s the dependence of IS/IT has grown in modern organizations, IT investments have soared in the last couple of decades. Large amounts of money are spent with the hope that the investments will generate value for the business organizations using the systems. It is hence easy to understand the needs for methods to assess the business value of IT-investments. The investment decision is basically about selecting the best IT-system or the best combination of IT-systems, i.e. the system(s) that provides the most business value in dimensions that are important business-wise. However, a problem with many of the avail-able methods is that they often fail to concretely explain what technical characteristics the IT systems(s) should have to achieve the business value desired. A complicating aspect of IT-investment evaluations is also that the evaluations usually include a high degree of un-certainty. In this thesis, an IT investment evaluation method is presented that indicatively assesses the differences in contribution to business value from IT-investment alternatives. The method provides, at a relatively low cost of investigation, indications of not only the technical differences between the IT-investment alternatives in a specific investment situation, but also an assessment of the differences in types and amounts of their business value. The presented method has been applied in a large case study at an electric power company. Furthermore, it also incorporates concepts found within Enterprise architecture (EA), particularly in how the information used in the evaluation is collected. The presented thesis is a composite thesis that, besides an introduction, includes five papers (paper A-E). Paper A presents an outline of the method as well as its application in the case study. It also presents the theoretical fundaments for the criteria used for the technical evaluation and the business value assessment including the method’s applications in relation to Enterprise architecture. The following two papers primarily present necessary steps in the development of the method. First, paper B presents the process to develop a functional reference model (used for the functional assessments in the method), including its application in the case study. Second, a breakdown of the term business value into a set of IS/IT-affected value dimension is presented in paper C. The last two papers present the final steps, i.e. the technical evaluation of the investment alternatives (paper D) and the final business value assessment (paper E). The papers include the methods to perform these analyses as well as the application of the method in the case study and the results of the case study. / QC 20100608

Business Value of the CRM Approach - the Case of 5 Stars Hotels in Lebanon Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an organizational-wide ongoing process. It provides a systemic approach to aligning business processes, technologies, and the customer. The application of the CRM approach in the hospitality sector accompanies the guest cycle in all its stages. It is an ongoing process defined by two main activities: the analysis and the action which are repeated as long as the relationship exists between the hotel and its customer. The success of this ongoing approach in increasing customer loyalty and fostering customer retention has yielded into the development of hotels' concentrations towards the CRM. Despite the extensive investments in CRM, numerous CRM projects fail to meet the expected business goals. Nevertheless, a handful of successful CRM projects give both a proof-of-concept and a guideline for a successful CRM approach. This research is intended to illuminate the business value of CRM approach in hotels. It brings together the concept of identifying the critical success factors of the CRM approach, and the impact of the CRM approach on the organizational performance in a single research model. This study was completed by examining the CRM approach in 5 stars hotels in Lebanon. The final sample represents 87.5% of the 5 stars hotels in Lebanon.

Temos aktualumas. Ekonominė aplinka svarbi tiek atskiroms šalims ar jų grupei, tiek įmonėms ir įvairioms institucijoms, tiek ir kiekvienam iš mūsų asmeniškai. Ekonominė šalies ir joje veikiančių įmonių galia priklauso nuo turimų resursų panaudojimo efektyvumo, kuris neatsiejamas nuo naujų gamybos technologinių linijų įsigijimo ir įdiegimo, esamų modernizavimo, įmonės vidinių inžinerinių tinklų, reikalingų verslo plėtrai, įrengimo. Europos Sąjungos šalyse narėse, ypač naujosiose, šios sritys yra remiamos įvairių nacionalinių ir bendrijos fondų lėšomis, tačiau, norint įsisavinti paramos lėšas, reikia gerai išmanyti šių fondų išteklių naudojimo principus ir taisykles. Paraiškos su sėkmingais verslo planais virsta realia nauda toms įmonėms, kurios gerai pasiruošusios paramos įsisavinimui. Paramos naudą, teikiamą įmonėms, tikslinga vertinti per visos įmonės vertės prizmę, tuomet įvertinama ne tik paramos teikiama nauda ar projekto vertė, bet ir realus visos įmonės vertės pokytis, gavus paramą. Todėl atsiranda įmonės vertės pokyčio, įsisavinus ES fondų lėšas, įvertinimo ir metodo, kuris įgalintų nustatyti tą pokytį ir palyginti paramą gavusių įmonių vertės pokyčius tarpusavyje, poreikis. Darbo objektas – Europos Sąjungos paramos įtaka įmonės vertei. Šio darbo tikslas – apžvelgti Europos Sąjungos teikiamos paramos principus, sąlygas ir įsisavinimo tendencijas. Išanalizuoti pagrindinius metodus, naudojamus įmonės vertės nustatymui, atsižvelgiant į juos, sudaryti indikatorių, kuris... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Topicality. Economical enviroment makes a direct affect on the whole country, businesses and every personality within. Proper comprehension, interpretation and application of the surrounding, possibilities, variuos financing sources and funds are essential for operating a successful business. It is more than important to take advantage of EU‘s funds available for businesses in young economies like Lithiuania. Each fund and investment is believed to take a positive affect to the company and increase the value of it. It is essential to cull from information in quantity only what’s most important and be able to evaluate the impact of an investment to an enterprise properly and determine the change of an enterprise value after the investment. The object of this graduation paper is the impact of EU‘s funds to the value of a business. Main goals: 1. Analyse and describe main theoretical EU‘s support for businesses aspects. 2. Describe and analyse main enterprise evaluation methods in use. 3. Come up with new business evaluation method, based on integrated value indicator, which enables one to evaluate EU‘s support‘s impact on enerprise value and measure the impact among number of companies. 4. Under favour of the new business evaluation method, evaluate the influence of EU‘s funding to the value of three enterprises, come up with conclusions and suggestions. The Results. Main aspects of EU‘s support for businesses and enterprise evaluation methods are presented and described in the... [to full text]

