Thesis (MTech (Information and Technology))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2016. / It has been shown that the South African insurance landscape takes up an important place in the African continent, contributing nearly three quarters of the total African insurance sector (Paul, Twala & Marwala, 2012). The industry landscape has shown development at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.7% between 2004 and 2008. The life insurance industry is assumed to grow at a CAGR of 8.3%. Small, medium and micro-sized enterprises (SMMEs) are important role players in every economy and provide a major contribution to the gross domestic product (GDP) and employment. Many South African enterprises have in the past focused on local markets, but more recently SMMEs have been forced to respond to competition in the global market as markets expand. The role of SMMEs is considered critical in terms of poverty alleviation, employment creation, and international competitiveness. However, resource limitations have made it difficult for many SMMEs to enter new markets and compete effectively. The effective application of information systems (IS) are viewed as a way for SMMEs to become more competitive and drive business benefits such as cost reduction, improved profitability, enhanced customer service, new market growth opportunities, and more efficient operating relationships with trading customers and partners. There are an increasing number of new opportunities and competition in the marketplace because of business globalisation. The marketplace and business globalisation dynamics have a major influence on SMMEs and their operations. SMMEs require a critical evaluation of their internal processes and seek out solutions to be able to sustain their growth and competitiveness. This research study adopted an inductive approach to describe the rational process of establishing a general proposition on the basis of observing particular facts. An in-depth case study is used to explore the multiple perspectives of the complexity and uniqueness of SMMEs. One-on-one interviews were conducted to collect data from 17 financial advisors using an interview guide with semi-structured questionnaires. The data were analysed through the process of thematic coding which is common in case study research, and labels were assigned to form and organise the themes in groups and categories. Ethical consideration was presented before data collection commenced, and the autonomy, self-respect and human dignity of all respondents during the data collection process were considered. The findings reveal that financial service providers (FSPs) have a different understanding of IS, what competitive means, and what it can do for a business.

M.Com. (Informatics) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

M.Comm. / In today's society everyone is dependent on information for decision making, and a big part of the information is provided via telecommunication lines. Telecommunication is the unseen and unsung hero when it comes to information transfer. It is no wonder that telecommunication service providers are striving to give better and faster service almost daily. Furthermore because of the competitive nature of the telecommunications arena, service providers are striving to get the best performance from their telecommunications links. It has thus become more important to provide excellent service and guaranteed performance above anything else. The purpose of this study is to determine what kind of information is needed by the management of a telecommunications service provider to make business or strategic decisions. Questionnaires and interviews were used in this study to determine what kind of information is needed by the managers and the decision makers in the management of the telecommunication network. The basis of the study was provided through the examination of what a telecommunication network consists of, and the information that is needed to run such a network. An additional feature was that there is already a network monitoring system working practically. This system was used to measure the success of telecommunication network management and to determine what other factors should be catered for when a total telecommunication management network is evaluated.

This thesis is focused on description the situation in the field of providing business information systems in the form of services and aspects related to the transition IT department from software licensing model to consumption of software in the form of IT services - the software as a service model (SaaS). The main objective of this thesis is to analyze the impact of the transition in enterprise IT department from software licensing model to SaaS model. To achieve this goal there is an adequate theoretical basis described in the theoretical part of this work and survey on the basis of interviews in the practical section. The first part describes the development of enterprise information model to cloud computing, including the presentation of the current market situation. The second part discusses the requirements to enterprise IT department in SaaS model, including an analysis of the impact of the transition to SaaS. In the final part of this thesis is carried out survey within the small and medium-sized companies that have moved their business information systems to SaaS model. The contribution of this thesis is primarily in the analysis and recommendations for companies that planning to move to the SaaS model. In the theoretical part of this thesis it is description of the impact of SaaS to the enterprise IT department, including assessing the relevance of ITIL framework in the time of SaaS.

The purpose of this study was to explore the alignment of soft skills sought by current business IS entry-level employers in electronic job postings, with the integration of soft skills in undergraduate business information systems (IS) syllabi of public four-year universities in Texas. One hundred fifty job postings were extracted from two major electronic career databases. Ten undergraduate AACSB-accredited programs in the field of business information systems (IS) were investigated, and syllabi for the 70 major courses of the business IS programs were obtained for review. Content analysis was applied to all job postings and syllabi, exposing all soft skills related to the 9 categories used in this study adapted from the 21st Century Framework for Learning (Partnership for 21st Century Learning, 2009). Frequencies were tabulated to determine rank of soft skills in job postings and syllabi, and Jaccard’s coefficient statistic of occurrence was used for cluster analysis. Soft skills within all 9 categories were found in job postings (n = 1554) and course syllabi (n = 774). Three soft skill categories were aligned between job postings and syllabi: (1) initiative and self-direction, (2) social and cross-cultural skills, and (3) flexibility and adaptability. However, because differences in the higher ranked frequencies of soft skills in job postings and syllabi were noted, the null hypothesis of this study was rejected.

