This book examines issues related to the alignment of business strategies and analytics. Vast amounts of data are being generated, collected, stored, processed, analyzed, distributed and used at an ever-increasing rate by organizations. Simultaneously, managers must rapidly and thoroughly understand the factors driving their business. Business Analytics is an interactive process of analyzing and exploring enterprise data to find valuable insights that can be exploited for competitive advantage. However, to gain this advantage, organizations need to create a sophisticated analytical climate within which strategic decisions are made. As a result, there is a growing awareness that alignment among business strategies, business structures, and analytics are critical to effectively develop and deploy techniques to enhance an organization's decision-making capability. In the past, the relevance and usefulness of academic research in the area of alignment is often questioned by practitioners, but this book seeks to bridge this gap. Aligning Business Strategies and Analytics: Bridging Between Theory and Practice is comprised of twelve chapters, divided into three sections. The book begins by introducing business analytics and the current gap between academic training and the needs within the business community. Chapters 2 - 5 examines how the use of cognitive computing improves financial advice, how technology is accelerating the growth of the financial advising industry, explores the application of advanced analytics to various facets of the industry and provides the context for analytics in practice. Chapters 6 - 9 offers real-world examples of how project management professionals tackle big-data challenges, explores the application of agile methodologies, discusses the operational benefits that can be gained by implementing real-time, and a case study on human capital analytics. Chapters 10 - 11 reviews the opportunities and potential shortfall and highlights how new media marketing and analytics fostered new insights. Finally the book concludes with a look at how data and analytics are playing a revolutionary role in strategy development in the chemical industry.

This book encompasses empirical evidences to understand the application of data analytical techniques in emerging contexts. Varied studies relating to manufacturing and services sectors including healthcare, banking, information technology, power, education sector etc. stresses upon the systematic approach followed in applying the data analytical techniques; and also analyses how these techniques are effective in decision-making in different contexts. Especially, the application of regression modeling, financial modelling, multi-group modeling, cluster analysis, and sentiment analysis will help the readers in understanding critical business scenarios in the best possible way, and which later can help them in arriving at best solution for the business related problems. The individual chapters will help the readers in understanding the role of specific data analytic tools and techniques in resolving business operational issues experienced in manufacturing and service organisations in India and in developing countries. The book offers a relevant resource that will help readers in the application and interpretation of data analytical statistical practices relating to emerging issues like customer experience, marketing capability, quality of manufactured products, strategic orientation, high-performance human resource policy, employee resilience, financial resources, etc. This book will be of interest to a professional audience that include practitioners, policy makers, NGOs, managers and employees as well as academicians, researchers and students.

This book discusses the latest developments in the field of open data. The opening of data by public organizations has the potential to improve the public sector, inspire business innovation, and establish transparency. With this potential comes unique challenges; these developments impact the operation of governments as well as their relationship with private sector enterprises and society. Changes at the technical, organizational, managerial, and political level are taking place, which, in turn, impact policy-making and traditional institutional structures. This book contributes to the systematic analysis and publication of cutting-edge methods, tools, and approaches for more efficient data sharing policies, practices, and further research. Topics discussed include an introduction to open data, the open data landscape, the open data life cycle, open data policies, organizational issues, interoperability, infrastructure, business models, open data portal evaluation, and research directions, best practices, and guidelines. Written to address different perspectives, this book will be of equal interest to students and researchers, ICT industry staff, practitioners, policy makers and public servants.

This volume constitutes the proceedings of the 11th IFIP WG 8.1 Conference on the Practice of Enterprise Modeling held in October/November 12018 in Vienna, Austria. The conference was created by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group 8.1 to offer a forum for knowledge transfer and experience sharing between the academic and practitioner communities. The 21 full papers and 5 short papers accepted were carefully reviewed and selected from 64 submissions. They are grouped by the following topics: business process modeling, model derivation; collaboration modeling; reviews and analyses of modeling methods; semantics and reasoning, experience reports; and teaching challenges.

