Dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Master of Technology: Information Technology in the Faculty of Informatics and Design at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology / Establishing Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) is one of the options for South Africa to grow and develop the economy by creating and maintaining employment. SMMEs need to utilise technology innovation in their businesses for the sustenance of their growth and development in the market. Although Information Technology (IT) has been identified as a key enabler of businesses, the adoption of IT by small businesses is low, owing to different disparaging factors and conditions SMMEs are faced with. The factors culminate in challenges which hinder evaluation, adoption and use of new technology innovation by SMMEs to develop the business. The aim of the study is to explore the evaluation and adoption of new technology by SMMEs. The research objectives are to investigate the evaluation factors affecting decision making and choice of technology adoption, and the effect evaluation and non-evaluation of new technology has on the business. The purpose of the research is to establish the challenges SMMEs encounter with evaluating new technology by SMMEs, being that evaluation is a major contributing factor to the successful adoption of new technology by SMMEs. The study takes the form of a multiple interpretive case study employing both qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection. Qualitative data was collected using semi-structured interviews with 15 managers/owners of SMMEs. Quantitative data was collected in the form of an online survey and results were used against the qualitative data analysis process, with categories formed and patterns identified in the data samples. The research reveals that SMMEs find it increasingly difficult to obtain knowledge on available new technology for business. SMMEs are unable to adequately determine how new technology could align with the business objectives and processes. It seems that government does not play any significant role in the SMME adoption process of new technology. Most SMMEs are oblivious to any government initiative or support available to them. The cost of compliance within the Financial Service Provider (FSP) sector is high due to new standards set by legislation. The increased cost burden of compliance has led to the demise of many FSPs in the financial sector. The study further suggests that with quality evaluation and implementation procedures of new technology, the selected technology will have a positive effect on the SMME industry. SMMEs need to embrace an evaluation culture and practice to enable them to make quality decisions on new technology in order to capitalise on the potential the technology has to offer. This could lead to gaining a competitive advantage and ensuring survival and growth in the market. Guidelines on new technology evaluation and adoption are proposed to SMMEs. These guidelines will assist SMMEs to evaluate and identify all factors relating to the business environment affecting the evaluation of new technology for the business. The study provides new insight and understanding on how SMMEs evaluate new technology. The evaluation includes issues surrounding availability of information, awareness of opportunities, decisionmaking and the need for increased and visible government participation in the process of SMME new technology adoption.

IT ses idag som ett strategiskt verktyg med krav på uppnådd lönsamhet i alla IT-relaterade investeringar och projekt. Lönsamhet och kostnadseffektivitet är tillsammans med nya lagar och förordningar för bolagsstyrning viktiga faktorer som fordrar bättre IT-styrning. Att bedöma och värdera affärsnytta och nyttoeffekter av IT innebär att se vad IT’s egentliga värde är för verksamheten och dess affärsprocesser. Genom att använda någon av de nyare metoderna för nyttobedömning som också har fokus på oväntade och dolda kostnader men framför allt inkluderar skattning av snabba/långsamma nyttor och direkta/indirekta nyttor, så uppnår man bättre kontroll över verksamheten och att man fokuserar på rätt saker och gör dem på rätt sätt. Alla dessa delar inkluderas i fenomenet IT-styrning med vilket man har som övergripande mål att på olika sätt få ett bättre stöd till affärsverksamheten av IT. IT-styrning kan idag avsevärt underlättas genom användning av standardiserade ramverk som t ex ITIL och/eller COBIT. Dessa ramverk inkluderar metodik, anvisningar och processer baserade på ”best practices”. Undersökningen har visat att de medverkande företagen, åtminstone på IT-verksamhetsnivå, oftast anser att IT är en strategisk lönsamhetsfaktor. Som ett bevis för detta använder man sig också av ovan beskrivna ramverk för IT-styrning. Dock kan inget av företagen egentligen peka på någon reell användning av de nyare metoderna för nyttobedömning. Undersökningen kan inte bevisa påståendet att företagsledningen inte i tillräckligt omfattande grad inser IT’s vikt för affärerna, men det finns indikationer som talar för ett visst ointresse för IT på ledningsnivå. IT-styrningen kan genom sitt affärsfokus dock komma att ändra på det.

