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Please read the abstract in the section 00front of this document. / Thesis (PhD (Industrial Systems))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Industrial and Systems Engineering / unrestricted

With the increasing amount, complexity and dynamism of operational and strategic information in electronic and distributed environment, executives are seeking assistance for continuous, self-reactive and self-adaptive activities or approaches of acquiring, synthesising and interpreting information for intelligence with a view to determining the course of action - executive intelligence activities. Executives Information Systems (EIS) were originally emerged as a computer-based tool to help senior executives to manage the search and process of information. EIS was popularised in 1990's but EIS study have not advanced to a great extent in either research or practice since its prevalence in the mid and late 1990's. Conventional EIS studies have established some views and guidelines for EIS design and development, but the guidelines underpinned by preceding research have failed to develop robust yet rational EIS for handling the current executive's information environment. The most common deficiency of traditional EIS is the static and inflexible function with predetermined information needs and processes designed for static performance monitoring and control. The current emergence of the intelligent software agent, as a concept and a technology, with applications, provides prospects and advanced solutions for supporting executive's information processing activities in a more integrated and distributed environment of the Internet. Although software agents offer the prospective to support information processing activities intelligently, executive's desires and perception of agent-based support must be elucidated in order to develop a system that is considered valuable for executives. This research attempts to identify executive criteria of an agent-based EIS for supporting executive intelligence activities. Firstly, four focus groups were conducted to explore and reveal the current state of executive's information environment and information processing behaviour in the light of Internet era, from which to examine the validity of the conventional views of EIS purpose, functions and design guidelines. Initial executive criteria for agent-based EIS design were also identified in the focus group study. Secondly, 25 senior managers were interviewed for deeper insights on value-added attributes and processes of executive criteria for building agent-based EIS. The findings suggest a "usability-adaptability-intelligence" trichotomy of agent-based EIS design model that comprises executive criteria of value-added attributes and processes for building a usable, adaptable and intelligent EIS.

Executive information systems or Business Intelligence (BI) systems are implemented in the majority of companies today. Contemporary trend is to focus these systems on the Corporate Performance Management (CPM), in which special processes, methodologies and metrics necessary for measurement and management of the business performance are used. This thesis explores how principles and tools of Competitive Intelligence (CI) may be applied in these systems. CI is another discipline useful for strategic management of a company. In the theoretical part of this thesis are briefly described principles of BI, CPM and CI. The main aim is to analyze the possibility, whether we can extend a potential of the executive information systems through the usage of Competitive Intelligence principles and technologies. This part is based especially on technical literature and other relevant sources. The practical part of the thesis explores these questions on a real system called the Business Navigation System (BNS). The aim is to analyze BNS in a viewpoint of Competitive Intelligence serviceability and to design new functionality. The contribution of this thesis in the theoretic area is the consideration; whether it's possible to derive benefit from the principles of CI in the executive information systems. The practical contribution is an evaluation of BNS and the suggestions, how to involve technologies of CI to the some modules of this system.

Datorbaserade informationssystemsstöd för företagsledningen, finns det sådana? Är det någon som använder dem och kan de göra någon nytta? Ett område som varit föremål för ett stort intresse sedan början av 1990-talet är ledningsinformationssystem. I populärpressen kunde man läsa ett flertal framgångsartiklar om hur ledningen nu börjat använda dessa verktyg: ”Äntligen har det kommit ett verktyg som chefer och ledningspersoner kan använda för att styra och följa upp verksamheten, få bättre beslutsunderlag och erhålla aktuell information om företaget och dess omvärld”. I denna avhandling har utvecklingen av användningen av ledningsinformationssystem i Sveriges 200 största företag följts under 1990-talet. Studien kartlägger faktorer som påverkar om företag väljer att införa ledningsinformationssystem och diskuterar hur olika faktorer påverkar användningen av ledningsinformationssystem. Ser man till utvecklingen framgår att användningen av ledningsinformationssystem är relativt låg, men ökande. Många företag har planerat att införa system, men realiseringsgraden av planerna är låg. Ledningsinformationssystem är vanligast bland större företag och det är viktigt att det är koncernledningen som kommer med idén till att införa ett system. I systemen finns mest information från interna källor och andelen extern information är låg. Det som driver företag att införa ledningsinformationssystem är framförallt behov av snabbare, mer tillgänglig och mer enhetlig information. Framgångsrika system ger koncernledningen bättre möjligheter att följa verksamheten och underlättar ledningsgruppens dialog och kommunikation med underställda chefer och enheter inom koncernen. / <p>Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2005</p>