For consultants, facilitators or OD specialists, a house's familiar image will help their clients see, think and feel their ways solving their business issues. No need for dry and hard-to-remember management schemas. The striking visual and active methods shown here deeply engage clients - they get it right away. The House and its 'Rooms' make sense to them, and they willingly start working with you. The Our House model has many of these 'Rooms' where complex business issues are sorted into one area at a time. The focus, the mood and the process vary with each Room, and the author reveals an entirely original consulting process each time. Disciplined creativity begins: loosening the grip of the past in the Attic; testing business foundations in the Cellar; preparing a meal the customer would love in the Kitchen; suppliers, maintenance and low-hanging fruit in the Garden; the team's dirty washing in the Laundry; elimination and waste goes into the Toilet; frank talk and vision alignment take place at the Dining Table; big systems perspectives can be seen from the Balcony; analysis in the Study; conversation and connection in the Living Room. The simplicity of the images of a House and its Rooms belies their frugality and their strength. In each Room, your clients are put through something demanding yet liberating. They see things differently and they see different things. Our House shows you how to succeed with simple action methods that are enlightening and strong.

This book addresses and examines the impacts of applications and services for data management and analysis, such as infrastructure, platforms, software, and business processes, on both academia and industry. The chapters cover effective approaches in dealing with the inherent complexity and increasing demands of big data management from an applications perspective. Various case studies included have been reported by data analysis experts who work closely with their clients in such fields as education, banking, and telecommunications. Understanding how data management has been adapted to these applications will help students, instructors and professionals in the field. Application areas also include the fields of social network analysis, bioinformatics, and the oil and gas industries.

Designed for a one-semester course, Applied Statistics for Business and Economics offers students in business and the social sciences an effective introduction to some of the most basic and powerful techniques available for understanding their world. Numerous interesting and important examples reflect real-life situations, stimulating students to think realistically in tackling these problems. Calculations can be performed using any standard spreadsheet package. To help with the examples, the author offers both actual and hypothetical databases on his website http://iwu.edu/~bleekley The text explores ways to describe data and the relationships found in data. It covers basic probability tools, Bayes' theorem, sampling, estimation, and confidence intervals. The text also discusses hypothesis testing for one and two samples, contingency tables, goodness-of-fit, analysis of variance, and population variances. In addition, the author develops the concepts behind the linear relationship between two numeric variables (simple regression) as well as the potentially nonlinear relationships among more than two variables (multiple regression). The final chapter introduces classical time-series analysis and how it applies to business and economics. This text provides a practical understanding of the value of statistics in the real world. After reading the book, students will be able to summarize data in insightful ways using charts, graphs, and summary statistics as well as make inferences from samples, especially about relationships.

Combine two typically separate sources of data-behavioral quantitative data and usability testing qualitative data-into a powerful single tool that helps improve your organization's website by increasing conversion and ROI. The combination of the what is happening data of website activity, coupled with the why it's happening data of usability testing, provides a complete 360-degree view into what is causing poor performance, where your website can be optimized, and how it can be improved. There are plenty of books focusing on big data and using data analytics to improve websites, or on utilizing usability testing and UX research methods for improvement. This is the first book that combines both subjects into a methodology you can use over and over again to improve any website. UX Optimization is ideal for anyone who wants to combine the power of quantitative data with the insights provided by qualitative data to improve website results. The book uses step-by-step instructions with photos, drawings, and supporting screenshots to show you how to: define personas, conduct behavioral UX data analysis, perform UX and usability testing evaluations, and combine behavioral UX and usability data to create a powerful set of optimization recommendations that can dramatically improve any website. What You'll Learn Understand personas: what they are and how to use them to analyze data Use quantitative research tools and techniques for analysis Know where to find UX behavioral data and when to use it Use qualitative research tools, techniques, and procedures Analyze qualitative data to find patterns of consistent task flow errors Combine qualitative and quantitative data for a 360-degree view Make recommendations for optimizations based on your findings Test optimization recommendations to ensure improvements are achieved Who This Book Is For Big data analytics (quantitative) professionals who want to learn more about the qualitative side of analysis; UX researchers, usability testers, and UX designers (qualitative professionals) who want to know more about big data and behavioral UX analysis; and students of UX, UX designers, product managers, developers, and those at startups who want to understand how to use behavioral UX and usability testing data to optimize their websites and apps.

