SOA is a driver for Personalization Annika Granebring, Peter Thilénius, Péter Révay Mälardalen University, School of Business, Västerås, Sweden [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Abstract: Everybody talk about SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture), the flexible paradigm that nowadays are running at large insurance companies, government agencies, as well as in small stores. SOA: s primary sales argument is the change capacity. In old systems the different parts are strongly dependent of each other. Should one function change, the whole system must be rebuilt which is expensive and time consuming. The result is that many necessary process improvements never are done. With SOA the services are encapsulated to make them autonomous. You can easily change, delete, or add a service without influencing for instance the monolithic enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. This paper discusses relevant research were the service modes of information systems are oriented to personalization (e.g. different customers are treated differently), and businesses flexibly can define service modes. Rules and norms are identified as the business rules on the market and in the industry. It can be formal rules as the law and accounting rules to informal rules the companies set up between each other. Dynamic business rules need to be standardized and controlled by business. Static business rules and polices need to be reusable by storage in central repositories and managed by business. The empirical data comes from a study at a Swedish store solutions provider within the grocery branch who meets additional requirements with their new comprehensive SOA solution when attracting new customers from the specialist trade (mobiles, sports equipments, travels etc.). The specialist trade has intense demands on accounting with revenues per different customer groups. SOA opens for different ERP brands to interact with POS (point-of-sale) store systems. The retailers ERP systems are also integrated with their wholesalers ERP. The case company finds that the decision to adopt SOA has opened up for their market to meet the requirements of new customer categories. The results show how the relationship marketing principle underpins the implementation of retailing strategy. Keywords: Single-customer view (SCV), Service-oriented architecture (SOA), Business rules modeling, process improvement by personalization.

1. Problem background New marketing strategies supported by information systems emerge in the network economy. Old marketing strategies based on cost price may not apply and new pricing ratios and new strategies increase the chance that customers choose the company’s offer (Shapiro & Varian, 1999). Automation of sales, services, marketing and customer relationships processes are the important activities of the retail business. Production and its administration are automated and have been outsourced. There is no need to own factories - production capacity can be bought. Focus in a globally competitive world is instead on customers and markets. Operators of large-scale systems (e.g. banks, retail chains, airlines) and software suppliers (like the case company) have emergence with interest in the area of personalization. The current focus on markets and customers suggests that the artefact system focus to capture this use needs a shift. SOA solutions contain loosely coupled services that communicate by sending pre-defined messages between applications. One example of a typical SOA sales process offers unoccupied flight chairs in own planes at Scandinavian Airline Systems (SAS), and if occupied also present other companies’ flight chairs. This service is globally available on the web for sales representatives at travel agencies. (Kajko-Mattsson 2005). Important questions we are trying to answer in this paper are: 1) How can a service provider personalize services for their consumers and still be in compliance with core business processes to support today’s agile business? We discuss why retail marketing strategists and planners need to develop long-term customer relationships based on mutual trust. Retailers use personalization technologies (customer profiles and bonus systems at Åhléns, Coop etc.) to make their products and services unique. The unacceptable bolting cost of customized systems makes the balance of standardization and personalization delicate. 2) How to assure the customers’ rights in controlling the policies around the use of customers buying behaviour information and give customers more control of what kind of offers they get? In today’s IS solutions the business rules are inconsistently deployed making them inflexible and static.

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2. Method Design and methodology approach in this article consist of a review of relevant research with commentary on the RC Market application of principles in practice. The empirical data of this article is based upon a case study at RBS AB following the development of the SOA application Retail Center (RC) Market. One of the authors has followed the process of creating the business view (BV) of RC Market by participating observation during 2005—2007. Initially the system was named Campaign. In 2006 RBS worked up the business view to a global level according to the developed architectural framework. Theory from the academic world, secondary data and case company’s experience from the industry embrace to describe and discuss the personalization process. This article contributes with a glance of the SOA personalization area by discussing comprehensive theories and questions at issues. Hopefully we help formulating informative questions without having the ambition to bring the matter to a satisfactory conclusion but rather take part in a relay race.