Abstract : Manufacturing companies in developed countries face a digital transformation that is meant to improve their productivity, but also produces a large volume of data. This data will go to waste if it is not valorized by using it to gain actionable insights, for example with business intelligence and analytics. This master’s thesis presents a systematic literature review and a multiple case-study on the subject of Business Intelligence in manufacturing companies. The first article, “Business Intelligence in Industry 4.0: Research opportunities”, present a literature review. Results show a lack of studies on the impacts of business intelligence activities on manufacturing small and medium enterprises. The strategic impacts should be studied, since they are often neglected in favor of the operational impacts such as quality improvement and operating costs reductions. The second article, “Business intelligence value creation: A multiple case study in manufacturing SMEs”, presents an exploration of the factors influencing strategic and operational business values of business intelligence. Results show the limit of the traditional models based on the Resource-Based View of the firm, which overlooks organizational factors that might be more important in smaller organizations. Contingency factors, such as organisational learning, leadership style, and the role of the owner, should be included when studying small and medium enterprises, as in these smaller organizations the lack of resources and the simpler structure affect business value of business intelligence and analytics systems differently than in larger firms. There is an interesting potential for the model suggested in this master’s thesis to understand the factors linked to business value creation in smaller organization, which should be empirically tested with a larger and more diverse sample in a future study. / Ce mémoire présente les travaux réalisés dans le cadre de ma maîtrise en Stratégie de l’intelligence d’affaires, de l’École de Gestion de l’Université de Sherbrooke. Il consiste en deux articles. Le premier est une revue de littérature systématique ayant été soumise et acceptées à la 51e édition de Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, qui a eu lieu du 3 au 6 janvier 2018. Il est présenté intégralement au chapitre deux. Le second article, présenté dans sa version longue au chapitre trois, a été soumis à la 7e édition de International Conference on Information Systems, Logistics and Supply Chain qui aura lieu du 8 au 10 juillet 2018. Les notices d’acceptation seront envoyées après la date de dépôt de ce mémoire. Toutes les preuves de soumissions sont présentées dans les annexes de ce mémoire. Les articles ont tous été rédigé par moi, Fanny-Ève Bordeleau, qui a également réalisé toutes les prises de données et les analyses, assistée de mes co-directeurs, les professeurs Elaine Mosconi et Luis Antonio De Santa-Eulalia.

Text mining is an enabling technology that will come to change the process for how businesses derive insights & knowledge from the textual data available to them. The current literature has its focus set on the text mining algorithms and techniques, whereas the practical aspects of text mining are lacking. The efforts of this study aims at helping companies understand what the business value of text mining is with the help of a case study. Subsequently, an SMS-survey method was used to identify additional business areas where text mining could be used to derive business value from. A literature review was conducted to conceptualize the business value of text mining, thus a concept matrix was established. Here a business category and its relative: derived insights & knowledge, domain, and data source are specified. The concept matrix was from then on used to decide when information was of business value, to prove that text mining could be used to derive information of business value.Text mining analyses was conducted on traffic school data of survey feedback. The results were several patterns, where the business value was derived mainly for the categories of Quality Control & Quality Assurance. After comparing the results of the SMS-survey with the case study empiricism, some difficulties emerged in the categorization of derived information, implying the categories are required to become more specific and distinct. Furthermore, the concept matrix does not comprise all of the business categories that are sure to exist.

The implementation of electronic business (e-business) in organisations has led to a major improvement in business performance in both developed and developing countries. This improvement as well as market forces have put pressure on Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) to adopt e-business. However, the e-business models adopted by SMEs are often abstruse and poorly represented, which leads to time consumption and miscommunication between the stakeholders involved, the business operations and Information Technology (IT) functions. These unclear e-business models make it difficult to evaluate its value. This research examines the elements necessary for this e-business value creation and draws from different disciplines and theories to create a comprehensive model for e-business evaluation in Southern African SMEs. Most studies done on e-business in Southern Africa have been found to be on challenges of technology, a lack of resources such as financial and user capabilities and challenges in business processes. Some gaps in the e-business literature have been found to exist on issues of alignment of business mission and strategy, entrepreneurial drive and management capabilities. The study adopted Gerbner’s theory of communication exchange for the data collection strategy and process, which posits that by studying the events of the communication exchange, one can infer about the state of the systems engaged in the exchange and their relationships. Consequently quantitative website content analysis of 100 Southern African SMEs was conducted to determine their e-business value. The results revealed that an SME that comprises of a properly aligned business mission and strategy, business processes that are enabled by e-business, an entrepreneurship orientation, management capabilities and employees as well as technology integration will achieve ebusiness value. This was seen by a positive influence of 68% on e-business value from these elements. Conversely 32% of this influence is from external elements, and future studies could explore more elements that influence e-business value. Also, a small employee size was found to not be a hindrance of e-business value. Lastly, overall infrastructural e-readiness is the same in Botswana and South Africa, which refutes claims that e-readiness is higher in South Africa than the rest of the Southern African countries. However, SMEs in Botswana lag behind when it comes to technological aspects such as technology equipment, successfully integrating their systems within the businesses; and their IT in their entire businesses and networks, forming technology interdependencies of processes with external businesses, and using online means to transfer information to clients/customers. The developed model (EBVE model) could help (1) stakeholders investigate, communicate and make appropriate decisions and (2) aid SMEs to successfully integrate e-business in their business processes and practices.