Get started with artificial intelligence in your business. This book will help you understand AI, its implications, and how to adopt a strategy that is rational, relevant, and practical. Beyond the buzzwords and the technology complexities, organizations are struggling to understand what AI means for their industry and how they can start their journey. How to Compete in the Age of Artificial Intelligence is not a book about complex formulas or solution architectures. It goes deeper into explaining the meaning and relevance of AI for your business. You will learn how to apply AI thinking across enterprise functions-including disruptive technologies such as IoT, Blockchain, and cloud-and transform your organization. What You'll Learn Know how to spot AI opportunities and establish the right organizational imperatives to grow your business Understand AI in the context of changing business dynamics and the workforce/skills required to succeed Discover how to apply AI thinking across enterprise functions-from the boardroom to cybersecurity, IoT, IT operations, policies-and implement a sustainable and integrated human-machine collaboration strategy Who This Book is For CxOs, senior executives, mid-level managers, AI evangelists, digital leads, and technology directors

This proceedings volume highlights the role and importance of Operational Research (OR) in the digital era and the underlying ICT challenges. The selected papers cover recent advances in all branches of operational research, mathematical modeling and decision making. It covers a wide range of key areas from digital economy, to supply chain management, and also finance. The book adopts an applied perspective that covers the contributions of OR in the broad field of business and economics linked with the discipline of computer science. The chapters are based on papers presented at the 6th International Symposium & 28th National Conference on Operational Research. Although the conference is organized by the Hellenic Operational Research Society (HELORS), the contributions in this book promotes international co-operation among researchers and practitioners working in the field.

This book addresses the issue of smart and sustainable development in the Mediterranean (MED) region, a distinct part of the world, full of challenges and risks but also opportunities. Above all, the book focuses on smartening up small and medium-sized cities and insular communities, taking into account their geographical peculiarities, the pattern of MED urban settlements and the abundance of island complexes in the MED Basin. Taking for granted that sustainability in the MED is the overarching policy goal that needs to be served, the book explores different aspects of smartness in support of this goal's achievement. In this respect, evidence from concrete smart developments adopted by forerunners in the MED region is collected and analyzed; coupled with experiences gathered from successful, non-MED, examples of smart efforts in European countries. More specifically, current research and empirical results from MED urban environments are discussed, as well as findings from or concerning other parts of the world, which are of relevance to the MED region. The book's primary goal is to enable policymakers, planners and decision-making bodies to recognize the challenges and options available; and make to more informed policy decisions towards smart, sustainable, inclusive and resilient urban and regional futures in the MED.

This book includes selected papers submitted to the ICADABAI-2017 conference, offering an overview of the new methodologies and presenting innovative applications that are of interest to both academicians and practitioners working in the area of analytics. It discusses predictive analytics applications, machine learning applications, human resource analytics, operations analytics, analytics in finance, methodology and econometric applications. The papers in the predictive analytics applications section discuss web analytics, email marketing, customer churn prediction, retail analytics and sports analytics. The section on machine learning applications then examines healthcare analytics, insurance analytics and machine analytics using different innovative machine learning techniques. Human resource analytics addresses important issues relating to talent acquisition and employability using analytics, while a paper in the section on operations analytics describe an innovative application in oil and gas industry. The papers in the analytics in finance part discuss the use of analytical tools in banking and commodity markets, and lastly the econometric applications part presents interesting banking and insurance applications.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Exploring Services Science, IESS 2018, held in Karlsruhe, Germany, in September 2018. The 30 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 67 submissions. The book is structured in six parts, each featuring contributions describing current research in a particular domain of service science: Service Design and Innovation; Smart Service Processes; Big Data in Services; Service Topics Open Exploration; Design Science Research in Services. The book offers an extended, ICT-focused vision on services and addresses multiple relevant aspects, including underlying business models, the necessary processes and technological capabilities like big data and machine learning. The academic work showcased at the conference should help to advance service science and its application in practice.

