<p>ABSTRACT</p><p>e-Services, or customer service, over the Internet is becoming increasingly popular and well traveled, but it is also rapidly changing along with new needs and demands as well as new technology. Many companies are about to experience the change from just using the web as a static service tool to be able to use the web as an interactive medium and an online extension of their business. Simplexica has developed, and implemented, their own e-service where their customers have access to their personal pages where they receive news and publications. The main purpose, though, is to make their technical expertise available for their trusted partners and customers in order for them to design their own technical system and to place orders online. Simplexica’s experience from the e-service implementation has proven to be a success in some markets, within some areas and with some customers, but the e-service is still struggling to get utilized to it’s full potential and showing an return on investment.</p><p>The purpose and objective of this thesis report is to analyze and generally describe the e-service portal and the e-service business process used by Simplexica today in order to find areas and functions within e-service which Simplexica can use and apply to improve their existing e-service business process. This thesis report also aims to analyze and evaluate the return on investment of the e-service.</p><p>More specifically the thesis work strives to answer:</p><p> How could the e-service process in place at Simplexica today be described?</p><p> How to best globally utilize the full concept of e-service at Simplexica?</p><p> Where is the return on investment at Simplexica?</p><p>The theoretical framework includes e-services, customer relationship management, business process management and methods of identifying gains, which is combined with a hermeneutic scientific perspective, a deductive research approach and a qualitative method in order to identify and evaluate different ways of calculating a return on investment that would be useful to Simplexica.</p><p>There is no simple solution to the dilemma, but the author summarizes the findings and recommendations in a suggested action plan where changes within Simplexica’s current e-service concept and the financial benefits of the investment, are in focus by:</p><p> removing the barriers for using the e-service where a key element is to create a common understanding, internally and externally, for their current e-service and e-process.</p><p> measuring key indicators and to incorporate crucial customer data</p><p> analyzing the return on investment and estimating the effect and value of intangible benefits</p><p> establishing a model for determining a successful investment based on a variant of the 5-table</p><p> extending, upgrading and changing the current e-service by using new technology as, for instance, M2M and e-mail channeling, and to introduce a total customer service strategy throughout Simplexica.</p>

ABSTRACT e-Services, or customer service, over the Internet is becoming increasingly popular and well traveled, but it is also rapidly changing along with new needs and demands as well as new technology. Many companies are about to experience the change from just using the web as a static service tool to be able to use the web as an interactive medium and an online extension of their business. Simplexica has developed, and implemented, their own e-service where their customers have access to their personal pages where they receive news and publications. The main purpose, though, is to make their technical expertise available for their trusted partners and customers in order for them to design their own technical system and to place orders online. Simplexica’s experience from the e-service implementation has proven to be a success in some markets, within some areas and with some customers, but the e-service is still struggling to get utilized to it’s full potential and showing an return on investment. The purpose and objective of this thesis report is to analyze and generally describe the e-service portal and the e-service business process used by Simplexica today in order to find areas and functions within e-service which Simplexica can use and apply to improve their existing e-service business process. This thesis report also aims to analyze and evaluate the return on investment of the e-service. More specifically the thesis work strives to answer:  How could the e-service process in place at Simplexica today be described?  How to best globally utilize the full concept of e-service at Simplexica?  Where is the return on investment at Simplexica? The theoretical framework includes e-services, customer relationship management, business process management and methods of identifying gains, which is combined with a hermeneutic scientific perspective, a deductive research approach and a qualitative method in order to identify and evaluate different ways of calculating a return on investment that would be useful to Simplexica. There is no simple solution to the dilemma, but the author summarizes the findings and recommendations in a suggested action plan where changes within Simplexica’s current e-service concept and the financial benefits of the investment, are in focus by:  removing the barriers for using the e-service where a key element is to create a common understanding, internally and externally, for their current e-service and e-process.  measuring key indicators and to incorporate crucial customer data  analyzing the return on investment and estimating the effect and value of intangible benefits  establishing a model for determining a successful investment based on a variant of the 5-table  extending, upgrading and changing the current e-service by using new technology as, for instance, M2M and e-mail channeling, and to introduce a total customer service strategy throughout Simplexica.

