Industrial selling processes are complex phenomena. The involvement of diverse persons and the prevalence of service elements in integrated sales offerings have meant that collaboration and dialogue are now essential aspects of any successful selling process. The present study is based on the premise that these essential aspects of contemporary industrial selling processes have not been sufficiently conceptualised in the extant literature and that new concepts are therefore required. In particular, relevant new concepts that are based on the personal experiences of the actors involved in the selling process are urgently needed. Grounded-theory methodology was chosen for this inductive study because this approach is especially suitable for the development of empirically based concepts derived from the real-life experiences of involved actors who are addressing their issues of concern. The substantive theory that is subsequently produced by this grounded-theory approach posits a core category of ‘business manoeuvring’ as the basic social process whereby the involved actors resolve their main concern—which is the conduct of effective business. This resolution is achieved within the core category of ‘business manoeuvring’ by the judicious management of mutually dependent and complementary activities, which are reflected in the other categories of the substantive theory—(i) ‘business standardisation’; (ii) ‘business fraternisation’; (iii) ‘personalisation’; and (iv) ‘probationary business rationalisation’. A comparison of the present study’s substantive theory with alternative models in the literature reveals that the broader scope and integration of the proposed substantive theory provides it with greater explanatory power than extant models; however, it is acknowledged that the proposed theory lacks the detailed depth of other models. The successful development of a substantive theory that grasps the main concern of the involved actors and adequately describes its continuous resolution means that this study has achieved its primary purpose of developing empirically based, actor-related concepts that provide an enhanced understanding of the theory and practice of complex selling processes in contemporary industrial markets.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att skapa förståelse för, varför företag väljer att outsourca sin ekonomifunktion utomlands, samt identifiera eventuella oförutsedda kostnader. För att illustrera detta genomförs en fallstudie på företaget Dell. Våra data har vi inhämtat genom en kvalitativ undersökning i form av en fallstudie på företaget Dell. Vi har valt att genomföra en längre intervju med två nyckelpersoner på det svenska kontoret i Solna. I teoriavsnittet presenteras litteratur och artiklar om vad outsourcing är och innebär samt forskningsartiklar gjorda om varför företag outsourcar sin ekonomifunktion och vad de önskar uppnå. Vidare presenteras även artiklar om den skepticism som stundtals finns kring outsourcing och dess fördelar. Vår undersökning baseras på den intervju vi har gjort med Dells nordiska redovisnings chef samt den person som är Nordic Credit Manager och därmed har nära kontakt med outsourcingparten i Riga. Vi kommer genom vår studie fram till att företag främst outsourcar ekonomifunktionen i syfte att nå kostnadsbesparingar via ökad effektivitet och standardisering av processer samt lägre personalkostnader, men att även strävan efter expertis gör outsourcing till något eftersträvansvärt. Vi finner att outsourcing av ekonomifunktionen innebär kostnader i form av risken för att företaget väljer fel utomstående part, högre personalomsättning, kulturella och språkliga barriärer, minskad flexibilitet och initiativtagande. Vissa av kostnaderna är specifikt kopplade till outsourcing utomlands. Sammantaget kommer dessa kostnader att minska det förväntade positiva utfallet av outsourcingen av ekonomifunktionen i olika påtaglig omfattning.

Information demand is a part of comprehensive business logistics which encompass logistics of information. The demand for information has provided a unifying framework for different needs on enterprise modeling. Hence, the problems organizations faces relating to flow and distribution has lead to the development of various framework for analyzing information demand and this is guided by a set of rules, methods and even a unified representation. This thesis work defines a specification for enterprise Information Demand Context model using XPDL as the language of construct. The paper gives reasons why XPDL was preferred for such a representation and show how mapping is carried out from the constructs of notations to its associated XPDL specifications, so that when we are defining a representation we are as well defining its meta model. The resulting specification is presented in such a way that it should be able to give a flexible, logical and more defined structure.

¡@¡@Since 1990s, rapidly changing business environments such as information technology advancements and global logistical competitions have brought enterprises many challenges. Recently, due to its rapid economic grow, China has become a ¡§world factory¡¨ but it will also cause the steel industry to face the problem of sterner challenges and crises for coping the huge steel demand. Most enterprises may make efforts to retain their competency and keep abreast of market status through so-called business process reengineering (BPR). Under such circumstances, it becomes very important for steel industry to integrate their business process and core competence to improve the competitive advantages. ¡@¡@Through literature review, in-depth interviews with experts and implementing experience of BPR project in steel plant, a reference model was developed to examine the core competence and facilitate the BPR. Some cases from domestic and oversea steel companies with successful experience in BPR project have been studied for validation of the model. And the result shows that this validated model can be used for the steel industry to implement their BPR projects. ¡@¡@In this study, it is also indicated that the core competence, composed of managerial system, physical system, skill and values of behavior, is very crucial to successfully fulfill the business process reengineering. The BPR project needs CEO¡¦s full support. The practical technical system and the skill of employees may speed up to build and maintain the new process. However if the new system is deemed to likely violate the rights and interests of employees, they may resist to reform. Therefore the learning organization in managerial system should guide the employees and communicate occasionally with their employees and with forming a value and a paradigm of common behavior in the company, the BPR could be actually carried out.