This book combines the three dimensions of technology, society and economy to explore the advent of today's cloud ecosystems as successors to older service ecosystems based on networks. Further, it describes the shifting of services to the cloud as a long-term trend that is still progressing rapidly.The book adopts a comprehensive perspective on the key success factors for the technology - compelling business models and ecosystems including private, public and national organizations. The authors explore the evolution of service ecosystems, describe the similarities and differences, and analyze the way they have created and changed industries. Lastly, based on the current status of cloud computing and related technologies like virtualization, the internet of things, fog computing, big data and analytics, cognitive computing and blockchain, the authors provide a revealing outlook on the possibilities of future technologies, the future of the internet, and the potential impacts on business and society.

This book presents the outcomes of the 17th IEEE/ACIS International Conference on Computer and Information Science (ICIS 2018), which was held in Singapore on June 6-8, 2018. The aim of the conference was to bring together researchers and scientists, businessmen and entrepreneurs, teachers, engineers, computer users, and students to discuss the various fields of computer science and to share their experiences, and to exchange new ideas and information in a meaningful way. The book includes findings on all aspects (theory, applications and tools) of computer and information science and discusses related practical challenges and the solutions adopted to solve them. The conference organizers selected the best papers from those accepted for presentation. The papers were chosen based on review scores submitted by members of the program committee and underwent a further rigorous round of review. From this second round, 13 of the conference's most promising papers were then published in this Springer (SCI) book and not the conference proceedings. We impatiently await the important contributions that we know these authors will make to the field of computer and information science.

This book provides a practical and strategic perspective on IT and cyber security for corporations and other businesses. Leading experts from industry, politics and research discuss the status quo and future prospects of corporate cyber security. They answer questions such as: How much will IT security cost? Who will provide IT security? Can security even be fun? The book claims that digitization will increasingly pervade all areas of the economy, as well as our daily professional and personal lives. It will produce speed, agility and cost efficiency, but also increasing vulnerability in the context of public, corporate and private life. Consequently, cyber security is destined to become the great facilitator of digitization, providing maximum protection for data, networks, data centres and terminal devices.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Workshop on Enterprise and Organizational Modeling and Simulation, EOMAS 2018, held in Tallinn, Estonia, in June 2018. The main focus of EOMAS is on the role, importance, and application of modeling and simulation within the extended organizational and enterprise context. The 11 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 22 submissions. They were organized in topical sections on conceptual modeling, enterprise engineering, and formal methods.

This book presents the latest developments and breakthroughs in fuzzy theory and performance prediction of queuing and reliability models by using the stochastic modeling and optimization theory. The main focus is on analytics that use fuzzy logic, queuing and reliability theory for the performance prediction and optimal design of real-time engineering systems including call centers, telecommunication, manufacturing, service organizations, etc. For the day-to-day as well as industrial queuing situations and reliability prediction of machining parts embedded in computer, communication and manufacturing systems, the book assesses various measures of performance and effectiveness that can provide valuable insights and help arrive at the best decisions with regard to service and engineering systems. In twenty chapters, the book presents both theoretical developments and applications of the fuzzy logic, reliability and queuing models in a diverse range of scenarios. The topics discussed will be of interest to researchers, educators and undergraduate students in the fields of Engineering, Business Management, and the Mathematical Sciences.

This book explains how to teach better and presents the latest research on processing educational data and presents traditional statistical techniques as well as probabilistic, interval, and fuzzy approaches. Teaching is a very rewarding activity; it is also a very difficult one - because it is largely an art. There is a lot of advice on teaching available, but it is usually informal and is not easy to follow. To remedy this situation, it is reasonable to use techniques specifically designed to handle such imprecise knowledge: the fuzzy logic techniques. Since there are a large number of statistical studies of different teaching techniques, the authors combined statistical and fuzzy approaches to process the educational data in order to provide insights into improving all the stages of the education process: from forming a curriculum to deciding in which order to present the material to grading the assignments and exams. The authors do not claim to have solved all the problems of education. Instead they show, using numerous examples, that an innovative combination of different uncertainty techniques can improve teaching. The book offers teachers and instructors valuable advice and provides researchers in pedagogical and fuzzy areas with techniques to further advance teaching.