3. Diffusion of Innovations theory & Marketing theory An innovation perspective on SOA includes different types of innovations, the diffusion of innovation in social systems, and the adoption of innovation in organizations, groups and at the individual level. Furthermore facilitating and hindering factors are covered as well as how to manage the complex processes involved, for example when to launch a product and/or service on the market for successful diffusion (Tidd & Bessant & Pavitt 2005). When discussing the complication implied when introducing new technology Moore concludes that the critical region between adopters lies in the gap between the early adopters and the early majority. The “enthusiasm of the few” is necessary but not sufficient to create a sustainable acceptance and use of new innovations. Diffusion of technology-enabled marketing development like tracking the customers and their behaviours with elements of data mining and statistical analyses is a condition for personalization (Moore 2002). Marketing management evolves from no differentiation, micro segment, nano segment, to singlecustomer view (SCV). Pettier and Schribrowsky (1997) introduce a micro segmentation framework that primarily focuses on the reasons for purchasing decisions. This conceptual framework for developing micro segments considers need based buying motives and benefits. The micro segmentation process identifies why a purchase is made and puts less emphasis on the customer. Micro segments of consumers are, therefore, identified based on their evaluative behaviours toward purchasing a product or service. Conceptually, micro segmentation yields more value to the marketing effort as the underlying motives of the customer/visitor are defined by their behaviours and complemented by their characteristics. Peltier and Schribrowsky noted that this approach provided marketers with a deeper understanding of their customers, which in turn can be translated into a more satisfying interaction and experience for the consumer. The limitations of the Peltier and Schribrowskys model in the e-commerce environment are that it is only applicable to buying or purchasing behaviors. In addition, this model focused on self-reported buying motives and behaviors. Micro segments are extended, for use in e-commerce, by using both purchase (transaction, goaloriented) and non-purchase (non-transactional, experiential) behavior (Hoffman & Novak 1996), by defining the concept of nano segments. Nano segments are derived based on the phases gather, infer, segment, and track. Nano segments are at a finer granularity (therefore nano) because they incorporate both behavior data and customer data (i.e. demographics or firmographics). SOA advances could play a key role in defining nano segments since customer tracking and data mining technologies, used in conjunction with a host of internal and external information sources, are necessary to operationalize the concept (Granebring & Révay 2006, 2007). In the mid-1980s, Coop1 introduced a customer card according to a concept called SELMA (SELective Marketing, se figure 2). The aim of this Coop pioneer concept was to integrate information on sales with information on customers. When customers are identified in the transaction process, their buying patterns can be analyzed and marketing activities can be adjusted (Horzella 2005).

4. Personalization A unique condition to today's information economy is that it's products are costly to produce, cheap to reproduce and without fixed supply. Value must be created by 'versioning' and personalizing a product in a number of different ways if you are not a cost-leader commodity seller. (Shapiro & Varian 1998, p. 123.) 1

Coop = ICA, Coop and Axfood are the three dominating Swedish grocery wholesaling and retailing organizations: These three accounted for approximately 72 % of Swedish grocery sales in 2004.

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Annika Granebring, Peter Thilénius and Péter Révay Personalization is the process where services are adapted to fit each individual user’s requirements, whether expressed or inferred. To enable personalization, the identification and authentication of the user must be provided. SOA services expose different interfaces for different purposes, following the object oriented principle of information hiding. By SOA personalization, the integration of user preferences into the specification that orchestrates the component web services can be achieved. SOA is a driver for personalization, i.e. delivering individual offers to customers. Individual tailored offers to the interest of individual customers are not necessary more expensive than delivering the same offers to all customers due to cost-effective technologies. (Papazoglou & Ribbers 2006, p. 209.).