Although investment in IT is growing rapidly, a number of studies have shown that the full benefits of this technology are not realised. One explanation is that these benefits exist, but have not been correctly measured. The other explanation is that they have not been achieved because of lack of management attention. Experience and common sense supports the latter assumption. Hence, the aim of this research is to develop and to trial a method which assists in the realisation of the benefits of a particularly problematic technology, executive information systems (EIS).The proposed method introduces the concept of generic benefits models into previous research on IT benefits management. This construct improves existing methods of benefits management in three respects. First, it employs reuse of benefits models in order to speed their development. Secondly, it allows these methods to be employed at any stage of a project, not just at the outset, in order to extract benefits. Thirdly, it provides a conceptual object which serves as the focus of organisational learning. The major focus of the research is on the development of generic benefits models of EIS. This requires an understanding of the role which information plays in executive work and how EIS technology may affect the manner in which executives use information. Unfortunately, the literature on executive work does not make this clear. Moreover, it seems that there is no agreed definition of EIS. As a result, it is necessary to create different generic models for different theories of executive work and different forms of EIS. The methodological approach adopted is pragmatism, in particular the experimentalism proposed by John Dewey and implemented by Donald Schon. The justification for this is that the primary objective of the study is to demonstrate the utility of the proposed method rather than its ability to explain, predict, or provide insight. The study includes six experiments conducted within the office of the Malaysian Prime Minister. Different types of EIS, with different degrees of benefits already realised, and at different stages of development are the subjects of these experiments. The results largely affirm the proposed method, but they do suggest some refinement of the original benefits models. They also indicate simplification of the models is possible. In addition the executives who participated in these experiments favour the proposed method. However, the IS practitioners in the organisation are less enthusiastic. The study proposes a solution to this problem which includes both changes to organisational structure and to the education of IS practitioners. The research also produced a number of supplementary findings. It reaffirmed the findings of Mintzberg's study of executive work. It demonstrated once again that executives rarely use EIS directly and that they mostly depended on subordinates to access information. When executives do employ EIS themselves, they are more likely to use it to enhance their learning than to support decision-making.

<p>One of the best ways to get expected results from information technology (IT) in a business organization is to have a close look at the financial issues related to it. Financial issues such as IT investment, IT costs, IT resources should be dealt with special care if any organization wants to get best result from its IT systems. The purpose of this research is to investigate the condition of IT financial issues such as IT investment, IT costs, IT resources, IT business value etc. in the selected seven organizations of Sweden and to have an understanding behind the condition. First of all, a survey has been conducted with nine IT managers from these seven organizations to get an overview of the condition of dealing with various IT financial issues. Then follow-up interviews have been conducted with four of those IT managers that took part in the survey to find out the reason behind the condition dealing with those IT financial issues. The results of the study show that most the seven companies do not have proper capital budgeting technique, benefit identification plan for IT investment. Most of them do not calculate all the IT related costs. Most of them have lack of knowledge about the business value of IT. Their knowledge of impact of IT resources is not clear. The study further shows why those seven companies are having that kind of condition regarding the IT related financial issues.</p>

One of the best ways to get expected results from information technology (IT) in a business organization is to have a close look at the financial issues related to it. Financial issues such as IT investment, IT costs, IT resources should be dealt with special care if any organization wants to get best result from its IT systems. The purpose of this research is to investigate the condition of IT financial issues such as IT investment, IT costs, IT resources, IT business value etc. in the selected seven organizations of Sweden and to have an understanding behind the condition. First of all, a survey has been conducted with nine IT managers from these seven organizations to get an overview of the condition of dealing with various IT financial issues. Then follow-up interviews have been conducted with four of those IT managers that took part in the survey to find out the reason behind the condition dealing with those IT financial issues. The results of the study show that most the seven companies do not have proper capital budgeting technique, benefit identification plan for IT investment. Most of them do not calculate all the IT related costs. Most of them have lack of knowledge about the business value of IT. Their knowledge of impact of IT resources is not clear. The study further shows why those seven companies are having that kind of condition regarding the IT related financial issues.

