Knowledge management for ERP success

The business value of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems and in general large software implementations has been extensively debated in both popular press and academic literature for over three decades. Despite the positive motives for adoption, various organizations have reported negative impacts from these large investments. This ‘disconnect’ between large IS investments and firms’ organizational performance may be attributable to the economic transition from an era of competitive advantage based on information to one that is based on Knowledge. This paper discusses the initial findings of a two-phased study that focuses on empirically assessing the impact of knowledge management on the success of Enterprise Resource Planning systems. The research study uses information gathered from twenty-seven public sector organizations in Queensland, Australia. Validation of the a priori model constructs through factor analysis identified two dimensions of knowledge management. Further analysis assessed the comparative differences in perceptions of knowledge management in ERP, across four employment cohorts.

Business Process Redesign in Information Technology Incident Management: A teaching case

This paper consists of a detailed case narrative on how a leading Australian Finance organisation has utilised contemporary Business Process Management (BPM) concepts for improving the IT incident management processes within the whole organisation. The target audience includes practitioners who are interested in BPM case studies and Academics who may be seeking case studies for innovative teaching practices.

Towards a Business Process Management Maturity Model

Business Process Management (BPM) has been identified as the number one business priority by a recent Gartner study (Gartner, 2005). However, BPM has a plethora of facets as its origins are in Business Process Reengineering, Process Innovation, Process Modelling, and Workflow Management to name a few. Organisations increasingly recognize the requirement for an increased process orientation and require appropriate comprehensive frameworks, which help to scope and evaluate their BPM initiative. This research project aims toward the development of a holistic and widely accepted BPM maturity model, which facilitates the assessment of BPM capabilities. This paper provides an overview about the current model with a focus on the actual model development utilizing a series of Delphi studies. The development process includes separate studies that focus on further defining and expanding the six core factors within the model, i.e. strategic alignment, governance, method, Information Technology, people and culture.

Experiences in Passively Detecting Session Hijacking Attacks in IEEE 802.11 Networks

Current IEEE 802.11 wireless networks are vulnerable to session hijacking attacks as the existing standards fail to address the lack of authentication of management frames and network card addresses, and rely on loosely coupled state machines. Even the new WLAN security standard - IEEE 802.11i does not address these issues. In our previous work, we proposed two new techniques for improving detection of session hijacking attacks that are passive, computationally inexpensive, reliable, and have minimal impact on network performance. These techniques utilise unspoofable characteristics from the MAC protocol and the physical layer to enhance confidence in the intrusion detection process. This paper extends our earlier work and explores usability, robustness and accuracy of these intrusion detection techniques by applying them to eight distinct test scenarios. A correlation engine has also been introduced to maintain the false positives and false negatives at a manageable level. We also explore the process of selecting optimum thresholds for both detection techniques. For the purposes of our experiments, Snort-Wireless open source wireless intrusion detection system was extended to implement these new techniques and the correlation engine. Absence of any false negatives and low number of false positives in all eight test scenarios successfully demonstrated the effectiveness of the correlation engine and the accuracy of the detection techniques.

A comparative analysis of major ERP lifecycle implementation, management and support issues in Queensland Government

This paper reports on a study of ERP lifecycle major issues from the perspectives of individuals with substantial and diverse involvement with SAP Financials in Queensland Government. A survey was conducted of 117 ERP system project participants in five closely related state government agencies. A modified Delphi technique identified, rationalized and weighed perceived major issues in ongoing ERP life cycle implementation, management and support. The five agencies each implemented SAP Financials simultaneously using a common implementation partner. The three survey rounds of the Delphi technique, together with coding and synthesizing procedures, resulted in a set of 10 major issue categories with 38 sub-issues. Relative scores of issue importance are compared across government agencies, roles (client vs implementation partner) and organizational levels (strategic, technical and operational). Study findings confirm the importance of this finer partitioning of the data, and distinctions identified reflect the circumstances of ERP lifecycle implementation, management and support among the stakeholder groups. The study findings should also be of interest to stakeholders who seek to better understand the issues surrounding ERP systems and to better realise the benefits of ERP.