Category Archives: Publications

News, Publication, Publications

Nomination as Best Theory Development Paper at ICIS 2017

Our paper “Leveraging Market Research Techniques in IS – A Review of Conjoint Analysis in IS Research” co-authored by Dana Naous and Christine Legner was nominated as Best Theory Development Paper at the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2017) in Seoul. The paper summarizes results of the SNF project “Don’t Guess, Simulate! – Understanding User Preferences for Cloud Services”.

ICIS is the most prestigious international conference in the Information Systems discipline, and provides a forum for networking and sharing of latest ideas and highest calibre scientific work amongst the IS profession. The ICIS Conference Proceedings are available for download in the AIS Electronic Library.

Abstract:
With the increasing importance of mass-market information systems (IS), understanding individual user preferences for IS design and adoption is essential. However, this has been a challenging task due to the complexity of balancing functional, non-functional, and economic requirements. Conjoint analysis (CA), from marketing research, estimates user preferences by measuring tradeoffs between products attributes. Although the number of studies applying CA in IS has increased in the past years, we still lack fundamental discussion on its use in our discipline. We review the existing CA studies in IS with regard to the application areas and methodological choices along the CA procedure. Based on this review, we develop a reference framework for application areas in IS that serves as foundation for future studies. We argue that CA can be leveraged in requirements management, business model design, and systems evaluation. As future research opportunities, we see domain-specific adaptations e.g., user preference models.

News, Projects, Publication, Publications

When Sales Meet Process Mining – Presentation at the International Conference on Information Systems

Gaël Bernard presented results of the CTI-funded research project “Real-Time Sales Planning and Performance Management (SPPM)” at the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) in Dublin.

G. Bernard, T. Boillat, C. Legner, P. Andritsos:
When Sales Meet Process Mining: A Scientific Approach to Sales Process and Performance Management
Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS), Dublin, 2016
Abstract:

Selling has long been considered as an ” art ” driven by personal intuition and native sales talent. However, significant changes have occurred over the past 30 years, as a result of technological advances and changing customer expectations. As one answer to these changes, practitioners and scholars have promoted the idea of ” sales as a science ” , relying on documented, repeatable ways of selling that reflect scientific methods. We argue that process mining is a relevant candidate for empowering ” sales as a science ” via its capacity to analyze, discover, and enhance end-to-end processes. Through a design science approach, we propose a framework for applying process mining to sales, comprising a refined notation and seven process mining analysis scenarios. Our study represents a first step towards gaining a better understanding of real-world sales processes based on digital traces from operational systems e.g., customer relationship management (CRM) systems, or emerging technologies e.g., smart watches.

Further information: Article (AIS library, ResearchGate), poster

News, Publications

Article “Designing Business Models for Cloud Platforms” published in the Information Systems Journal (ISJ)

We are proud to announce that the manuscript “Designing Business Models for cloud platforms” co-authored by Andrea Giessmann and Christine Legner has been published in the Information Systems Journal (ISJ). ISJ is one of the top IS management journals and  part of the Senior Scholars’ Basket of Journals.
Abstract: Platform as a service (PaaS) has become a strategic option for software vendors who expect to benefit from value co-creation with partners by developing complementary components and applications. In reality, however, established and new software vendors are battling to redefine their offering to embrace PaaS. They face the challenges of transforming, configuring and calibrating their PaaS business models to align them with existing business models, customer expectations and competitive pressures. This motivates our research question: How can software providers design viable business models for PaaS? Our study develops a design theory for PaaS business models. This theory is grounded on a 12-month action design research study at one of the largest global software companies (here called Alpha) with mixed PaaS experiences in the past. Our primary research contribution is a set of design principles that guide software providers to define a viable PaaS business model in order to create a flourishing software ecosystem for their cloud platform. By synthesizing prescriptive knowledge related to business model design for emerging cloud platforms, our study advances PaaS research towards the existing body of research on software platforms and business models.

The full article is available here.

 

Conference Attendance, News, Publications

Two papers presented at the International Conference on Information Systems

Kenny Lienhard and Christine Legner attended the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) which was held from December 13 to 16 in Fort Worth, Texas, with more than 1,500 participants. They presented two full papers co-authored by BISA team members:

ICIS is the most prestigious academic conference in the Information Systems discipline, and provides a forum for networking and sharing of latest ideas and highest calibre scientific work amongst the IS profession. The ICIS Conference Proceedings are available for download in the AIS Electronic Library.

News, Publications

Article on cloud enterprise software published

The article “From On-Premise Software to Cloud Services: The Impact of Cloud Computing on Enterprise Software Vendors’ Business Models” by Thomas Boillat and Christine Legner is one of five research papers in the Special Issue on Cloud Computing published by the Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research (JTAER).

Link to full text.

Abstract:
Cloud computing is an emerging paradigm that allows users to conveniently access computing resources as pay-per-use services. Whereas cloud offerings such as Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud and Google Apps are rapidly gaining a large user base, enterprise software’s migration towards the cloud is still in its infancy. For software vendors the move toward cloud solutions implies profound changes in their value-creation logic. Not only are they forced to deliver fully web-enabled solutions and to replace their license model with service fees, they also need to build the competencies to host and manage business-critical applications for their customers. This motivates our research, which investigates cloud computing’s implications for enterprise software vendors’ business models. From multiple case studies covering traditional and ‘pure’ cloud providers, we find that moving from on-premise software to cloud services affects all business model components, that is, the customer value proposition, resource base, value configuration, and financial flows. It thus underpins cloud computing’s disruptive nature in the enterprise software domain. By deriving two alternative business model configurations, SaaS and SaaS+PaaS, our research synthesizes the strategic choices for enterprise software vendors and provides guidelines for designing viable business models.