Organizational adoption of information technology is an important decision for modern enterprises. Proper use of technology can increase benefits and competitive advantage. Inappropriate use could cause failure. Most previous literature focuses on treating technology adoption as a rational decision based on the functional needs of an organization. In many cases, however, technology adoption is not due to functional needs but environmental or peer pressure (called symbolic or ceremonial adoption). Different motivations for adoption may lead to different outcome. In addition, there is no generally accepted organizational adoption model that can include all key factors into consideration. Therefore, this study tries to understand what factors will affect an organization¡¦s adoption of a new information technology or use an information technology and whether different purposes (intangible value vs. tangible value) will affect the adoption or usage of information technology in organizations. The framework of this study was extended from the Fit-Viability Model to include the internal organizational factors and external environmental factors. We conducted a survey study and use PLS to analyze the collected data. The results show that the extended FV model can interpret organizational IT adoption and IT usage. The purpose of adoption did have effect on the intention to adopt information technology. In the symbolic adoption situation, TEF and viability had significant impacts on organizational intention to adopt; and in the functional adoption situation, TTF and viability had significant impacts on organizational intention to adopt. Different purposes of adoption have less significant effect on the actual use and performance of information system. TTF and actual use had significant impacts on organizational performance, and viability also had significant impacts on actual use of information technology in both situations. In other words, organizations can also benefit from IT adoption even if the original motivation was symbolic.

In this thesis, information systems success measurement practices and expectations for information technology investments of four companies in Turkey are examined. The aim of this study is to understand the information systems success measurement practices of the studied companies and the relation between the expectations for IT investment and IS success of these companies in Turkey.

In today&apos;s business environment, organizations try to improve their efficiency in order to have more power in the global competition. This requires capabilities to detect and evaluate the impact of Information Technology (IT) on the organization&apos;s efficiency.There are some difficulties in evaluating the impact of IT on the organization‟s efficiency. For example, one should consider many quantitative and qualitative factors in the evaluation process. For solving these kinds of problems, this thesis proposes a methodology to identify the effects of IT investment and the importance of IT related activities on the organization‟s efficiency, within the BSC-DEA model.In the first parts of thesis, the Balanced Scorecard is used as a performance management tool for evaluating an organization‟s efficiency. The four dimensions of the Balanced Scorecard link organization‟s strategies with indicators and help the management establish an integrated efficiency assessment system for evaluation of IT investment. This thesis has studied some shortcoming of BSC for efficiency measurement and argued that DEA has the advantage to fill these shortcomings of BSC and to better evaluates impacts of IT on the organization&apos;s efficiency.In the Second part of this thesis, I have shown that the DEA model generates one single efficiency figure in multi-input and multi-output situations. DEA performs the optimization analysis on each individual unit (DMUs) and generate relative efficiency value of each DMU. In this way, the integrated BSC-DEA model is constructed. For a better explanation of proposed BSC-DEA model, I presented and analyzed an example in the final part of the thesis.The presented model has two major benefits in subjected area:Firstly, It Combines two well-established managerial methodologies and proposes a new approach to evaluate IT effects on organizations. This approach uses “BSC” as a comprehensive framework for defining evaluation criteria with regard to IT investment and uses “DEA” as a nonparametric technique for ranking organization performance with those criteria. The second contribution is that with the comprehensive view which BSC gives us and with efficiency measure that DEA calculates, we can have a dependent variable to study how and why some organizations use IT better than others. / Program: Magisterutbildning i informatik

The unprecedented ubiquity with which technological advancements, such as blockchain, the Internet of things (IoT), big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI), are impacting the world has forced large organizations to rethink their information technology roadmaps. Their decisions about how they invest in technology have become more important. It is against this backdrop that companies must decide how much to invest in their aging technologies versus these new potentially transformational ones. A decision is only as good as the information available to the decision-makers when they make it. This research project seeks to understand the effects that information asymmetry has on strategic information technology (IT) investment decisions within large complex organizations. The data collected for this study was gathered from six executives. The conceptual model was grounded in Akerlof’s (1978) seminal paper on information asymmetry. This study followed an Action Design Research (ADR) approach to formulate the problem and an elaborated Action Design Research (eADR) process model to create a solution. Results indicate that using the proposed solution will result in organizations making more informed strategic IT investment decisions.