The rapid advancement and penetration of information technology (IT), amid continued questions over its benefits, has resulted in research efforts to understand the extent to which IT resources contribute to organisational performance. There is little question that the presence of IT contributes to organisational performance. Our understanding of how and where IT contributes to value in organisations, however, is limited. Current IT business value research advances the notion that firm’s IT-related capabilities ability to leverage their IT resources explains the IT-related performance differences across firms. Understanding the nature of the IT-related capabilities, and their relationship with IT resources can provide a better understanding of how organisations can make better use of their IT resources. IT resources are dynamic and change at a rapid pace. Current IT business value research suggests the firm’s IT-related capabilities at a point in time can source value from the IT resources. However, firms IT-related capabilities must demonstrate parallel dynamics to maximise their influence on their IT resources. In this dynamic resource relationship environment, firm’s ability to sustain a level of influence on their IT resources will determine the extent of IT resources’ value-creating ability. Using the resource-based view of the firm that suggest an organisation is a bundle of resources, and using a complementary theoretical lens, this study introduces a higher-level resource, co-created by combining two or more complementary resources. This higher-level resource is capable of contributing to business value on its own, and importantly, can help organisations sustain their existing IT-related capabilities. The sustainable IT-related capabilities will have a better influence on the IT resources and will source better IT-related business value. This higher-level resource can also help with the timing of IT investments, and can provide an environment where a firm’s technical IT skills can better integrate the IT resources into the business processes. On measurement of organisational performance, this study suggests that a unique combination of organisational resources creates an efficient and effective internal environment that then becomes a powerful tool to enhance the key external process of customer service. Such enhancements in process-level efficiency and effectiveness will carry forward to be recognised in overall firm-level performance. This study develops and tests a model that assesses the association between the two generic IT resources (IT investment and technical IT skills), three IT-related capabilities (top management commitment, shared organisational knowledge, and flexible IT infrastructure), and internal process-level performance. It also assesses whether the IT-Usage Platform, a higher-level co-created resource, on its own associates with, and enhances the generic IT resources’ and IT-related capabilities’ association with internal process-level performance. The study also proposes that improvement in internal process-level performance will be positively associated with external process-level performance of customer service. Firms that improve their internal and external process performance should also improve their firm-level performance. The results, as hypothesised, failed to reject the non-association between the generic IT resources and the internal process-level performance. The study, as predicted, found a positive association between the three IT-related capabilities, IT-Usage Platform, and the internal process-level performance. The IT-Usage Platform indeed enhances the association between the IT-related capabilities and internal process-level performance. The results also suggest that the association between the technical IT skills and internal process-level performance improves in the presence of the IT-Usage Platform. Firms’ improved internal process-level performance also relates to improvement in external process-level performance. Improvement in the internal-external process performance also contributes to performance at the firm level. For research, this study demonstrates that the complementarity and the resource-based view theories allow inclusion of a greater variety of resources in a bundle of capable resources that could be a source of IT-related business value. The complementary theoretical lens also enables one to consider firms’ higher-level resources, co-created from complementary resources. The result is a robust model with the flexibility to consider other forms of resource interactions that sustain firms existing IT-related capabilities. The model also enables comparison of IT and other organisational resources on a level-platform and allows for a deeper understanding of how organisations can better leverage their IT resources. The study also presents the internal-external coordination path of IT-related value creation. For decision makers this study reinforces the importance of the concept of a coordinated IT-related change to secure value from their IT investments. It also presents decision makers with a visual IT business value path from internal process benefits to external process benefits, and finally to firm-level benefits. This study suggests all organisational resources, through various combinations, could be a source of IT-related business value. Future research can consider resources that are at the boundary of capable/non-capable resources to evaluate whether firms various resource arrangements can make these resources more valuable in sourcing IT-related business value. This research also provides strong theoretical arguments to consider other higher-level factors that may have the potential to sustain firms existing IT-related capabilities.

