Future Research Work

5.2 Future Research Work

The future research work will continue to explore the complex issues of the alignment and automation between domains and standards. Some of the immediate tasks to be undertaken in our study include：

Enhancing the ontology search and inference capability. As the rule base and heuristics base grow, search and inference engine become slow in the ontology management. Tuning and enhanced rules must be developed.

Upgrading the DTD importer to import XML Schema and to enable the conversion between XML Schema and OWL representation. This will solve the version control issue.

Conducting more diverse and complex experiments in terms of scale and scope.

More experiments will be conducted in the public processes of receiving and payment that are closely related with the public process of purchase order.

RosettaNet and ebXML will still be the main standards.

REFERENCES

1. Baclawski, K., Kokar, M.K., Kogut, P.A., Hart, L., Smith, J., Letkowski, J., &

Emery, P. (2002) “Extending the Unified Modeling Language for Ontology Development”, Software and Systems Modeling, Vol 1 No 2, pp. 142-156.

2. Berners-Lee, T., Hendler, J., & Lassila, O. (2001) “The Semantic Web”, Scientific

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American, Vol 284 No 5, pp. 34-43.

3. Bird, Linda, Andrew G., & Terry H. (2000) “Object Role Modelling and XML-Schema”, ER2000.

4. Bose, R. (2006) “ Understanding Management Data Systems For Enterprise Performance Management ”, Industrial Management and Data Systems, Vol 106 No 1, pp. 43-59.

5. Bussler, C. (2001) “Semantic B2B integration”, ACM SIGMOD Record, Vol 30 No 2, pp. 625.

6. Bussler, C., Fensel, D., & Maedche, A. (2002) “A Conceptual Architecture for Semantic Web Enabled Web Services”, ACM SIGMOD Record, Vol 31 No 4.

7. Cao, M., Zhang, Q.Y., Seydel, J. (2005) “B2C e-commerce web site quality: an empirical examination”, Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol 105 No 5, pp. 645-661.

8. Choy, L. Y., Kim, H. T. (2004) “A process and tool for supply network analysis”, Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol 104 No 4, pp. 355-363.

9. Cranefield, S., & Purvis, M. (1999) “UML as an Ontology Modelling Language”, In Proceedings of 16th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence on Workshop on Intelligent Information Integration.

10. Cranefield, S. (2001) “Networked Knowledge Representation and Exchange Using UML and RDF”, Journal of Digital Information, Vol 1 No 8.

11. Cut, Z., Jones, D., & O'Brien, P. (2002) “Semantic B2B Integration: Issues in Ontology-based Approaches”, ACM SIGMOD Record, Vol 31 No 1, pp. 43-48.

12. Decker, Stefan, Sergey M., Frank V. H., Dieter F., Michel K., et al. (2000) “The Semantic Web: The Roles of XML and RDF”, IEEE Internet Computing, Vol 4 No 5, pp.63-64.

13. Ding, Y., Fensel, D., Klein, M., Omelayenko, B., & Schulten, E. (2004) “The Role of Ontologies in eCommerce”, Handbook on Ontologies, Staab S. and Studer R., Springer.

14. ebXML BPSS (2006) http://www.ebxml.org/

15. Gasevic, D., Djuric, D., Devedzic, V., & Damjanovic, V. (2004) “Converting UML to OWL Ontologies”, Proceedings of the 13th international World Wide Web Conference, pp. 488-489.

16. Gulledge, T. (2006) “What is integration?,” Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol 106 No 1, pp. 5-20.

17. Helo, P., Szekely, B. (2005) “Logistics information systems: An analysis of software solutions for supply chain co-ordination”, Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol 105 No 1, pp. 5-18.

18. Hunag, C.J., Amy J.C. Trappy, Yao, Y.H. (2006) “Developing an agent-based workflow management system for collaborative product design”, Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol 106 No 5, pp. 680-699.

19. Hsieh, C.T., Lai, F.J., Shi, W.H. (2006) “Information orientation and its impacts on information asymmetry and e-business adoption: Evidence from China's international trading industry”, Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol 106 No 6, pp. 825-840.

20. Iyer ,L. S., Gupta, B., Johri, N. (2005) ”Performance, scalability and reliability issues in web applications”, Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol 105 No 5, pp. 561-576.

21. Kogut P., Cranefield S., Hart L, Dutra M., Baclawski K., Kokar M., & Smith J.

(2002) “UML for Ontology Development”, The Knowledge Engineering Review, Vol 17 No 1, pp. 61-64.

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22. Lesjak ,D., Vehovar, V. (2005) “Factors affecting evaluation of e-business projects”, Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol 105 No 4, pp. 409-428.

