Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Information factors'

ERP systems link together an organization’s strategy, structure, and business processes with the IT system. The different way of handling the process of ERP implementation brings about many success and failure stories. By doing research on 1) what are the critical success factors in the implementation of ERP 2) why are these factors critical 3) what is the criticality degree of each factor 4) how important are these factors for customers, consultants, and vendors, the report aims to to identify the critical success factors in ERP implementation and understand the criticality degree of each factor from the perspectives of three parties (companies, consultants & vendors).

The research is proceeded with combined methods of qualitative and quantitative. The qualitative method for the interviews was chosen in order to get the information in depth. A semi-structured interview helps to provide some basic questions as guideline.

Furthermore, the quantitative approach contributes to manipulating the data for a more comprehensive analysis of empirical findings. This report states 11 CSFs (Critical Success Factors) from three points of view: strategic, tactical, and cultural. They are: Top management support and ERP strategy, Business Process Reengineering, Project team & change management, Retain the experienced employee, Consultant and vendor support, Monitoring and evaluation of performance, Problems anticipation (troubleshooting, bugs, etc.), Organizational culture, Effective communication, and Cultural diversity. By testing the perceived CSFs in six respondents (VSM Group, Scania, Sogeti, SYSteam, Oracle, and SAP), this report puts the 11 factors into three overall ranks (most critical, medium critical, and less critical), gains 3 other new critical factors (testing, business model, and client’s resources), and clarifies the diverse opinions about CSFs from customers/companies, consultants, and vendors. The most critical factors are Top management support, BPR, Project team & change management, and Effective communication. The medium critical factors go to ERP strategy, Consultant and vendor support, and Organizational culture. And the remaining 4 factors belong to less critical category.

For the differences, their agreement comes into the 4 most critical factors. In monitoring and evaluation of performance they agree on its less criticality. All customers, consultants and vendors have quite different opinions about the remaining 6 factors.

Reviewing the research questions, this report has fulfilled the main objectives and purpose. With better understanding of the comprehensive identification of CSFs and criticality rank of each factor, management will be able to judge and allocate essential resources that are required to bring ERP implementation into success.

Small and Medium Size Enterprises (SMEs) constitute the backbone of many economies in the world today. This is because they are creating new jobs and contributing positively to their respective economies in which Sweden is not an exception and par-ticularly the municipality of Jonkoping. SMEs invest in IT to gain access to integration of transactions oriented data and business processes.

This thesis, motivational factors for growth in SMEs – (IT perspective) give an overview of how SMEs grow as a result of the introduction and implementation of IT. Information Technology (IT) is seen to be a motivational factor for the growth of SMEs. This is because it acts like an enabler to their businesses and the current business environment.

To answer the research question, I conducted an empirical study of some companies in Jonkoping that are using IT as a motivational factor for growth. Interviews were con-ducted through the use of a structured questionnaire and to a lesser extent, unstructured questionnaire.

Results from studies portrayed that, these companies introduced and implemented IT as a motivational factor for similar reasons though with different objectives.

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has been considered a tool that can be used to achieve development goals in developing countries. In the same time, the majority of people living in developing countries, and especially those in rural areas lack access to ICT. Even if there have been many attempts to introduce ICT, they have in general not been long-lasting.

A framework for studying factors that influence use of ICT is desirable. We see it necessary to bring a sustainability aspect into the picture of ICT. In this work the requirement of ‘sustainable ICT use’ stresses that ICT is long-lasting and that ICT meets the needs of the user. Thus, the aim of this work is to develop a tool for conceptualisation that can support the understanding of the conditions for sustainable, and therefore successful, ICT projects in developing countries.

Our theoretical starting point is taken in the Information System (IS) theories. The theoretical base is then broadened to include theories on international development, theories on sustainable development, and theories on diffusion of innovations and transfer of technology. The theoretical foundation, together with four empirical studies, is used to answer the two research questions in this thesis. The first question is: Which are the critical factors influencing sustainable ICT use in developing countries? By using ‘critical factors’ we emphasise a focus on factors which are crucial (even if possibly not sufficient) for bringing about sustainable ICT use. This question is followed by a second question: How would a framework be structured to properly include these factors in order to support analyses of sustainable ICT use?

The framework has evolved through the identification of factors from four empirical studies. Forty-one factors were identified and sorted into fifteen subcategories of five major capital assets. The main contribution of our study is that of a generic framework, which can be used as a guideline for planning, implementation, and evaluation of ICT projects in a rural developing country context achieving sustainable ICT. As argued in this thesis technology is not the key resource; it is the combination and system of different resources distributed along a time and space dimension that is the key. With our framework we have demonstrated that the ICT artefact is not the sustainability tool, it is the combination of different resources that makes it sustainable and competitive.