Récemment les données issues de médias sociaux, dites les Big Social Data (BSD) retiennent de plus en plus l’attention des chercheurs et des professionnels, notamment après l’apparition des outils de surveillance des médias sociaux (Social Media Monitoring – SMM), permettant de traiter ces BSD. Les promesses associées au SMM concernent l’amélioration des processus de prise de décision, voire la transformation de processus métiers des entreprises. Malgré des investissements de plus en plus importants, l’usage efficace de ces outils dans les entreprises est très variable. Dans cette recherche, nous souhaiterions comprendre comment et pour quelles finalités le outils SMM sont utilisés ?. Pour l’évaluation de ces outils, nous nous appuyons sur la théorie des ressources. Afin de mettre œuvre de cette recherche, nous avons eu recours à une approche par méthodes mixtes. Cette approche consiste en étude qualitative qui a servi au développement et à l’enrichissement d’une seconde étude quantitative. Les résultats obtenus montrent que la combinaison de ressources SMM (qualité d’outil, ressources humaines…) et de ressources complémentaires permet de constituer des capacités SMM (mesure, interactive, utilisation processus) conduisant à la performance du SMM. Le soutien de l’organisation et, plus spécifiquement le rôle des managers, dans l’activation des ressources et des capacités SMM est conforme au récent approfondissement du management des ressources. En revanche, nous avons détecté que des ambiguïtés demeurent concernant le RBT. Pour cela, nous proposerons de lever ces ambigüités en ayant recours à la théorie étendue des ressources. Finalement, nous présentons les apports, les limites et les perspectives de notre recherche. / Recently, social media data, called Big Social Data (BSD), attract more and more attention from researchers and professionals, particularly after the emergence of Social Media Monitoring (SMM) tools, used to process BSD. The promises associated with the SMM concern the improvement of decision-making processes, or even the transformation of business processes. Despite increasing investments, the effective use of these tools in companies is very variable. In this research, we would like to understand how and for what purposes the SMM tools are used?. For the evaluation of these tools, we build upon the Resource-Based Theory (RBT). In order to implement this research, we used a mixed method approach. This approach consists of a qualitative study that was used to develop and enrich a second quantitative study. The obtained results show that the combination of SMM resources (quality of SMM tool, human resources…) and complementary resources makes it possible to build SMM capabilities (measurement, process, interaction…) leading to performance. Moreover, the support of the organization, and more specifically the role of managers, in the activation of SMM resources and capabilities is consistent with the recent advancements of resource management. However, we detected some ambiguities concerning the RBT. To deal with these ambiguities, we propose to resort to the extended theory of resource. Finally, we present the contributions, the limits and the perspectives of our research.