23. Medjahed, B., Benatallah, B., Bouguettaya, A., Ngu, A.H.H, & Elmagarmid, A.K.

(2003) “Business-to-Business Interactions: Issues and Enabling Technologies”, The VLDB Journal, Vol 12 No 1, pp. 59-85.

24. OASIS Consortium (2005) http://www.oasis-open.org 25. Object Management Group (2005) http://www.omg.org

26. Omelayenko, B. (2001) “Preliminary Ontology Modeling for B2B Content Integration”, Proceedings of the 12th International Workshop on Database and Expert Systems Applications, pp. 7-13.

27. Rahm, Erhard & Philip A. B. (2001) “A survey of approaches to automatic schema matching”, The VLDB Journal, Vol 10, pp. 334-350.

28. RosettaNet Consortium (2006) http://www.rosettanet.org/

29. Stojanovic L., Maedche A., Motik B., & Stojanovic N. (2002) “User-Driven Ontology Evolution Management”, Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management. Ontologies and the Semantic Web, pp. 285-300.

30. Web Ontology Language (2004) http://www.w3c.org/2004/OWL/

31. Zhao, F. (2004) “Management of information technology and business process re-engineering: a case study”, Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol 104 No 8, pp.674-680.

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Services economy dominates the research and development activities in the industrialized nations. More and more corporations in the manufacturing sectors identify a huge growing share of revenues and profits coming from the service units, not to mention the existing strong growth of service businesses in many sectors such as financial, banking, information, and retail sectors. Service innovation, growth, productivity, and valuation is critical and of great relevance to government, industry, business, and academia. The growing commoditization of service activities has gradually transformed the market competition from quality of services to the creation of experience economy. Software as service and business on demand represent the new waves of value generating in IT industry.

Services science begins to have contributions from different research fields (e.g.

Information Management, Social Science), different institutions (universities, research laboratories, companies), different application fields (e.g. e-commerce, e-business, e-industry, e-government), different work cultures (e.g. academia, industry; software engineers, researchers), different parts of the world (Asia, Australia, North America, Europe), and different user groups (e.g. everyone, special jobs, special needs). As a consequence, the competitive edge of an enterprise now depends on the innovative collaboration and co-production of knowledge workers in industry and academia, and the application of science, engineering, business, and management.

The purpose of the study is to articulate a methodological and practice oriented framework and model through the study approach of survey, interviews, case studies, and experiments, to explore the ways in which research and development activities and factors influence the integration of innovation, technology, and strategy over the services science and economy. An analytic framework illustrating the ways how novel ideas and problem solving capabilities are formed and fostered in the context of research and development activities within and cross organizations will be created.

An initial model representing the approaches how an advance in theoretical research and practical development in software service and business service is achieved will be developed.

This research project is financially sponsored by National Science Council.

Based on my past interview and case study experience, I estimate the possible facility and resource I need at IBM Almaden Services Research is as follows.

1. Duration of study: approximately from July 1, 2008 through September 15, 2008

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2. Persons to interview: 8 to 10 researchers and scientists in services science research and development

3. Interview time: one hour to one and half hour each time

4. A work space, the computer/Internet access, and the library access would be greatly appreciated.

1. Anderson, James C., Nirmalya Kumar, James A. Narus (2007) Value Merchants: Demonstrating and Documenting Superior Value in Business Markets. Harvard Business Review. Boston, MA.

“Purchasing managers in business markets are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their strategies and tactics. Increasingly held accountable for reducing costs,

purchasing and other customer managers don’t have the luxury of simply believing suppliers’ claims of cost savings. A relatively easy and quick way to obtain savings is for purchasing managers to focus on price and obtain price concessions from suppliers. To enhance their negotiating power, purchasing managers attempt to convince suppliers that their offerings are the same as their competitors – that they could be easily replaced. In the face of such pressure… suppliers cave in and match competitor prices. It is rare commodity in business markets to find firms that do business based on demonstrably superior value.” (Pg. 3)

“Suppliers must adopt a philosophy of doing business based on demonstrated and documented superior value and implement that philosophy using an approach we call customer value management. Customer value management is a progressive,

practical approach to business markets that, in its essence, has two basic goals: 1.

Deliver superior value to targeted market segments and customer firms, 2. Get an equitable return on the value delivered.” (Pp. 3-4).

“By ‘demonstrate,’ we mean showing prospective customers convincingly beforehand what cost savings or added value they can expect from using the supplier’s offering relative to the next-best alternative. Value case histories are one tool that best practice suppliers…use to accomplish this. Value case histories are written accounts that document the cost savings or added value that reference customers have received from using a supplier’s market offering. Another way best practice firms…

demonstrate the value of their offerings to prospective customers is through customer value assessment tools, which we term value calculators. These tools are

spreadsheet software applications that salespeople or value specialists conduct on

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their laptops as part of a consultative selling approach to demonstrate the value that customers likely would receive from their offering… Thus suppliers work with their customers to define the measures on which they will track the cost savings or incremental profit produced and then, after a suitable period of time, work with customer managers to substantiate the results.” (Pp. 5-6).