The cost and effort estimation of projects depend on software size. A software product size is needed at as early a phase of the project as possible. Conventional Early Functional Size Estimation methods generate size at the early phase but result in subjectivity and unrepeatability due to manual calculation. On the other hand, automated Functional Size Measurement calculation approaches require constructs which are available in considerably late software development phases. In this study we developed an approach called e-Cosmic to calculate and automate the functional size measurement based on the business processes. Functions and input and output relationship types of each function are identified in the business process model. The size of each relationship type is determined by assigning appropriate data movements based on the COSMIC Measurement Manual. Then, relationship type size is aggregated to produce the size of each function. The size of the software product is the sum of the size of these functions. Automation of this process based on business process model is performed by developing a script in the ARIS tool concept. Three case studies were conducted to validate the proposed functional size estimation method (e-Cosmic). The size of the products in the case studies are measured manually with COSMIC FSM (Abran et al, 2007) as well as using a conventional early estimation method, called Early and Quick COSMIC FFP. We compared the results of different approaches and discussed the usability of e-Cosmic based on the findings.

The majority of organizations make their business processes explicit to improve them. Defining business processes manually and modeling them are two alternatives utilized for this purpose. Meanwhile, organizations have quality management systems which are frequently shaped by frameworks. The most commonly used process improvement frameworks in the IT sector are ITIL, Cobit, CMMI and ISO 9001. These frameworks indicate the necessity of process documentation and ISO 9001 addresses the name &ldquo / Quality Manual&rdquo / for this purpose. In this thesis, an automated tool is developed for quality manual generation from predetermined business process models. In addition, a case study is performed by means of a systematic approach and its results were discussed with the findings of structured interviews. The aim of the study is to reduce the effort and time required for quality manual preparation and merge quality management activities with process modeling by means of process documentation.

Business process modeling has become a common need for organizations. Therefore process quality is also having an important role for the organizations. The most of the quality studies are based on cost and time which can be analyzed during or after the execution of the business processes. There are also quality measures which help analyzing measures before the execution of the business processes. This type of measures can give early feedback about the processes. There are three frameworks defined in the literature for a more comprehensive measurement. One of the frameworks is adapted from software programs and it aims to enable process design to be less error-prone, understandable and maintainable. The second framework is adapted from object-oriented software designs and it provides object-oriented view to the design of the business process. The last framework is adapted from ISO/IEC Software Product Quality enabling to measure the quality of process itself rather than the design. By conducting a case study, the measures defined in the frameworks are explored in terms of applicability, automation potential and required time and effort on a set of business process model. As a result of this study it is observed that measurement takes time and requires effort and is always error-prone. Therefore, an approach is implemented by automating the measures which have automation potential, in order to decrease the required time and effort and also to increase the accuracy of the measurement. The second case study is then conducted on a set of another business process models in order to validate the approach.

Business process reengineering (BPR) has been considered as one of the key approaches to increasing the competitive edge of many modern enterprises. Many big enterprises have taken diversified degree of reengineering to their business processes. The importance of understanding the existing business processes and evaluating the new business processes before they are actually deployed is commonly recognized. Without careful examination of the existing and new business processes, the change in business process. In this research, we look into the business process analysis issues under the scope of BPR. We first examine various models for business processes. As each model is invented with a purpose, e.g., for identifying the critical path in a factory manufacturing environment, for automating workflow in an office environment, etc., they may not be completely suitable for business process analysis. We try to identify the requirements of business process analysis and propose a model to meet these requirements. We finally design and implement a business process analyzer. This business process analyzer use our proposed business process model and is able to answer the queries from the BPR team expressed by our proposed query language.

Component base software development methodology is the most important technological revolution of software industry in the past few years. Straightly to push forward software industry from taking handiwork as principle thing, gradually to get into automation assisting tool procreation¡¦s automation industry. Component base software development technology give way to business information system easy fabricate flexibly. System developer may assemble software components depending on user requirement. We can increase or subtract system components to modulate a section of system capability any time. But do not influence whole system, only contained a part of system components. This thesis brings up an object-process methodology to apply develop a business distributed information system. Using object-process methodology to find business objects from business process. We can divide system analysis into two parts and eight steps, to analyze the user requirement than to design information system to guide stable software objects and system framework. Through object-process business system helps we establish the model of the complex business system, mapping the real world activity or the abstract conception into system model. We can analyze and design distributed objects efficiently for distributed operation system environment needed. Proceeding to the next step, to transform software model and to seal up distributed component object module (DCOM), than to put DCOM into system application layer. Let the business information system flexibly and ample fitting in user requirement.

<p>Many of today’s organizations are striving to find ways to make faster and better decisions about their business. One way to achieve this is to develop a data warehouse, offering novel features such as data mining and ad hoc querying on data collected and integrated from many of the computerized systems used in the organization. A data warehouse is of vital interest for decision makers and may reduce uncertainty in decision making. The relationship between data warehousing and business processes may be used at the pre-deployment stage of a data warehouse project, i.e. during the actual development of the data warehouse, as an opportunity to change business processes in an organization. This may then result in improved business processes that in turn may result in a better performing data warehouse. By focusing on the pre-deployment stage instead of the post-deployment stage, we believe that the costs for development will decrease, since needs for changes detected early in a development project probably will be detected anyway, but in a later stage where changes in the business processes may cause a need to restructure the finished data warehouse. We are therefore interested in which factors that may cause a need for changes in the business processes during the pre-deployment stage of a data warehouse project, the types of business processes affected, and also if there is any correspondence between factors that trigger changes and business processes affected.</p><p>Based on a literature survey and an interview study, general triggering factors to change business processes have been identified, such as needs for new organizational knowledge and for prioritization of goals etc. We have also found that needs for changes more often concern supporting processes than other types of business processes. We have also found a general correspondence at a type level between triggering factors and affected business processes.</p><p>In combination with the results and conclusions presented, we have also identified propositions for future work, which will refine and confirm the ideas presented here.</p>