5. Relevant research In a retrospective study Horzella (2005) finds that implementation of standards in digital information flows has been important for productivity growth within Swedish grocery distribution. The effects are divided into automational, informational and transformational categories. Shared IT initiatives like the design and the implementation of the shared bar code European Article Numbering (EAN) and the shared procurement system Dakom (another similar procurement system is Trader) deliver more positive results for the involved organizations than own initiatives. The advantage lies in not having to implement parallel standards. The more users of a shared system deliver standardized information, the greater the value of that information. An efficient communication i.e. standardized messages provide higher value the more the organizations that communicate use the same standards. Horzella (2005) also concludes that the investment in IS/IT that deliver productivity growth is strongly connected with agile process development. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology of automatic identification, may in time substitute EAN codes (provides article number only). The diffusion of the RFID technology goes slowly, which is normal according to Rogers (2003), partly because of high implementation and operational costs but also because of lack of technology standards and difficulties in collaboration between parties. Another study, which reflects the complexity of business and also its concomitant complexity on the use of IT in business, i.e. for information systems in business was carried out by Lindh (2006). By studying 353 companies and the use of IT in important business relationships with customers she could conclude that the use of IT in business requires careful considerations by companies toward their individual customers in the use of IT. The result indicates that the use of information systems is a complex issue for companies, due to the complexity of business and that the process of reaching standardized solutions necessitates investment and cooperation by involved parties. IT support for managing full business work flows are appreciated by the companies in the study. Building also on the business relationship view, is Ekman (2006), who finds that the rigid structure of the current enterprise systems rendering them unfit to contribute enough in business relationships.

6. Case company Retailers have indicated that customer knowledge is needed in key business segments of retail. Retail businesses IT investment in computerized cash register (SP) and straight forward accounting system is insufficient. Case company AB Retail Business Systems (RBS) invest in the POS integration space, realizing that in-store customer centric solutions support promotional activities and provide competitive advantages (see figure 1). In the dynamic and evolving industry of retail, new technologies allow interaction with customers in innovative processes. (Granebring & Révay 2006).

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EIS Business Performance Dashboard Executive Support Systems

Business Process Dashboard Workflow Automation

B2B, Supply Chain Management

INTERFACE

INTERFACE

INTERFACE

Financial Performance

Collaborative Dashboard

RC BI

MS Reporting Service

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RC Data Warehouse CRM

RC CBO

RC Market

INTERFACE

INTERFACE

RC Gift ERP/ Logistics Certificates

RC SP/

Point of sale

INTERFACE

INTERFACE

Customer Card loyalty systems

Raw data feeds transaction systems

XML CRM

XML

Figure 1: Architecture of case company’s Retail Center (RC). Data Warehouse has a central role in the comprehensive SOA store solution. The RC communication platform integrates RC CBO (Central back office), RC Market, RC Store Point of Sale (SP) with multiple external central systems like ERP, CRM, and customer card systems etc. Source: RBS 2006. RC (see figure 1) satisfies the market need of integration between the StorePos systems and different ERP systems. Retailers adopt personalization technologies like campaign modules, data warehouse, and business intelligence analyses to make their products and services unique for the purpose of attracting and retaining customers. RBS’ Point-of-Sale system (StorePOS or SP) and Retail Center Central Back Office system (RC/CBO) are prepared to be easily connected to customers’ different ERP systems. The RBS SOA strategy is to integrate and support the effective finance and inventory modules in ERP systems and management of customers and pricelists in CRM systems with central back office and distributed store solutions. It is possible to define different price books and connect them per regions (more/less expensive in the north of Sweden) or per different customer categories. In the RC SP system the customer is identified and can be matched with the personalized price book and offers. In RC Market (see attachment) it is possible to create CombinationCategories containing one individual customer with unique demands and benefits. Naturally there must be support for this all through the storepos (SP) system.

