CRM packaged software : a study of organisational experiences

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) packaged software has become a key contributor to attempts at aligning business and IT strategies in recent years. Throughout the 1990s there was, in many organisations strategies, a shift from the need to manage transactions and toward relationship management. Where Enterprise Resource Planning packages dominated the management of transactions era, CRM packages lead in regard to relationships. At present, balanced views of CRM packages are scantly presented instead relying on vendor rhetoric. This paper uses case study research to analyse some of the issues associated with CRM packages. These issues include the limitations of CRM packages, the need for a relationship orientation and the problems of a dominant management perspective of CRM. It is suggested that these issues could be more readily accommodated by organisational detachment from beliefs in IT as utopia, consideration of prior IS theory and practice and a more informed approach to CRM package selection.

Potential pitfalls in packaged software adoption

The common reasons for those in organizations adopting large config- urable packaged software products are compelling. Problems with the existing software situation, the supposed predictability and perceived business benefits of packaged software, and various social influences, can lead to packages being preferred to custom approaches. Yet, for every reason, there is a potential associated problem that must be understood before an informed adoption decision can be made...

Achieving enterprise integration through software customization : part I-evidence from the field

Achieving business and IT integration is strategic goal for many organisations – it has almost become the ‘Holy Grail’ of organisational success. In this environment Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) packages have become the defacto option for addressing this issue. Integration has come to mean adopting ERP, through configuration and without customization, but this all or nothing approach has proved difficult for many organisations. In part 1 of a 2 part update we provide evidence from the field that suggests that whilst costly, if managed appropriately, customization can have value in aiding organisational integration efforts. In part 2, we discuss in more detail the benefits and pitfalls involved in enacting a non-standard based integration strategy.

Achieving enterprise integration through software customization : part II-enacting the strategy

In part 1 of this update, we put forward the argument that integration in ERP based environments can be achieved in ways other than adopting a software configuration only approach. We drew on evidence from two large ERP implementations to show how, despite the cost implications, some customization, if carefully managed, could prove helpful. In this, the final part of the update, we discuss the benefits, and potential pitfalls, involved in enacting a non-standard based integration strategy. This requires attention to a) broadening the integration definition; b) bringing legacy practices forward and c) developing a customization based integration strategy.

The game of clones and the Australia tax : divergent views about copyright business models and the willingness of Australian consumers to infringe