“Our approach to customer value assessment focuses the supplier’s and customers’

limited resources on the value elements – that is, specific ways the offerings reduce customer costs or enable the customer to earn additional revenue and profit – that matter most and assessing them in the way that matters most… The guiding principle is to generate new knowledge, not recycle opinion.” (Pp. 8-9).

“In recent years, the terms value and value proposition have become two of the most widely used terms in business markets. While these terms are fundamental to our customer value management approach, our research reveals that despite their growing use, there is little specificity or agreement about (1) what is value, (2) what constitutes a customer value proposition, and (3) what makes a value proposition persuasive..”

(Pg. 12).

“Value in business markets is the worth in monetary terms of the technical, economic, service, and social benefits a customer firm receives in exchange for the price it pays for a market offering… Thus, we conceptually view a market offering as having two elemental characteristics: its value and its price… Finally, we contend that customer value in business markets is a comparative concept in which customers assess the value of a given market offering relative to what they regard as the next-best

alternative to it. There always is an alternative. It might be: 1. A market offering from a competitor… 2. the customer’s decision to source an item from an outside supplier or make the item itself… 3. The status quo (i.e., not doing anything)… 4. The most recent offering from the same supplier…” (Pp. 24-25).

“The difference between value and price is the customers incentive to purchase.

Remember, in this concept of value in business markets, raising or lowering the price does not change the value that offering provides to a customer firm. Rather, it changes the customer’s incentive to purchase the offering… And recognizing that the value of a given offering can vary by segment and by customer characteristics is vital.” (Pg. 27).

“Points of parity, points of difference, and points of contention are the inputs for

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developing the suppliers firm’s value proposition.” (Pg. 30)

“The resonating-focus customer value proposition consists of the one or two points of difference, and perhaps a point of parity, that deliver the greatest value to the target customer. This proposition differs from the favorable-points-of-difference

proposition in… significant respects. First, more is not better.” (Pp. 34-35).

“To generate some creative ideas that might substantially improve an offering’s value to customers, consider the set of questions that Professors Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne offer to promote out-of-the-box thinking. Specifically, supplier

managers, salespeople, and field technical representatives should be asked to answer the following four questions with respect to the present offering or the existing value proposition: 1. Reduce. Which value elements should be reduced well below industry standard? 2. Raise: Which value elements should be raised significantly above the industry standard? 3. Eliminate: Which value elements that the industry has taken for granted should be eliminated? 4. Create. Which new value elements should be created that the industry has never offered?” (Pp. 46-47).

2. Jagannathan, Sridhar, Jay Srinivasan, and Jerry L. Kalman (2002) Internet Commerce Metrics and Models in the New Era of Accountability. Prentice Hall. Upper Saddle River, NJ.

“Emergence of Services: Outsourcing as a Way of Life. One of the most interesting aspects of the Internet evolution is the proliferation of new and different services, so much so that the ‘service provider’ label is now a standard part of the Internet vernacular… Fundamentally, the Internet allows merchants to expand value in modular and spatially distributed ways. Each module of service, as we will see, gives rise to a set of vendors specializing around a service. Thus, it is no longer necessary or even prudent to consolidate one’s physical and human resources in company-owned and operated locations.” (Pg. 16).

“Organization of the Book. Overall, this book is designed to provide a framework for how to understand and cope with many issues that arise in building and sustaining an electronic commerce business by examining prevalent business models on the Internet. More specifically, the intent is to provide details about the ways to build business models that can then be pieced together in a building-block fashion to

construct, understand, and analyze complex business relationships in the new world of

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electronic commerce. In the early chapters we set up a framework that establishes benchmarks you might use as a starting point for evaluation…Finally there is a trial analysis of a sample company we call Ebiztro.com to show how all can be brought together. Assembling these units into a cohesive view of an enterprise is achieved by defining the online business model in terms of four horizontal stacks and one vertical stack. The four horizontal stacks are platform, content, community, and commerce… The vertical stack is services, which provides value for each of the horizontal stacks. Metrics and examples to illustrate what we refer to as atomic business models are provided wherever possible. Services are vertical because they can be introduced into every horizontal stack, usually when a make versus buy

decision is at hand. Services are pervasive throughout the new economy, and they potentially touch every enterprise that uses online processes and technologies.