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Annika Granebring, Peter Thilénius and Péter Révay

6.1 The market system RC Market ERP system Visma Axapta RC CBO

Presentation services Client GoSPORT

Service applications Client VI

RcMarketDb Combinations = demands + benefits

(2)

Points

(1) Articles

RC Market

Client XX Customer Card (loyalty system) G2, Allround, Selma

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or

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RcERPDb (articles, prices)

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RC Data Warehouse Component_Library

Export Combinations

Combinations, Receipts

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SP K02

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Store2

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Figure 2: The RC Market application’s possibilities to information exchange with articles (1) from the ERP system, with combinations exported to RC CBO or StoreOffice (2), further receipts and combinations are sent to the point-of-sale systems to calculate the campaign prices etc. in the cash registers. The statistics (4) are transferred to the RC Data warehouse and from there to the Customer Cards bonus system. There are special benefits for loyal customers. RC Market is prepared for SCV but for now used for categories like customers with customer cards and customers without customer cards. Source: The RC Market based on SOA, sketch map after case company’s RC solution 2006.

6.2 SOA at Harrods Harrods, the famous London store with 254 departments and 350 000 average visitors in one day, like many retailers today, is faced with the challenge of creating a more efficient business model that both improves customer service and reduces the cost of maintaining. To address these challenges, Harrods is expanding its use of IT, and has adopted SOA strategy to preserve its existing IT investments while enhancing business agility and improving customer experience. Even Harrods with their head strategy based on central position and exclusivity has reason to consider complementing satellites that can catch customer groups and buying situation. Harrods’ current strategy point is transformed to being multi functional (different business processes with different customer requirements by target marketing like direct mail) and multi-channel (in-store, catalogs, internet, callcentre). The Harrods’ CIO finds that old architecture does not support the needs of the multi-channel integration. Systems are not integrated and current complex technical environment is expensive to manage. The vision is improved customer service, effective supply chain, and vendor collaboration. Today’s point-to-point integration will be replaced by SOA on the Sun Java CAPS (Composite Application Platform Suite). Product & services diversification means different business processes. Today’s customer databases • Duplication of records (constant cleaning is needed) • No sharing of information • Inability to recognize the customer • No campaign history or analysis Marketing • Best customers are bombarded with marketing offers • Store Credit Card database is primary source for marketing programs • No coordinated contact strategy across channels

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• No data available to encourage cross-sell/channel shopping • Little campaign analysis When customers are identified through SCV (single-customer view) across channels following benefits are reachable: • Concentrate marketing resources on best customers • Target customers with personalized offers through multiple channels • Customer segmentation and modeling • Understanding of cross department sales to motivate cross-sell. (Harrods SOA strategy (Modern integration and SOA [conference 2006-05-17 in Stockholm])

7. Strategy Context Studies on business concern companies and their customers. Traditionally, companies are seen as the active part in conducting business with numerous, anonymous customers in markets or segments of markets. The customers respond to the companies’ marketing-mix where price, product, promotion and place are the parameters used to gain and sustain competitive advantages. This also means that each purchase is viewed as a separate occasion with no prior history and no aftermath calling for further contacts between the seller and the customer. Furthermore, customers are commonly seen as a collective group and not as individuals leaving no room for personalization of the marketing activities. Contrary to this is business between companies, i.e. B2B, generally carried out between companies well known to each other. The fact that they are well known to each other is due to repeated business over considerable periods of time. This leads to a focus on business relationships of long term orientation. The business relationship approach analyses the joint business between companies rather than the business operations of one company i.e. studies focus on business taking place in a dyad of exchange (Bagozzi, 1974). Exchange concerns more than buying and selling, as the law of exchange by Alderson and Martin (1965) defines: Exchange is when both parties give something in order to obtain something they need, but not possessed before, and thus exchange increases the value of each party. The nature of exchange is that both parties increase their value (Alderson & Martin 1965; Bagozzi 1974). To attain the state of value increasing business for both parties requires that the companies get to know each other and each other’s enterprise systems. The variation of activities and differing extent of the exchanges results in different degrees of complexity of the business relationship. The extent of interaction or exchange of information is based on the necessity of communicating on the character and definitions of products (Anderson & Narus 1990; 1992; Johanson 1989). Further, the exchange of a business relationship can range from concerning a single well-defined product or service to a multitude of more or less definable products and services. This aspect adds to the simplicity - complexity of the product base of the business and makes the behavior in business relationships an important aspect of their development. Behavior in business relationships is studied as the presence of trust the companies have for each other (Morgan & Hunt 1994), or as the degree to which there is commitment in the business relationship (Anderson & Weitz 1992). To commit is to pledge resources to the business relationship, i.e. to make idiosyncratic investment in it and that necessitates that the companies are convinced their business will continue. As the business relationship develops, interdependence grows between the parties (Blankenburg et al., 1999), for example by the adaptations of products, production processes or deliveries are carried out (Hallén et al, 1991). A business relationship requires cooperation between the companies (Anderson & Narus 1990) and that information flows are working. Information in business relationships is often exchanged in meetings, but also by the use of IT, which is increasing in use in business (Leek 2003). In long term oriented business relationships, as exchange of information is part of the exchanges, important both for executing the product exchange and money transfer (Hallén et al., 1991; Håkansson, 1982; Johanson, 1989). On one hand, it may seem like big investment to handle business with large and multifaceted information systems as risk may be involved. The long term orientation of business relationships, however, contradicts that notion since long term oriented business relationships reduce uncertainty and risk of business, thus encouraging and supporting investment in information systems directed towards customers and other counterparts. (cf. Lindh,