The recent increase in the amount of stored company data and exceeding interest in data analysis has resulted in new requirements on Data Warehousing solutions. This has led to the development of Data Warehouse Appliances, which this research project aims to investigate the business value of. The result is intended to support companies that are considering an investment, and give them an understanding of the technology’s benefits. The research project was conducted in two parts. Vendors of the Appliance technology were interviewed, as well as their customers. The results from the vendor interviews together with a literature study provided a knowledge base for the analysis of the user companies’ interviews. The results clearly indicate that there is value in the technology for larger companies. The research shows that although the main benefits advocated by the vendors match the perceived ones of the user companies, there are other aspects which they value even more. Examples of this include a reduced amount of administrative tasks and support from a single source. The research also reveals that the benefits estimated by the customer at the time of purchase were not their most valued benefits in hindsight. / Företag lagrar allt större datamängder och låter dessa ligga till grund för komplicerade dataanalyser, vilket ställer nya krav på deras befintliga Data Warehouse--‐lösningar. Detta har lett till utvecklingen av Data Warehouse Appliance, vars affärsnytta detta projekt syftar till att utreda. Resultatet kommer tillhandahålla beslutsunderlag för de företag som överväger en investering i tekniken. Undersökningen genomfördes i två steg. Intervjuer genomfördes med leverantörer som tillhandahåller tekniken såväl som med deras användande kunder. Resultaten från leverantörsintervjuerna tillsammans med en omfattande litteraturstudie låg sedan till grund för den analys som gjordes av intervjuerna med de användande företagen. Resultaten visar på ett verkligt värde i tekniken för företag med stora datamängder. Undersökningen visar att de fördelar som framhålls som teknikens främsta av leverantörerna bekräftas av deras användande kunder, men att det finns andra vinster de värdesätter ännu mer. Dessa inkluderar en minskad teknisk komplexitet, en minskad mängd administrativa uppgifter samt support från en enda källa. Undersökningen visar även att de faktorer som spelat störst roll vid investeringen inte är desamma som tillskrivs störst värde i efterhand.

The theme of this research is to establish how South African companies evaluate the benefits of a capital investment, in terms of ERP implementations, to the organisation. The question of whether determinable value can be quantified and the methods used to calculate such value is explored. A search is conducted for critical success factors for successful ERP implementations, key metrics used for monitoring results, and the approach of South African companies to determining benefits. The research is designed to establish what post purchase analyses of completed projects are conducted and what percentage of completed implementations are considered successful in the South African environment, as well as the possible reasons for those successes and failures. The research consists of firstly a qualitative study of the goals of value creation of ERP decisions, which included a couple of interviews with IT and Process Engineering consultants to form a basis of knowledge for why companies implement ERP systems in the first place, followed by a quantitative descriptive study of the implementation success factors and post implementation analysis, by means of a survey of South African companies. The outcome of the research shows that ERP in South Africa has matured to a level where the majority of projects are judged by the key decision makers to be successful, in contrast to expectations created by the literature review performed. It also highlights that, in the capital budgeting decision making processes followed by companies of different sizes, qualitative factors play a slightly bigger role than quantitative factors in the motivation of an ERP implementation. In addition, this research concludes that companies who identify a clear business value goal with the proposed ERP implementation, ensures buy-in from top management, perform proper planning before embarking on the project, as well as follow some kind of rigorous measurement framework, experience higher levels of ERP success than those who do not. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

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Yes / Purpose – The purpose of this article is to identify how the organisations are able to improve their business value through acquisition of business analytics capabilities and by improving their performance. Design/Methodology/Approach – With the help of literature survey, along with standard resource-based view framework, a conceptual model has been developed. These have been statistically tested by collecting the data using the survey questionnaire from 306 selected respondents from various service sector and product based organisations in India. To analyse the data we have used partial least square based structural equation modelling. Findings – The study highlights that by the help of data acquisition and tool acquisition as two vital components, the acquisition of business analytics capabilities could improve the business value of the organisation by strengthening its organisational performance. The findings of this research also indicated that acquisition of business analytics capabilities has a significant influence on organisation’s business process performance and business decision, which in turn significantly influence organisational performance. And, organisational performance eventually positively influences its business value. The model was found to provide an explanative power of 71%. Research Implication – The proposed research model can provide effective recommendations to the management of the organisations to realise the importance of acquisition of effective business analytics capabilities to eventually improve the business value of the organisation. Originality/Value – No specific studies, as yet, have analysed the effects of acquisition of business analytics capabilities for improving organisational performance mediated through business process performance and business decision. Therefore, this research has explored the distinctive effort to empirically validate this understanding.

Yes / Although IT-enabled dynamic capabilities (ITDCs) add value to firms operating in turbulent and rapidly changing environments, firms face several challenges in developing, deploying, and maintaining the right portfolio of ITDCs. Since ITDCs are not uniformly advantageous, firms need to make strategic decisions in order to accomplish the complex task of achieving optimal ITDC configurations. This conceptual paper draws on the strategic alignment perspective to identify the optimal configuration of ITDCs for a firm based on its business strategy orientation indicated by the Miles and Snow typology. This paper first explicates the theoretically ideal configurations of ITDCs based on the competitive strategy patterns associated with each Miles and Snow archetype and then develops a model for measuring the strategic fit of ITDCs. This paper contributes to the literatures on ITDCs and strategic alignment by identifying optimal ITDC configurations and by conceptualizing the strategic fit of ITDCs respectively.