It is often said that Australia is a world leader in rates of copyright infringement for entertainment goods. In 2012, the hit television show, Game of Thrones, was the most downloaded television show over bitorrent, and estimates suggest that Australians accounted for a plurality of nearly 10% of the 3-4 million downloads each week. The season finale of 2013 was downloaded over a million times within 24 hours of its release, and again Australians were the largest block of illicit downloaders over BitTorrent, despite our relatively small population. This trend has led the former US Ambassador to Australia to implore Australians to stop 'stealing' digital content, and rightsholders to push for increasing sanctions on copyright infringers. The Australian Government is looking to respond by requiring Internet Service Providers to issue warnings and potentially punish consumers who are alleged by industry groups to have infringed copyright. This is the logical next step in deterring infringement, given that the operators of infringing networks (like The Pirate Bay, for example) are out of regulatory reach. This steady ratcheting up of the strength of copyright, however, comes at a significant cost to user privacy and autonomy, and while the decentralisation of enforcement reduces costs, it also reduces the due process safeguards provided by the judicial process. This article presents qualitative evidence that substantiates a common intuition: one of the major reasons that Australians seek out illicit downloads of content like Game of Thrones in such numbers is that it is more difficult to access legitimately in Australia. The geographically segmented way in which copyright is exploited at an international level has given rise to a ‘tyranny of digital distance’, where Australians have less access to copyright goods than consumers in other countries. Compared to consumers in the US and the EU, Australians pay more for digital goods, have less choice in distribution channels, are exposed to substantial delays in access, and are sometimes denied access completely. In this article we focus our analysis on premium film and television offerings, like Game of Thrones, and through semi-structured interviews, explore how choices in distribution impact on the willingness of Australian consumers to seek out infringing copies of copyright material. Game of Thrones provides an excellent case study through which to frame this analysis: it is both one of the least legally accessible television offerings and one of the most downloaded through filesharing networks of recent times. Our analysis shows that at the same time as rightsholder groups, particularly in the film and television industries, are lobbying for stronger laws to counter illicit distribution, the business practices of their member organisations are counter-productively increasing incentives for consumers to infringe. The lack of accessibility and high prices of copyright goods in Australia leads to substantial economic waste. The unmet consumer demand means that Australian consumers are harmed by lower access to information and entertainment goods than consumers in other jurisdictions. The higher rates of infringement that fulfils some of this unmet demand increases enforcement costs for copyright owners and imposes burdens either on our judicial system or on private entities – like ISPs – who may be tasked with enforcing the rights of third parties. Most worryingly, the lack of convenient and cheap legitimate digital distribution channels risks undermining public support for copyright law. Our research shows that consumers blame rightsholders for failing to meet market demand, and this encourages a social norm that infringing copyright, while illegal, is not morally wrongful. The implications are as simple as they are profound: Australia should not take steps to increase the strength of copyright law at this time. The interests of the public and those of rightsholders align better when there is effective competition in distribution channels and consumers can legitimately get access to content. While foreign rightsholders are seeking enhanced protection for their interests, increasing enforcement is likely to increase their ability to engage in lucrative geographical price-discrimination, particularly for premium content. This is only likely to increase the degree to which Australian consumers feel that their interests are not being met and, consequently, to further undermine the legitimacy of copyright law. If consumers are to respect copyright law, increasing sanctions for infringement without enhancing access and competition in legitimate distribution channels could be dangerously counter-productive. We suggest that rightsholders’ best strategy for addressing infringement in Australia at this time is to ensure that Australians can access copyright goods in a timely, affordable, convenient, and fair lawful manner.

Vagueness and software engineering

We do not commonly associate software engineering with philosophical debate. Indeed, software engineers ought to be concerned with building software systems and not settling philosophical questions. I attempt to show that software engineers do, in fact, take philosophical sides when designing software applications. In particular, I look at how the problem of vagueness arises in software engineering and argue that when software engineers solve it, they commit to philosophical views that they are seldom aware of. In the second part of the paper, I suggest a way of dealing with vague predicates without having to confront the problem of vagueness itself. The purpose of my paper is to highlight the currently prevalent disconnect between philosophy and software engineering. I claim that a better knowledge of the philosophical debate is important as it can have ramifications for crucial software design decisions. Better awareness of philosophical issues not only produces better software engineers, it also produces better engineered products.

Detecting approximate clones in business process model repositories

Empirical evidence shows that repositories of business process models used in industrial practice contain significant amounts of duplication. This duplication arises for example when the repository covers multiple variants of the same processes or due to copy-pasting. Previous work has addressed the problem of efficiently retrieving exact clones that can be refactored into shared subprocess models. This article studies the broader problem of approximate clone detection in process models. The article proposes techniques for detecting clusters of approximate clones based on two well-known clustering algorithms: DBSCAN and Hi- erarchical Agglomerative Clustering (HAC). The article also defines a measure of standardizability of an approximate clone cluster, meaning the potential benefit of replacing the approximate clones with a single standardized subprocess. Experiments show that both techniques, in conjunction with the proposed standardizability measure, accurately retrieve clusters of approximate clones that originate from copy-pasting followed by independent modifications to the copied fragments. Additional experiments show that both techniques produce clusters that match those produced by human subjects and that are perceived to be standardizable.