This thesis reports on a study conducted to investigate the business information needs, seeking patterns and information services for small, micro and medium enterprises (SMMEs) in Namibia. The survey methodology was used and questionnaires were distributed to 308 SMMEs and 60 business service providers in the Windhoek and Oshana districts of Namibia. An in-depth qualitative assessment of the business information services was also conducted in 15 business support organisations in the two districts. The data collected through questionnaires was analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) while qualitative data was analysed using content analysis. The study revealed that SMMEs have a range of business information needs and top among them are information on: finance, marketing, training and business information. The study also revealed that the information seeking patterns of SMMEs are largely informal with limited use of formal business information services provided by a range of business support services. There are several business support organisations in Namibia providing a range of services, including the provision of business information services. However, the study established that there is need for a coordinated approach towards the provision of business information services in the SMME sector in Namibia. The study showed that the utilisation of ICTs among SMMEs is very limited to basic computer operations like word processing, book-keeping packages, and spreadsheets. The use of Internet as a business tool and source of business information among SMMEs is also very limited. However, the study shows that the utilisation of ICTs among business support organisations is advanced and that this could be used as a platform to improve information delivery services to the SMMEs. The study proposes a strategic model that could be used in the deployment of business information services in the SMME sector. This strategy is based on a definition of business information services, components of business information services and the steps that must be followed in the development of the services. The proposed strategy also outlines the steps that should be taken in the impact assessment of business information services. The study concludes by making several recommendations concerning the improvement of business information delivery services to the SMME sector. Business support organisations and, in particular government and Chambers of Commerce and Industry need to consider various approaches in the design of sustainable business information services. / Thesis (DPhil (Information Science))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Information Science / unrestricted

<div>Digitization has led to emergence of many platforms-based markets. In this dissertation I focus on three different design problems in these markets. The first essay relates to augmented-reality platforms. Pok\'emon Go, an augmented-reality technology-based game, garnered tremendous public interest upon release with an average of 20 million active daily users. The game combines geo-spatial elements with gamification practices to incentivize user movement in the physical world. This work examines the potential externalities that such incentives may have on associated businesses. Particularly, we study the impact of Pok\'emon Go on local restaurants using online reviews as a proxy for consumer engagement and perception. We treat the release of Pok\'emon Go as a natural experiment and study the post-release impact on the associated restaurants. We find that restaurants located near an in-game artifact do indeed observe a higher level of consumer engagement and a more positive consumer perception as compared with those that have no in-game artifacts nearby. In addition, we find that the heterogeneous characteristics of the restaurants moderate the effect significantly. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to examine the economic implications of augmented-reality applications. Thereby, our research lays the foundations for how augmented-reality games affect consumer economic behavior. This work also builds insights into the potential value of such associations for business owners and policymakers. </div><div><br></div><div>The second essay focuses on the platform design problem in sponsored seaerch ad-market.Recent advances in technology have reduced frictions in various markets. In this research, we specifically investigate the role of frictions in determining the efficiency and bidding behavior in a generalized second price auction (GSP) -- the most preferred mechanism for sponsored search advertisements. First, we simulate computational agents in the GSP setting and obtain predictions for the metrics of interest. Second, we test these predictions by conducting a human-subject experiment. We find that, contrary to the theoretical prediction, the lower-valued advertisers (who do not win the auction) substantially overbid. Moreover, we find that the presence of market frictions moderates this phenomenon and results in higher allocative efficiency. These results have implications for policymakers and auction platform managers in designing incentives for more efficient auctions.</div><div><br></div><div>The third essay is about user-generated content platforms. These platform utilize various gamification strategies to incentivize user contributions. One of the most popular strategy is to provide platform sponsorships like a special status. Previous literature has extensively studied the impact of having these sponsorships user contributions. We specifically focus on the impact of losing such elite status. Once their contributions to the platform reduce in volume, elite users lose status. Using a unique empirical strategy we show that users continue to contribute high quality reviews, even though they lose their status. We utilize NLP to extract various review characteristics including sentiment and topics. Using an empirical strategy, we find that losing status does not modify the topic of the reviews written by the users, on average. </div><div><br></div>

The purpose of this study is to examine the nature of performance measures utilised by the maintenance function in todays business organisations. In the process, the increasing variety and significance of these measures are addressed from operational and strategic perspectives. A survey-based research method was utilised to gather the research data. Several statistical procedures were utilised to analyse the data. The findings of this study point to the multifaceted nature of the maintenance measures and measurement. Multiple categories of maintenance measures were identified. These categories varied from the machine-specific, to measures impacting organisational performance. The relative lack of emphasis placed on the environment and strategic facets of maintenance is noted. The findings of this study have direct implications to organisations, which are attempting to measure the effectiveness of their maintenance efforts. The need to align the maintenance performance efforts with the organisational strategic direction is emphasised. In this context, the integration of the maintenance performance information systems with the overall organisational performance management information system might facilitate the needed alignment. This study utilises 120 maintenance measures. As such, it represents a comprehensive view of the maintenance effort.

University of Macau / Faculty of Law

D. Tech. Business Information Systems / Information supports the smooth operations and vital decision making of the normal operation of business processes within an enterprise. Developing countries’ Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are faced with challenges of accessing intelligent information for decision making at different operational sites. Developing countries' SMEs could have benefited from the use of Mobile Business Intelligence (MBI) system. However, there is a lack of a framework that is contextualized to inform the deployment of Mobile Business Intelligence in developing countries' SMEs. This thesis therefore is envisioned to design a framework for the deployment of Mobile Business Intelligence in developing countries' SMEs. This study identified the factors that are needed in the development of a deployment framework for MBI within SMEs in developing countries.