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Annika Granebring, Peter Thilénius and Péter Révay 2006). The opportunity for the SOA paradigm lies in managing flexible business processes and wellconsidered information sources to attain business value (see figure 3). MASTER

FUTURE

Strategy

METRICS

PLAN

Initiatives C.O.P. Common Operational Platform

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”know-how”

Reporting suite

Globalization vs. Localization

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CASH

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Industry Context Compliance Í Î Choice Porter: follow the rules of the industry

WORKFLOW Automation

Enterprise applications

Organizational Context

The future company

The firm matters, not the industry Control Í Î Chaos

Manager DATA

Introduction of new technology in the industry Value innovation Knowledge Economy

A snapshot of the company

The strategy context

Figure 3: Hierarchy of strategy context. Tolido’s pyramid is inspired by Maslow’s’ hierarchy of needs. The pyramids are top-down managed, i.e. the top of the pyramid rules. Still no step can be skipped, every level need to be carried out bottom-up in the maturity process. Source: Maslow, Strategy company Nimbus.

8. Conceptual Business Rules Modeling Customer information and customer business rules affect personalization business activities and business processes. Business rules and especially personalized business rules change more often than the processes. The lack of a central rules repository hinders reuse of rules in processes. From the business perspective, a business rule is guidance that there is an obligation concerning conduct, action, practice, or procedure within a particular capability. Two important characteristics of a business rule are: •

There ought to be an explicit motivation for it.

•

It should have an enforcement regime stating what the consequences would be if the rule were broken.

From the information system perspective, a business rule is a statement that defines or constrains some aspect of the business. It is intended to assert business structure, or to control or influence the behavior of the business. (Morgan & Halpin 2005). A tool for information analyzes including coordinating and timing of business rules is Object-Role Modeling (ORM), where selected terms can be described and analyzed in an verbal non technical business way – not primary connected to the database (see figure 5). A way to avoid inconsistency or redundancy is to use a rule engine (f.i. Brock, Biztalk) to separate rules from processes and information elements. A business rule book (Ross 1994) control what we can do and what we can not do and what we must do. The business management should be able to change the dynamic business rules. Business rules are the combination of terms, facts, and rules. The relationship between terms, facts, and rules (=constraints) put terms (like customers) stand-alone at the top. Facts concern terms and rules are based on facts. Terms are defined and approved by the business manager and the enterprise architect. Facts tell something about one or more terms, i.e. the fact that a customer has a customer