Small and medium enterprises using software as a service : exploring the different roles of intermediaries

Software as a Service (SaaS) can provide significant benefits to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) due to advantages like ease of access, 7*24 availability, and utility pricing. However, underlying the SaaS delivery model is often the assumption that SMEs will directly interact with the SaaS vendor and use a self-service approach. In practice, we see the rise of SaaS intermediaries who can support SMEs with sourcing and leveraging SaaS. This paper reports on the roles of intermediaries and how they support SMEs with using SaaS. We conducted an empirical study of two SaaS intermediaries and analysed their business models, in particular their value propositions. We identified orientation (technology or customer) and alignment (operational or strategic) as themes for understanding their roles. The contributions of this paper include: (1) the identification and description of SaaS intermediaries for SMEs based on an empirical study and (2) understanding the different roles of SaaS intermediaries, in particular a more basic role based on technology orientation and operational alignment and a more value adding role based on customer orientation and strategic alignment. We propose that SaaS intermediaries can address SaaS adoption and implementation challenges of SMEs by playing a basic role and can also aim to support SMEs in creating business value with SaaS based solutions by playing an added value role.

Veracity of the archive : a research approach to the collection and verification of urban morphological records using qualitative data analysis software

Critical to the research of urban morphologists is the availability of historical records that document the urban transformation of the study area. However, thus far little work has been done towards an empirical approach to the validation of archival data in this field. Outlined in this paper, therefore, is a new methodology for validating the accuracy of archival records and mapping data, accrued through the process of urban morphological research, so as to establish a reliable platform from which analysis can proceed. The paper particularly addresses the problems of inaccuracies in existing curated historical information, as well as errors in archival research by student assistants, which together give rise to unacceptable levels of uncertainty in the documentation. The paper discusses the problems relating to the reliability of historical information, demonstrates the importance of data verification in urban morphological research, and proposes a rigorous method for objective testing of collected archival data through the use of qualitative data analysis software.

FaceXpress : an integrated software suite for facial emotion stimulus manipulation and facial measurement

The characterisation of facial expression through landmark-based analysis methods such as FACEM (Pilowsky & Katsikitis, 1994) has a variety of uses in psychiatric and psychological research. In these systems, important structural relationships are extracted from images of facial expressions by the analysis of a pre-defined set of feature points. These relationship measures may then be used, for instance, to assess the degree of variability and similarity between different facial expressions of emotion. FaceXpress is a multimedia software suite that provides a generalised workbench for landmark-based facial emotion analysis and stimulus manipulation. It is a flexible tool that is designed to be specialised at runtime by the user. While FaceXpress has been used to implement the FACEM process, it can also be configured to support any other similar, arbitrary system for quantifying human facial emotion. FaceXpress also implements an integrated set of image processing tools and specialised tools for facial expression stimulus production including facial morphing routines and the generation of expression-representative line drawings from photographs.

Multi-level neural modelling : an application of object-oriented software engineering

Neu-Model, an ongoing project aimed at developing a neural simulation environment that is extremely computationally powerful and flexible, is described. It is shown that the use of good Software Engineering techniques in Neu-Model’s design and implementation is resulting in a high performance system that is powerful and flexible enough to allow rigorous exploration of brain function at a variety of conceptual levels.

A real-time software architecture for robotics and automation

This paper describes a software architecture for real-world robotic applications. We discuss issues of software reliability, testing and realistic off-line simulation that allows the majority of the automation system to be tested off-line in the laboratory before deployment in the field. A recent project, the automation of a very large mining machine is used to illustrate the discussion.

A low-cost attack on branch-based software watermarking schemes

In 2005, Ginger Myles and Hongxia Jin proposed a software watermarking scheme based on converting jump instructions or unconditional branch statements (UBSs) by calls to a fingerprint branch function (FBF) that computes the correct target address of the UBS as a function of the generated fingerprint and integrity check. If the program is tampered with, the fingerprint and integrity checks change and the target address will not be computed correctly. In this paper, we present an attack based on tracking stack pointer modifications to break the scheme and provide implementation details. The key element of the attack is to remove the fingerprint and integrity check generating code from the program after disassociating the target address from the fingerprint and integrity value. Using the debugging tools that give vast control to the attacker to track stack pointer operations, we perform both subtractive and watermark replacement attacks. The major steps in the attack are automated resulting in a fast and low-cost attack.