As with many new technology implementations before, Business Intelligence (BI) implementations have come under scrutiny in terms of the value added to organisations. The latest academic research uses various different ‘traditional financial methods’ such as the Return on Investment (ROI) calculations to determine the value of investments. In some instances customized measurement tools are proposed as a result of empirical studies conducted. The main objective of this study is to perform qualitative investigation on the theoretical value of BI implementations in organisations. If it is assumed that BI does add value to organisations, the primary research question aims to investigate how this value is added. A balanced scorecard second generation approach is used as theoretical framework in order to address the question. This approach is also known as strategy mapping. The research process starts with an extensive literature review on the topic of BI value evaluations and BI related balanced scorecards and strategy maps. As a result, various theoretical and practical research contributions are produced. One of the theoretical contributions includes an inventory of previous academic literature on the topic of BI value evaluations. This inventory is also presented diagrammatically. A preliminary version of the BI balanced scorecard is developed and used as foundation for a semi-structured interview template to investigate the value of BI in organisations.\ The semi-structured interview template was used as primary data generation instrument to gather data for this multiple-case study project. Four organisations participated in the study. The data obtained from the study was analysed and presented using an updated version of the theoretical framework of the study and was labelled as the intermediate version of the scorecard. The intermediate version of the BI balanced scorecard provided valuable input towards investigating how value was achieved as a result of BI implementations. These results were verified as part of a final verification process through a consultation process with the same study participants. A final version of the BI balanced scorecard is presented and included in a complete BI value solution. This version of the balanced scorecard is also a valuable practical contribution of the study. The verified results of the investigation indicated the following:- (1) BI adds value to organisations in all four perspectives of the organisation, namely the business value perspective, user orientation perspective, operational excellence perspective as well as the future orientation perspective. (2) Furthermore, the study confirmed that BI adds value to organisations through a number of benefits including an increase in sales and compliance to regulatory requirements (to name a few). (3) However, the study also indicated that value-related studies must adopt a holistic approach in an attempt to cater for the many facets of the topic. (4) Despite the challenge of implementing BI in organisations, the perceived value of BI implementations amongst senior management remained positive. This was supported by the continuous implementation of new BI projects in organisations. (5) There was a definite relationship between BI implementations and organisational performance. This is evident through the positive impact on sales figures, risk and compliance management and operational management. The study contributes to the broader field of Information Systems (IS) in numerous ways. Firstly the research discovers gaps in existing research, then proposes a method to investigate the research question as a result of the gaps identified, and -iiiuses this method as a tool to investigate the problem. The main contribution of the study is to contribute to the body of knowledge by investigating the value of business intelligence to organisations. / College of Engineering, Science and Technology / D. Litt et. Phil. (Information Systems)

The aim of the master thesis is to estimate the value of the company BLAŽEK PRAHA a.s. to the valuation date 1. 1. 2012. According to the evaluation of external potential and competitive power of the company, as well as its financial health, value generators' analysis and the prediction of the financial plan, the appropriate methods for the valuation of company BLAŽEK PRAHA a.s. will be selected. The thesis will be practically usable as an auxiliary material for the decision making of potential investor in the clothing industry.

The aim of this master thesis is to estimate the value of the company Lesní společnost Broumov Holding, a. s. as of the valuation date 01/01/2016. The thesis consists of two main parts, theoretically-methodological and related practical part. For accomplishing the objective, the strategical and financial analysis were made, also the main generators of the value were identified and scheduled and the financial plan was composed. The valuation itself was realized by three different methods that were afterwards calculated together which resulted into final estimation of the company's value, that reaches 147 024 thousand Czech crowns. The thesis is usable as a full overview of the company's situation and may be also helpful to the owners as a base for price negotiations, in case of potential investor's interest in buying it.

The diploma thesis is focused on the determination of the business value of the company IMA - material for the furniture industry s. r. o. The theoretical part defines the procedure for determining the business value and valuation method. The analytical part is devoted to strategic analysis of the company based on the financial plan, which was created, and then final valuation of the analysed company is proposed.

The interest and demand of sustainable actions have alongside with societal development increased over time. It has become crucial for companies in today’s society to show responsibility for the footprints they leave behind as a consequence of operating. A possible course of action could be the implementation of Creating Shared Value – CSV, which encompasses undertakings that result in value creation for both the company itself, and the local environment in which the company operates. Even though companies are expected to contribute to societal issues, there are still no blueprints declaring how to satisfy societal needs, and the challenges accompanied with it. CSV aims to tackle the distances between societal and business goals, however, despite CSV’s acknowledgement in academia, the concept is often criticized for being insufficient in practice. This has led to businesses trying to apply a CSV approach while still undertaking Corporate Social Responsibility – CSR related activities. The mixture of these concepts has made it difficult to explore what factors that affect the process of capturing Shared Value opportunities. This research investigates what factors that influence the process of capturing Shared Value in the Swedish insurance industry. The findings derived from this single company case study suggests that depending on what managerial decision-making approach used in a company affects the rate of success in terms of Creating Shared Value. An unclear communication plan, combined with the continuous confusion between the concepts, seems to increase the uncertainness of why and how different decisions are taken, hindering the process of CSV as well as the understanding of how Shared Value is created. A variety of factors were identified, where three main factors were considered to play a key role in, not only the capturing of Shared Value opportunities but the entire implementation process of the concept. Based on these factors, a model was established, showing how these main factors obstructs the realization of Shared Value opportunities.