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name. Constraints place structural restrictions on facts. Lacking consensus or terminology (like synonyms) on what a business rule is causes confusion. The rule part (consistency constraints) is subdivided into: • Constraints (von Halle) or Rejectors (Ross). Condition must be fulfilled or transaction is rejected. Based on a fact like “Ph D student is supervision by a Professor”. • Action enabler rules (von Halle) or Projectors (Ross). • Computations and Inference (von Halle) or Producers (Ross) – rules produce new data. Customers with three overdue invoices imply the new knowledge that the customer is categorized a risk customer. (Ross 2003, von Halle 2002). Object-Role Modeling (ORM) is originated in Europe as NIAM (Nijssen’s Information Analysis Methodology) back in the 70s. According to Ross (1994) the business rules communicated by a verbalized fact-oriented model provides insights to business people and domain experts not having to relay solely on graphical models. Terry Halpin, started in the academic world and has worked at Microsoft Corporation (as Program Manager in Database Modeling for the Enterprise Frameworks and Tool Unit in Redmond). Halpin is back in the academia as professor at Neumont University (ex Northface), Utah. ORM takes a business rules approach to the modeling of information. Halpins doctoral thesis provides the first full formalization of ORM. ORM has advantages like semantic richness, verbalization, and handling & definition of static business rules. ORM2 verbalizes the constraints in positive (it is possible that) or in negative (it is impossible that) syntax. Visual Studio 2005 Architect Edition comes with an ORM tool i.e. ORM2. ORM2 is an open source tool, developed by third party (Neumount University) to be used for the definition of business rules. From a request data use case and a response data use case ORM2 generates UML diagram in Visio, XSD schema, and database script in fifth normal form automatically. There is a formal process standard for function documentation with data, control, output and mechanism arrows (see figure 5). IDEF0 is control oriented rather than flow oriented, and IDEF0 is at regular use at RBS.

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Annika Granebring, Peter Thilénius and Péter Révay

Figure 4: Integration definition for function (IDEF0). IDEF0 process diagram is at regular use at case company at process level and documenting the program flow. Source: Draft Federal Information Processing Standards Publication 183 (1993), and RBS (2006).

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Figure 5: Example of an ORM diagram. Source: Halpin’s article Object Role Modeling: An Overview (2001). At case company RBS’ RC store solution some of the dynamic business rules like accounting business rules are standardized and changeable for business management. The customer business rules are implemented in tables and in code.

9. Conclusion and future work A successful SOA strategy will be embedded within a customer-driven general business strategy. Marketing managers should plan to develop and sustain long-term trust-based working relationships, which take into account organizational and national values. One way to improve customer experience is through personalization. The traditional way of segmenting customers according to basic demographic division (age, gender, civil status, parents to infants, parents to little children, etc.) is too blunt. Retailers search insights of different customers’ needs and preferences to develop diversified merchandising and servicing strategies. SOA offers flexibility to select appropriate services to execute the activity instances at run-time. Customization by system diversification (i.e. separate systems) is complex and expensive. This paper proposes to take advantage of the information richness and flexibility of SOA as fundament for realizing sustainable personalization. This article addresses briefly two business applied IT research questions: 1) How can a service provider personalize services for their consumers and be in compliance with enterprise processes to support today’s agile business? Strict SOA governance gives potential to support diversification of customer’s processes like loyalty programs where the customers are divided into silver customers, gold customers, and platinum customers where different processes and conditions and offers apply to each. Methods have to be introduced for determining the customer categorization, add this to the user interface, to be able to change for instance the pricing and rebate algorithms. The gathering information about the customer and then combining services based upon their profile improve the customer experience. Customer-centric shopping experience creates personalization. Some benefits of the Retail Center store solution at case company are: • The ability to access data stored within a range of independent systems. • Personalization opens for cross product sales. • Customers’ RC solution can be refigured to match changing retailing requirements. • Synchronization of new/updated customer data and global profiles across all systems. • Prepared for personalization by RC Market with campaign, RC BI, profiling, self scanning. • Applications as services are smaller, faster to build, easier to change and maintain. • The data source is interchangeable without touching the business logic. • Real-time access to customer information. • Easy to let project schedules, budgets and “legacy skill sets” spoil SOA efforts. • Wrapping ERP apps. and other like customer card systems with XML message interfaces. 2) How to assure the customers’ rights in controlling the policies around the use of their information i.e. buying behaviour? Business rules provide control and constraints both the business processes and the information element and they should be managed by business people. The business rule book, e.g. structure what, should be separated from processes and data, e.g. how, to provide business agility according to SOA. The future systems will be pull-driven by the users, making the business rules even more important. Fact-oriented modeling (like ORM) helps synchronizing the dynamic part of business processes with the more static technical part. Precision in ORM diagram is a benefit but the user friendliness of the ORM tool need to be improved. The case company offers standard services to be combined with optional services which require customized presentation services. This customization does not influence the conceptual or the logical view, only a delivery dimension of the business view and the physical view. Case company has not yet introduced full personalization in their SOA based store solution. For the future case company will make the business rules consistent, non-redundant, flexible, and accessible for business people (by portal & engine). In the physical view customer specific business rules are implemented in the databases (in scripts). The credit card companies and customer club systems collect information about shopping practices. The true owner of the data being shared is the individual shopper, not credit card companies and not their retail partners. Service providers are acting as both the data owner and the service provider. Should service providers give the true owners of the information the ability to control