Gilbert Muller introduces the foundations of Business Process Management as well as Case-based Reasoning and presents a novel approach to assist the complex, time-consuming, and error-prone task of workflow modeling. By means of methods from artificial intelligence, in particular from the field of Case-based Reasoning, he shows how workflows can be automatically constructed according to a query specified by the user. Thus, the modeling process can be supported substantially, which addresses a highly relevant problem in many workflow domains.

This book offers guidance for US-based IT businesses on both sides of the Atlantic when dealing with big data and government data, since transatlantic data flows are key to the success of these enterprises. It offers practical insights into many of the data-protection challenges US companies in various industries face when seeking to comply with US and EU data-protection laws, and analyses the potential conflicts in the light of their risks and the way in which US-based cloud providers react to the uncertainties of the applicable data-protection rules. The book particularly focuses on the insights derived from a qualitative study conducted in 2016 with various cloud-based IT businesses in the Silicon Valley area, which shows the diversity of views on data protection and the many approaches companies take to this topic. Further, it discusses key data-protection issues in the field of big data and government data.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Perspectives in Business Informatics Research, BIR 2018, held in Stockholm, Sweden, in September 2018. This year's conference theme was "Business Resilience - Organizational and Information System Resilience in Congruence". The 17 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 50 submissions. The papers were organized in topical sections named: business, people and system resilience; resilient collaboration; digital transformation; information technology management; enterprise systems and data analytics; and business and information systems development.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th SIGSAND/PLAIS EuroSymposium 2018 held in Gdansk, Poland, on September 20, 2018. The objective of the EuroSymposium on Systems Analysis and Design is to promote and develop high quality research on all issues related to information systems (IS) and in particular in systems analysis and design (SAND). The 14 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 36 submissions. They were organized in topical sections named: systems development and engineering; systems acceptance and usability; internet of things and big data; and healthcare IT.

This book helps decision makers grasp the importance, and applicability to business, of the new technologies and extended connectivity of systems that underlie what is becoming known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution: technologies and systems such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, 3D printing, the internet of things, virtual and augmented reality, big data and mobile networks. The WEF, OECD and UN all agree that humanity is on the cusp of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. As intelligent systems become integrated into every aspect of our lives this revolution will induce cultural and societal change of a magnitude hitherto unforeseen. These technologies challenge the values, customer experience and business propositions that have been the mainstay of almost every business and organization in existence. By redefining and encapsulating new value structures with emerging intelligent technologies, new innovative models are being created, and brought to market. Understanding the potential and impact of these changes will be a fundamental leadership requirement over the coming years. Skilton and Hovsepian provide decision makers with practical, independent and authoritative guidance to help them prepare for the changes we are all likely to witness due to the rapid convergence of technological advances. In short, bite-sized, nuggets, with frameworks supported by a deep set of practical and up-to-the-minute case studies, they shine light on the new business models and enterprise architectures emerging as businesses seek to build strategies to thrive within this brave new world.

Exploring the Cloud Computing (CC) commercial landscape as it matures; this book asserts that the key ingredient in sustaining the Software as a Service (SaaS) business model is subscription renewal. Chronicling the evolution and future trajectory of the CC concept, the authors examine the new paradigm it is creating for the distribution of computer software applications among business-to-business (B2B) clients. CC enabled SaaS has been fundamentally changing the revenue expectations and business model for the application software industry, and impacting on how SaaS providers pursue, acquire and retain B2B clients. Securing SaaS subscription renewal is critical to the survival and prosperity of this business as attrition can have a significant impact on the financial viability of SaaS businesses based on this model. Focusing on the B2B client and the SaaS industry dependency on renewal subscriptions delivered through the CC channel, the primary research presented in this book seeks to examine the key drivers behind the B2B SaaS subscription renewal decision and, in doing so, to explore the recurring revenue framework for the Cloud SaaS business.