<p>Title: A study about the purchasing process of IT</p><p>Level: Master thesis in Information Technology and Business Administration, 15 hp, EIK024</p><p>Authors: Emelie Johanson and Mikael Lindström</p><p>Tutor: Peter Ekman, Mälardalens Högskola</p><p>Keywords: IT-investment, purchase, decision</p><p>Problem: In the last decades the amount of IT investments increased and has become an important resource within most organizations. IT gives the ability to compete and could also be a condition for many to be able to compete. In different businesses it could vary in where they put their focus when they choose an IT investment. This thesis examines how the purchase process of IT looks. How does processes differs in a bigger company versus a smaller company? From these two perspectives this study examined these research questions: Who makes the decisions whether or not an IT solution should be purchased? What aspects decide when companies are to choose between different IT solutions? Where in the purchase process do problems usually emerge?</p><p>Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyze the purchasing process of IT from a business perspective. The purpose is also to see if it differs in a bigger company versus a smaller company and where the problems usually emerge in this process.</p><p>Method: The study is based on a theoretical framework about IT investments and how a purchasing process might look like. It all lead up to a summarizing model made by the authors of this thesis and it shows all the different steps in a purchasing process. The study contains three interviews where two of them were in big companies and one in a smaller company.</p><p>Conclusions: This study shows that depending on the size on a company the decisions are made in one or several levels within the company and that the amounts of levels increase with the size of the company. A smaller company got better possibilities to get information from the end-users and the rest of the staff to make better requirements on the IT solution, which could increase the chance for an IT solution to satisfy their needs. The price of the IT-solution matters in the choice in what to buy and it seems like the price sensitivity increases the smaller size a company is. All company sizes wants long terming relations with a few suppliers. The problem often emerges in the progress to gather the requirements for the IT solution and also in the communication with the suppliers. The problem comes from misunderstandings between the company and the supplier because of different use of language. It also creates problems when there is lack of knowledge amongst the people making the specifications of the requirements for the IT solution.</p> / <p>Titel: En studie om inköpsprocessen av IT</p><p>Nivå: Magisteruppsats i IT-ekonomi, 15 hp, EIK024</p><p>Författare: Emelie Johanson och Mikael Lindström</p><p>Handledare: Peter Ekman, Mälardalens Högskola</p><p>Nyckelord: IT-investering, inköp, beslut</p><p>Problem: De senaste decennierna har investeringar i IT ökat och blivit en viktig resurs för de flesta organisationer. IT ger företagen förmågan att konkurrera och kan även vara en förutsättning för många att kunna konkurrera. Beroende på vilken bransch en organisation är verksam i kan deras fokus variera när de gör sina urval av IT-investeringar. Denna studie undersöker hur inköpsprocessen ser ut för IT. Hur skiljer sig denna process i ett större företag mot ett mindre företag? Utifrån båda dessa perspektiv har studien utgått ifrån följande problemfrågor:</p><p>Vem tar beslutet om att en IT-lösning ska köpas in till företaget?</p><p>Vilka faktorer avgör när företag ska välja mellan olika IT-lösningar?</p><p>Var i inköpsprocessen är problem mer förekommande?</p><p>Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att beskriva och analysera inköpsprocessen av IT utifrån ett företagsperspektiv. Studien ämnar även visa om den skiljer sig mellan mindre och större företag och var problem oftast uppstår i inköpsprocessen.</p><p>Teori & Metod: Undersökningen baseras på en teoretisk referensram som ger en inblick i vad IT-investeringar är och hur inköpsfasen av IT kan tänkas se ut. Den insamlade teorin utmynnar i en undersökningsmodell som är framtagen av uppsatsförfattarna, som visar de olika steg ett företag kan gå igenom vid inköp av IT.</p><p>Studien innehåller tre intervjuer på två stora samt ett mindre IT-företag. Därefter har data, med hjälp av undersökningsmodellen, analyserats för att resultera i ett antal slutsatser.</p><p>Resultat: Den slutsats som dras är att beroende på vilken storlek ett företag är så fattas besluten på en till flera nivåer inom företaget, där antalet nivåer växer med företagets storlek. Ett mindre företag har större möjligheter att kunna få in information till kravspecificeringen från slutanvändare och resten av företagets personal, vilket kan bidra till att de har större chans att hitta en IT-lösning som uppfyller just deras behov. När företag väljer ut vilka IT-lösningar de ska köpa in så konstateras att priset har en viss avgörande roll, där priskänsligheten ser ut att öka ju mindre ett företag är. Oavsett om ett företag är litet eller stort så värdesätter de långvariga stabila relationer med ett fåtal leverantörer. Problem är mest förekommande vid framtagandet av kravspecifikation och vid kommunikation med leverantörer. Problemet med leverantör är att parterna inte pratar samma språk vilket leder till missförstånd mellan dem. Det skapas även problem på grund bristande kunskap vid kravspecifikation.</p>