Integrating services and service providers shortens time to market and often reduces capital costs.” (Pp. 22-23).

“The Service Providers. One of the most fascinating aspects of value creation on the Internet is the broad spectrum of Service Providers, many of whom owe their

existence to perceived online merchant needs. Service providers create a wide range of outsource capabilities that allow an online player to substitute owned assets or internally performed units of work with those that are externally contracted or carried out. The outsourced services in every aspect of business provide individuals, entrepreneurs, small businesses, and large businesses with new options on the way an atomic business functionality is achieved. All of which boils down to a simple consideration: Is there an external alternative in every specific, narrow aspect of business? The remarkable answer is an impressive YES!... As a consequence, the Internet now allows the creation of completely ‘virtual’ businesses that can own almost no infrastructure, no physical assets, no unique content, and no employees other than the owner, and yet are able to earn real revenue. Is this possible.

Absolutely.” (Pg. 55).

“A full business is created to relate its mission to daily operations. We take it to the next level by relating the metrics of the business model to profitability of the

company… In essence, a for-profit business is a machine whose ultimate design and purpose is to serve customers. As a reward for doing so, it must then make money for its shareholders and satisfy the requirements of incorporation, promote employee well being, and meet the community responsibilities. Such an economic engine always has a final report card of how its capital is utilized. The resulting machine is designed to implement the intent of the business, or goals and objectives… The report

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card is return on assets or capital employed.” (Pg. 313).

“Comprehension of all possible manual and automated business activities is achieved through business process mapping. Business process mapping can be carried out to considerable levels of granularity to include all software and human steps.” (Pg. 321).

“Appendix. Categorization of Selected Internet Companies.” (Pg. 353).

Selected list of figures and tables:

Figure 2.1 The Five-Stack E-Commerce Model Figure 2.8 Solution Space for E-Commerce

Figure 2.10 Service Providers Support and Supplement the Other Four Stacks.

Table 3.6 Illustrative Comparison Between In-House and ASP for an ERP Application Table 4.1 Metrics for Content Management.

Table 5.1 Community Entities and Associated Metrics Table 5.2 Cost Structure and Metrics

Table 6.2 Online Versus Offline: Benefits and Drawback [Baseline for Store Measurement]

Table 6.6 Buyer Perspective in an Online Marketplace

Table 6.7 Supplier Perspective in an Online Marketplace [Baseline Measurements for Exchanges]

Figure 6.12 Ecosystem Value Stack for Buyers, Sellers, and Partners Table 7.1 B2B, B2C, and C2C Pricing

Table 7.2 Pricing Mechanism by Market Environment

Table 7.3 Characteristics of Auctions in C2C, B2C, and B2B Contexts

Table 7.6 Advantages and Disadvantages of Direct Barter [Baseline Measurements for Barter Exchange]

Table 7.10 Metrics for Establishing Dynamic Pricing in an Exchange Table 8.2 Metrics for Permission Marketing

Table 8.2 Metrics for Merchant Affiliate Programs

3. Ricketts, John Arthur (2008) Reaching the Goal: How Managers Improve Services Business Using Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints. IBM Press.

Pearson plc. Upper Saddle River, NJ.

“We are all avid consumers of services, yet we seldom think much about where those services come from. Services are often like background music: Most are barely

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noticeable unless disrupted. How much we rely on services becomes painfully evident when power goes out, the planes stop flying, phone go dead, paychecks are late, hospitals are filled, day care is closed, water is shut off, Internet connections are lost, restaurants are closed, mail isn’t delivered, 911 emergency lines are jammed, or automatic teller machines are down. When a disaster causes multiple service disruptions for an extended period, life gets really hard, really fast. In developed economies, service providers are by far the largest employer, yet surprisingly few employees have a deep understanding of what it takes to provide service.” (Pg. 4).

“Services that seem straightforward can be immensely complicated beneath the surface. Consider simple calls to customer service… When you add it all up, seemingly simple calls to customer service can easily cost 100 times more than it costs for the customers to accomplish the same inquiries or transactions by themselves via kiosks or the Internet. No wonder service providers love customer self-service.”

(Pp. 4-5).

“Of course, some service are difficult or impossible to accomplish via self-service.

Complex services may require special tools and materials, but they often require expertise. For example, professional services include medicine, law, engineering, architecture, accounting, and finance. Scientific services cover biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, sociology, psychology. And technical services include

installation, maintenance, repair, operations. Professional, scientific, and technical services are the most highly customized of all services, which means that demand for these services is not easily predicted, and service delivery is not easily automated.”

installation, maintenance, repair, operations. Professional, scientific, and technical services are the most highly customized of all services, which means that demand for these services is not easily predicted, and service delivery is not easily automated.”