En styrelses uppgifter är avgörande för verksamheten, där beslutstagande och effektivitet blir allt viktigare med tiden. Som hjälpmedel för styrelser finns exekutiva affärssystem genom SaaS- tjänster som erbjuder digitala verktyg för styrelsen att effektivisera sitt arbete. Implementering av sådana system har däremot av tidigare forskning noterats riskfylld och problematisk, vilket givit upphov till forskning om kritiska framgångsfaktorer för implementeringen av SaaS- tjänster.

高階主管在面臨日益艱難的經濟情勢與經營環境〈主要是來自消費者(Customers)、競爭(Competition)及變動(Change)等3C的壓力）時，依賴傳統組織架構及報告系統來獲取決策資訊的作法，其有效性正受到強烈的質疑。高階主管資訊系統(Executive　Information Systems,EIS)可說是九○年代電腦資訊系統應用的新領域，它以易學易用的圖形使用者介面、多維分析及往下展開的特性，使高階主管能迅速存取各種攸關其企業成敗的關鍵性資訊。由於其親切易用，近年來EIS的應用更沿組織階層向下發展，成為Everyone Information Systems。在企業發展EIS日趨普遍的情況下，一套系統化的分析設計方法更形重要。 　　然而，在相關的文獻中對EIS的發展方法並沒有提出具體的執行步驟，只有概念性的描述，不易引導開發人員及高階主管將其策略理念轉換為資訊需求，而許多發展EIS失敗的例子，正是由於系統資訊需求不正確、時間與成本超出預算、操之過急及政治因素等所造成。因此實務界人士據其顧問經驗提出一個EIS快速發展方法，強調雛型系統的快速建立以爭取高階主管的持續支持及系統的後續發展。但因仍缺乏系統化的需求分析方法，系統發展者往往需經多次歷練才能領悟其中訣竅，也不易將個人經驗傳授於他人。因此雖然企業組織眾人已感受到EIS的重要性，相關的軟硬體工具也可親易用，而EIS的成功推展卻仍受到相當限制。 　　有鑑於此，本論文以符合文獻中對EIS發展方法之概念性描述的「資訊導向」觀念為基礎，並參考快速雛型系統發展方式，運用「中間擴散」(Middle-Out)方向，整合策略分析及資訊系統規劃的具體作法，發展一套結構化的EIS發展方法，稱為EISAD，含目標分析、關鍵成功要素分析、主要績效指標分析、資料分析、資料庫設計、輸出設計、轉換設計、程序及控制設計等步驟。並以金融業為例：說明此方法論的實際運用過程。以期在理論上對EIS發展方法論，及實務上對金融資訊系統應用層次之提昇有所貢獻。 / Due to the rapid changes of business environment and the increasing customer demands and competition pressure, it is getting important to have Executive Information Systems(EIS) to help executives access to high-level strategic information. Recently, EIS has even evolved down the organization hierarchy to become "Everyone Information Systems". The increasing EIS demand endues the needs for EIS development methodology. However, the literature contains only a few academic studies of EIS development methods which are broad and vague. The EIS development has not been researched in a rigorous and systematic manner. Many practitioners adopt a rapid prototyping approach to attract the executives for further support. Due to the lack of a systematic approach to help extracting the user requirements, it is usually up to the developer's experience to informally address the executives' information needs and this experience is hard to be transferred to others. In this thesis, we propose an EIS development methodology, called EISAD, based on the information-oriented concepts and middle-out system development direction. EISAD integrates related tools in strategic analysis and information systems planning as a structurized EIS development methodology. The step by step explanation of the EISAD is illustrated using a banking example.