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There are far too many Information Systems (IS) projects which end in failure. It is widely recognised that the primary reasons for this are essentially human and organisational and rarely technical. Although it is found that the vast majority of IT specialists consider human and organisational issues to be of equal if not of greater importance than technical issues, in practice they are still focusing on technical aspects at the expense of human and organisational issues in Information Systems Development (ISD) and implementation. Despite the awareness of the importance of human and organisational issues in ISD, little is known about how these issues can actually be addressed. This study attempts to fill this gap by investigating empirically how, when and by tinhorn a set of 14 specific organisational issues are treated in practice, and explores whether the treatment of this set of issues is dependent upon the employment of specific Systems Development Methods (SDM) or the successful adoption of organisationally oriented best practice factors. In excess of 2,250 questionnaires were posted to IS/IT directors in different British organisations which had over 250 employees, and 344 valid responses were received. This mail survey was followed by a series of focus groups interviewees with IT practitioners. It was envisaged that the integration of the two strategies would provide a very effective mechanism for combining the complementary advantages of the qualitative and quantitative research approaches. The interviews provided a richer picture of the research statistical results and explored their meaning and implications. This research presents empirical evidence that the level of organisational issues consideration, the tinting of treatment, and the person/people responsible for the treatment during ISD significantly influence the overall level of systems' success. The findings also show that there is a significant correlation between the adoption of best practice factors and the overall success of IS and the treatment of organisational issues. There is, however, no significant relationship between the use of systems development methods and the overall success of IS or the treatment of organisational issues. These findings suggest that it is not the choice of a specific systems method that ensures the consideration of a wide range of organisational issues, but the successful adoption of the organisationally oriented best practices approaches.

The current state of electronic commerce in tourism shows that it has become an increasingly complicated task for travellers to locate and integrate disparate information as a result of the rapid growth in the number of online travel sites. Therefore, new means of automating the searching and decision-making tasks are needed. A review of current literature shows that software agents are deemed to be highly suitable for delivering solutions to these problems. However, agents have failed to penetrate the electronic marketplace so far. An analysis of the reason for this failure has led the author to conclude that a new type of architecture is required, allowing a simple and useful first wave product to accelerate the penetration of agents. For this purpose, a proof-of-concept multi-agent prototype - Personal Travel Assistant (PTA) was developed. Firstly, user requirements were compared against what existing network and agent technologies could deliver. Then, a number of obstacles were identified that were used as guidelines to derive the prototype architecture. To overcome the main obstacles in the design, PTA used existing HTTP servers to tackle the interoperability problem and keep development costs low. A multi-agent collaborative learning strategy was designed to speed up knowledge acquisition by transferring and adapting rules encoded in the Java language. The construction of PTA goes to prove that an open multi-agent system could be deployed in a short time by standardising a small but adaptable set of communication protocols instead of going through a complex and lengthy standardisation process. Also, PTA's structure enables fully distributed computing thus minimising the necessary changes in existing hardware and software infrastructure. The major contribution of PTA to this research area is that its architecture is unique. It is hoped that it will lay the first step on the roadmap that would lead the evolution of agents into the next stage of development.

Thesis (MTech (Business Information Systems))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2015. / The objective of the thesis is to determine the role Business Informatics plays in transforming an organisation using a selected organisation in Cape Town as a case study. Business informatics is an emerging discipline that combines various aspects of business management, information technology and informatics. Informatics is broadly defined as the science of processing information; thus, increasingly, it involves processing and analysing information digitally with the aid of computers. Therefore the aim of the research was to understand what components of business informatics are being leveraged to transform businesses, and the challenges thereof. This was done using a social theory – duality of technology from Orlikowski adapted from Giddens’ Structuration Theory (ST) as a theoretical framework, particularly, the dimensions of duality of structure. The theory was used as a lens to understand and interpret this social phenomenon - the role business informatics can play in business transformation. It is argued that business informatics concepts are able to assist in business transformation through effective use of information systems and business management concepts. In that regard, ERP system in a Cloud platform was recommended to illustrate these concepts. The concepts helped to device guidelines for determining the challenges of a business to use informatics to transform and become sustainable and competitive. Therefore, the research explained and recommended why business entities have begun to move from an application-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to cloud computing-based ERP (cloud-ERP) system. The study used the interpretive approach where qualitative philosophy was applied together with the underpinning theory and literature reviewed to design a semi-structured interview schedule as a data collection instrument. It was a case study of an Organisation where the units of analysis were the IT, Finance, HR and Sales and Marketing departments and object of analysis was 50 employees. The output is a general framework to guide businesses as to how to apply the concepts of business informatics to achieve improved business transformation.

