Search results

The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors that lead to consulting success in the enterprise software environment and thereby develop a refined consulting services maturity (CSM) model which includes prioritised best practices grouped under eight key focus areas (KFAs).

The research is conducted among Tier‐1 enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors using interviews, focus group sessions, and a web survey. Based on the findings of the survey, the CSM model is improved, refined, and ultimately ratified by a number of experienced ERP sector practitioners.

The fundamental basis of the CSM model is that an enterprise software company will be able to improve the maturity level of its consulting services operations by focusing on certain key areas and adopting prioritised best practices in each of the key areas. These key areas include leadership, values, consulting skills, consulting success factors, adaptability, project management practices, profitability, and customer focus. The level of maturity of the organisation increases as best practices are implemented and continuously refined.

The outcome is a blueprint for best practice consulting services for companies operating in the ERP software environment that can be adopted for very little cost. When implemented, the CSM model readily helps a company improve the performance of its consulting services business.

Business performance is enhanced by selecting KFAs, including their associated best practices, and then targeting these for improvement. As further best practices are implemented and refined, the maturity level of the consulting practice increases. This model can easily be adopted by any consulting services company and with the necessary focus, it should lead to a dramatic improvement of most dimensions of a consulting practice.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the elements of lean concept and identify those principles which are applicable to service organizations, also, to compare the lean best practices with CMMI‐SVC v1.2 model goals and practices and find out the compatibility.

The capability maturity model integration (CMMI) for services (CMMI‐SVC v1.2) model, developed by Software Engineering Institute is a collection of best practices applicable to service operations. Lean concepts, on the other hand, originated from manufacturing but of late lean principles and best practices have been implemented in some services organizations. As lean concepts originated from manufacturing and CMMI‐SVC v1.2 from software industry, there could be some overlapping content and some differences and each may offer some distinct advantages. This paper is based on the review of the contemporary literature on lean concepts and CMMI‐SVC v1.2 model, including books, journal articles and handbooks. The authors involved a group of practitioners and experts with theoretical and practical expertise on the CMMI framework, software process improvements as well as lean principles and services to find out which lean principles are applicable to service organization and also the compatibility of lean and CMMI‐SVC v1.2 practices.

The authors have defined a set of lean best practices which can be applied to service organizations. It is concluded that integration and harmonization of both lean and CMMI‐SVC v1.2 practices is possible and in many ways the practices are complementary. In the future, a unified model based on both lean and CMMI‐SVC v1.2 can be developed by combining the best practices of both.

This paper has reviewed the lean literature and grouped the lean best practices which are applicable to service organizations. It has compared the lean best practices with CMMI‐SVC v1.2 best practices. Little research has been done on comparison of lean best practices with CMMI‐SVC v1.2 model.

The purpose of this paper is to establish what constitutes best practice models of microfinance for poverty alleviation. It argues that the new microfinance phenomenon characterized by two camps; commercial and developmental players should be recognized as legitimate separate microfinance approaches with different aims and motives. This paper aims to establish strong foundational argument for developing parallel thinking and separate best practice models for effective engagement with each approach.

Rapid evidence assessment methodology was used to systematically identify and analyze a comprehensive list of relevant literature on best practice models of microfinance for poverty alleviation from both online and offline publications. Over 40 publications on microfinance best practice were critically reviewed with a specific attention to how the two approaches to microfinance (commercial and developmental) were dealt with in relation to impact on poverty and best practice approaches.

The paper argues that, business priorities of commercial microfinance providers differ significantly to those of development microfinance providers and this impacts on the program design which means clients of each regardless of coming from the same target group may have different experiences. The microfinance concept evolved far beyond any single philosophical or ideological confinement that there is now need for formal recognition and acknowledgment that commercial and developmental microfinance paradigms are parallel models of approaches whose continuous evolution is less likely to converge in the near future, so should be treated separately.

Because the purpose, challenges and requirements of commercial and developmental microfinance approaches are different, continued lack of purposeful distinction between the two will continue to cause confusion and lack of precision in policy response on specific sector challenges. Further work and discourse on the impact of both commercial and developmental approach to microfinance on service delivery to the poor is required to test the implications on best practice.

The paper highlights the fundamental flaw in the current perspective of microfinance sector which fails to recognize irreconcilable parallel approaches underpinned by different motives.

Quality function deployment (QFD) has been used to translate customer requirements into engineering characteristics of a product, while benchmarking was developed to search for the best industry practices, which will lead to exceptional performance through the implementation of these best practices. However, no attempt has been made to integrate QFD with benchmarking to identify the best practices of QFD model. This paper aims to classify the QFD models and thereby applying benchmarking process to propose the best practices of QFD model.

The fundamental benchmarking model developed by Camp has been used to benchmark the existing QFD models available in the literature.

Benchmarking the QFD models revealed about 36 QFD steps in the first phase of the house of quality. The tools used in solving for each practice are also reported.

The proposed model is conceptual and it requires validation by implementing the same in an organization to understand its effectiveness.

Utilizing the benchmarking process to develop the best practices of QFD model is an original concept.

Sharing information security best practices between experts via knowledge management systems is valuable for improving information security practices, exchanging expertise, mitigating security risks, spreading knowledge, reducing costs and saving efforts. The purpose of this paper is developing a conceptual model to enhance the transfer of information security best practices between professionals in virtual communities through a Web-based knowledge management system to exchange their successful experience in handling different information security situations.