Preservation of information is not a new issue but preservation of digital information has a relatively short history. Since the 60’s when computers began to be used within administration, digital information that has had to be preserved over time.The problem addressed in this research is how to preserve understandable information over time. Information is context dependent, which means that without context it is not possible to use the information. Process is one part of the context. And an important issue when preserving information is then to be able to trace an information

object to the process where in it has been created and managed. Associating information to a particular process creates the possibility of relating information objects to each other and also to the context in which the information has been created and used. The aim of this thesis is to identify and structure factors that can improve the traceability between information and processes over time. A set of factors based on case studies and a set of analytical methods are presented that can improve the traceability over time. These factors have been identified and structured by the use of the Synergy-4 model. They have been identified within four different spheres namely: competence, management, organization/procedure and technology. The factors have further been structured in three different time states namely: creation time, short and middle term and long-term. The research concludes that there are a lot of factors influencing ability to preserve information. Preservation issues include selection of metadata standards, organizational culture, lack of understanding from management and formalization of documents. The conclusion is that if an organization wants to succeed in preserving traceable information they have to build strategies that cover the issues from a range of different angles. This thesis suggests that crucial angles are competence, management, organization/procedure

and technology. Furthermore, the strategies must be in place at the stage of creationof the information objects.

Date: 2008-06-04

Course: EIK 034 Masters Thesis

Authors: Laxmi Rao & Zarina Osmonalieva

Tutor: Ole Liljefors

Title: Which factors facilitate the management of external knowledge?

Introduction: Today more and more organisations are realising that handling internal and external knowledge is a key issue for successful performance. Different theories describe the importance of this topic, for instance, Porter’s Five Forces model and Hedman & Kalling’s General Business Model demonstrate how organizations are strongly influenced by external forces. Hedman & Kalling’s model particularly demonstrates that organizations need to have the competence, capability and resources to effectively manage external knowledge in order to increase their competitiveness and develop and improve their long term survival.

Purpose: Nicholas Carr highlights that for the past decade organizational investment in IT and IS has reached nearly 50% of capital expenditure, while the organizations see little or no performance improvement as a result of this investment. While IT systems are good at storing and retrieving information, the success of the systems heavily relies on the quality of the external and internal knowledge used both during development and usage. A deeper awareness of factors which facilitate the management of external knowledge is relevant to IT managers (indeed all managers) as it will help to facilitate the development and implementation of information systems and technology which are designed to facilitate knowledge management in organisations.

Methodology: In the thesis factors related to effective management of external knowledge are identified and described. The General Business Model was used as a tool to identify and categorize the literature review into key themes.

Conclusions One of the findings is that most published research focuses on factors internal to organizations such as activities and resources and there are few papers dealing with external factors for knowledge management. It was also found that literature which focussed on external factors mainly focused on the role of individuals as resources who cross the boundary of the organization in order to acquire and diffuse the external knowledge. In general the topic of external knowledge management is not studied in a holistic way. The acquisition and diffusion processes have been investigated as separate, but not as the whole process.

This dissertation couples the growing corpus of human subjects and behavioral research in information security with large-scale data and robust quantitative methods. Linking human subject experimentation with theoretical models enables the information security community to reason more effectively about the system-wide effects of user behavior. I examine how users interact with the digital environment, how those interactions affect decision-making, and how aggregate decision-making affects system-wide vulnerabilities. This interdisciplinary challenge requires a combination of techniques from cognitive neuroscience, social network analysis, human-subjects research, dynamical systems, network theory, and agent-based models.

In the first section, eye-tracking data demonstrates the relationships between expertise and online perceptual awareness of security cues. Expertise is shown to be only a small factor in attention to security cues, and task-type proves to be much larger indicator of attention, with tasks requiring the use of personal accounts driving attention to cues. This section uses Bayesian ANOVA to evaluate users' perceptual awareness of security cues as they complete common online tasks, as it relates to user sophistication and task type.

The second section uses a theoretical epidemiological model of malware spread to investigate factors that might mitigate the prevalence of malware in a coupled, two-population model. This both demonstrates that cost is the largest factor for affecting malware prevalence, outside of malware infection rates, and identifies appropriate strategies for system-wide botnet mitigation.

The final section utilizes an agent-based model of mobile application adoption combined with social network data and mobile marketplace policy. The result is an examination of the dynamic effects of user and market behavior on the spread of mobile malware and the second order effects, such as privacy loss, due to that spread. This model reveals that well-regulated markets are effective at limiting malware spread, but user behavior grows in importance as markets become less restricted.

Each study examines ways in which users interact with their technology, the aggregate effects of those behaviors, and identifies possible inflection points to change system-wide behaviors. This dissertation integrates empirical behavioral studies to develop a better understanding of digital behavior, thus enabling a more holistic approach to information security.

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Information Technology (IT) architecture is not restricted to technology, but may also address the views of business activities
their processes
data sets and information flows
applications and software
and technology. The objective of this study is to understand the role of IT Architecture and related factors that support competitive business advantage. This study investigates the null hypothesis: IT architecture enhances the competitive advantage of business. This study sets out to explore IT architecture and strategic factorsthat support business advantage. The study findings indicated that business advantage is supported by a sound architecture, by IT and business alignmentand by the enablers of organisations..."