The aim of this research is to improve the efficiency of the construction process through the application of electronic data interchange (EDI). This thesis describes the development and application of EDI messages. The messages described are targeted to provide a means for transferring construction specific information during the construction process. The definition of electronic data interchange and its technical issues are first described. The nature of EDI, replacing paper based communication with electronic messages, impacts on the way in which business is conducted, and also has far reaching legal implications due to the reliance of many legal systems on paper documents and signatures. The business and legal implications are therefore discussed in detail. The application of EDI in the construction industry is investigated by means of a literature review. This work is furthered by a longitudinal study of the construction industry's application of EDI, which consisted of two surveys at a five year interval. A model of the information flows within the traditional construction process is developed to assist in the identification of information flows suitable for EDI. A methodology for message development was produced. The methodology was then applied to develop a description data model that could be utilised in the existing bill of quantity and trading cycle messages. The bill of quantity message set was at a stage ready for trial. To determine the issues related to implementation specifically in the construction industry a trial implementation of this message set was undertaken. The official implementation undertaken by EDICON is described. Software was also developed to undertake the trial. This software was tested and proved the message set developed was suitable for the transfer of bill of quantity related information during a construction project. The factors causing the failure of the implementation of the bill of quantities message set are discussed. A number of these factors are considered valid for all construction project information flows. Finally, the use of shared project models to re-engineer construction information tasks is recommended as a means of achieving significant benefit from electronic data exchange in the construction process.

"The purpose of this study is to survey the need for key punch operators in state government agencies and the adequacy of facilities in the Tallahassee, Florida area for training potential employees in this field. This study has attempted to determine the responsibility which business educators in the Tallahassee area have in providing trained personnel for automatic data-processing departments in state agencies. An effort was made to determine whether key-punch training and training for operators of other data-processing machines can best be given in business departments of schools in the Tallahassee area, in on-the-job training programs within the various state agencies, in offices of manufacturers of automatic data-processing equipment, or in cooperative programs"--Introduction. / Typescript. / "January, 1969." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts." / Advisor: Frank Dame, Professor Directing Study. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 85-89).

Includes bibliography. / The area of interest in which this Study is set is the linking of a company's business strategies with its strategic planning for IT (information technology). The objectives of the Study are: to investigate how the IT planning environment is changing for business enterprises in South Africa; to establish how successfully South African companies are managing IT strategically; to propose a new approach to strategic IT decision making that will help South African management deal with the major issues; to propose a way of implementing the approach. In Chapter 2, conclusions are drawn from an examination of the key strategic IT planning literature. It appears that fundamental changes are indeed taking place, and are producing significant shifts in the way researchers, consultants and managers think about IT. The survey of South African management opinion is described in Chapter 3. The opinions analyzed range over environmental trends, strategic decision making practices, and what an acceptable strategic IT decision making framework would look like. The need for a new, comprehensive approach to strategic IT decision making in South Africa is clearly established. In Chapter 4, a theoretical Framework is proposed as a new, comprehensive approach to strategic IT decision making. The Framework covers five strategic tasks: analysing the key environmental issues; determining the purposes and uses of IT in competitive strategy and organizational designs; developing the IT infrastructure, human systems, information systems, and human resources to achieve these purposes and uses; implementing the strategic IT decisions; and learning to make better strategic IT decisions. In Chapter 5, ways of implementing the Framework in practice are .identified. A means of evaluating its acceptability in a specific company is also proposed. The general conclusions of the Study are presented in Chapter 6. The Framework developed in this Study is intended for use, not directly by the IT decision makers themselves, but by the persons responsible for designing the IT decision making processes of the company. It is not, however, offered as a theory or a methodology. The aim is· simply to provide a conceptual "filing system", to help designers uncover and classify the IT strategy problems of their own company, to identify the tools their decision makers need, and to put appropriate problem solving processes in place.