The model is validated by surveying 17 experts’ reviews on the correctness of the model’s structure and its related components through applying deep rich peer debriefing to test suitability. Quantitative data has been collected to achieve confirmatory results.

The resulting model incorporates five main components that support the formal mechanism for the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge: identification, classification, storage, validation and sharing. The success of knowledge sharing is highly dependent on the active collaboration of community members and highly influenced by motivation. Validating transferred knowledge is vital for ensuring the credibility of the system.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper is one of the first to highlight the role of integrating knowledge management to enhance the effective share and reuse of information security best practices knowledge. The research results can support researchers investigating the topic and generate trustworthy literature to guide information security virtual community developers.

The purpose of this article is to present a unified model by combining lean and CMMI‐SVC best practices. The model would be very useful for CMMI‐SVC organizations that plan to implement lean best practices.

The paper is based on the review of the contemporary literature on lean concepts and the CMMI‐SVC v1.3 model, including books, journal articles and handbooks. A group of practitioners and experts with theoretical and practical expertise on the CMMI framework, software process improvements as well as lean principles and services were involved to find out which lean principles are applicable to service organization and also the compatibility of lean and CMMI‐SVC v1.3 practices.

The authors have presented a unified model by combining CMMI‐SVC v1.3 and lean best practices which can be applied to service organizations. In the future they would like to implement their unified model within IT service organizations to check its feasibility and effectiveness in real world. It would also provide an opportunity to explore the strengths and weaknesses of the unified model, based on which it can be further refined and matured.

The model has been designed in such a way that lean practices can be plugged‐in to CMMI‐SVC model process areas. By including lean practices to CMMI‐SVC model, the process improvement initiatives will be aligned with the business objectives. The unified model will be useful to the organizations that would like to implement lean concepts within the CMMI‐SVC framework.

The purpose of this paper is to examine human resource management (HRM) practices of the top 25 companies identified as “best” in India in 2011. This paper provides insights into HRM practices of a leading country in Asia that is playing a very important role in the global economy.

This conceptual paper will use for its research analysis the business reports of the Outlook Business Magazine and AON Hewitt. AON Hewitt is a global human resource consulting company and is an established authority in identifying “best” companies in India since 2004. A qualitative content analysis was done of the business report to identify predominant themes.

The analysis identified how the “best” 25 Indian companies offer progressive HRM practices that required careful investment and collaboration. This research showcases seven specific HRM themes that include elaborate staffing, investment in learning, work–life balance, egalitarian practices, developmental performance culture, generous benefits and engagement initiatives.

This paper provides preliminary guidelines for global practitioners who may be interested in doing business in India. It also provides a model of “best” HRM practices adopted by 25 companies that could help other organizations identify successful HRM practices in India. Among the 25 companies, 16 are Indian companies and 9 are subsidiaries of multinationals.

This paper outlines HRM “best” practices of organizations in an emerging Asian economy that has not been addressed before. This paper hopes to bridge this paucity in the extant literature by showcasing the “best” HRM practices from 25 “best” companies in India. It also provides an Indian model of “best” HRM practices that can be tested by other scholars for future studies.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a quick maturity test to assist a company's development of a supply chain operations strategy. Maturity tests and models have been developed within several areas, but there is a lack of maturity tests targeting supply chain operations.

A literature review on maturity models is carried out in order to build the structure of the test, while a literature review on best practices in supply chain management is the basis for the test content.

The proposed maturity test is an audit scheme built on best practice statements within seven key strategic decision areas – strategy, control, processes, materials, resources, information and organisation. The test is designed with simplicity as a key feature and takes only one hour to complete. The test results are the input to strategic decisions regarding use of best practices in supply chain operations.

Supply chain managers ask for a simple and quick tool that can be used as an eye‐opener and a compass early in the development process of the supply chain operations strategy. The proposed test has a proven potential to point out directions for supply chain improvement areas.

There is a need for a quick assessment tool for mapping the maturity of a company's supply chain operations. The proposed test is a potential answer to this need.

Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and shows that these are in many, differing, areas across management research from: retail finance; precarious jobs and decisions; methodological lessons from feminism; call centre experience and disability discrimination. These and all points east and west are covered and laid out in a simple, abstract style, including, where applicable, references, endnotes and bibliography in an easy‐to‐follow manner. Summarizes each paper and also gives conclusions where needed, in a comfortable modern format.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the best practices in the green operations strategy of hospitals.

A total of 25 cases from all over the world were investigated. The source of data was the annual sustainability reports that were retrieved from Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) database. The present research adopted the benchmarking method and the quantitative content analysis of sustainability reports. Then, the indicative models of best practices were developed by using two analysis approaches; within cluster analysis and across clusters analysis.

This study found four major taxonomies of green operation strategy in hospitals. The significant strategic groups were resources/waste management; electrical power management; non-hazardous waste management; and emissions/resources management. Indicative models for the relationship between actions and key green performance indicators were developed in the two stages of the analysis.

The best practices of green operations strategies in hospitals have not so far been investigated. Countries around the world should obey the new regulations for their environmental footprint; if they do, it will exert pressure on all sectors and organizations at all levels to take immediate steps to measure and improve their environmental performance.