data collection to produce real-time reports and alerts relating the use of financial and non-financial information, so that decision-makers can act on.

The policy in dynamic load balancing, classification and function are variety based on the focus study for each research. They are different but employing the same strategy to obtain the load balancing. The communication processes between policies are explored within the dynamic load balancing and decentralized approaches. At the same time the computation processes also take into consideration for further steps. Multi-agent system characteristics and capabilities are explored too. The unique capabilities offered by multi-agent systems can be integrated or combined with the structure of dynamic load balancing to produce a better strategy and better load balancing algorithm.

The accumulation, storage and handling of budgetary and bookkeeping or accounting information/data that is utilized by leaders or decision makers. An Accounting Information System (AIS) is by and large a PC based system for following accounting activity in conjunction with data innovation assets. The subsequent factual reports can be utilized inside by administration or remotely by other invested individuals including financial specialists, banks and duty powers. We outline the present and prospect position of (AIS) by analyzing the key commitments of clerks (accountants) and cash related or finance specialists. While a couple of these commitments are starting now suitably reinforced by standard development answers, others address defies that still not have fitting clarifications and thusly ought to be the focal point of prospect investigation. We expect prospect creative reactions to this concern area defies. The recognized advances fuse business Process Management (BPM), Cloud computing, mobile phones, Big Data, Computer assisted tools and techniques, enterprise application integration, web services, business intelligence (BI) mobile computing (MC), environmental scanning.