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Annika Granebring, Peter Thilénius and Péter Révay who (and how) could access it. The first step to get the data owner involves might be to have business information managers that set the business rules policy.

10. Acknowledgements We thank Sten Sundblad and Per Sundblad for their willingness to share their SOA knowledge by authoring articles for academics and practitioners, their blog activity, and for managing their comprehensive education program for professional solution architects in the .NET environment.

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Håkansson, H. (Ed.), (1982), International Marketing and Purchasing of Industrial Goods: an Interaction Approach, Chichester, John Wiley & Sons. Johanson, J. (1989) Business Relationships and Industrial Networks. Perspectives on the Economics of Organisation. Crawford Lectures 1, Institute of Economic Research, Lund University Press. Kajko-Mattsson, M. (2005) SAS Organisation and Processes, Department of Computer and Systems Sciences at Stockholm University and Royal Institute of Technology. Lindh, C. (2006) Business Relationships and Integration of Information Technology, doctoral dissertation no. 28 Mälardalen University, Västerås. Leek, S. and Turnbull, P. W. and Naude, P. (2003) “How is information technology affecting business relationships? Results from a UK survey”. Industrial Marketing Management, 32, 119-126. Moore, G. (2002) Living on the fault line, HarperBusiness, New York. Morgan, R. and Hunt, S. (1994) “The Commitment-Trust Theory of Relationship Marketing”. Journal of Marketing, 58, 20-38. Morgan, T. and Halpin, T. (2005) “Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules (SBVR) BEI RFP bei/22 aug 2006“, ver:8. A standard definition of the concept of business rules by the Object Management Group, [email protected], Neumont University. Papazoglou, M. and Ribbers, P. (2006), e-Business: Organization and technical foundation, John Wiley & Sons, England. Peltier, J. and Schribrowsky, J. (1997) “The use of need-based segmentation for developing segment-specific direct marketing strategies”, Journal of Direct Marketing, Vol 11, Iss. 4, pp53-62. Porter, M.E. (1980) Corporate Strategy, Free Press, New York. Porter, M.E. (2004) Competitive Advantage – Creating and sustaining superior performance, Free Press, New York. Rogers, E. (2003) Diffusion of Innovations, 5th edition, New York, The Free Press. Ross, R. (2003) Principles of the Business Rule Approach, Addison-Wesley, USA. Ross, R. (1994) The Business Rule Book, Database Newsletter. Shapiro, C. and Varian H.R. Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy. Harvard Business School, Press Boston, Mass. Sundblad, S. (2004) Serviceorienterad arkitektur och processer, www.microsoft.com/msdn/architects/articles. Tidd, J. and Bessant, J. and Pavitt, K. (2005) Managing Innovation: Integrating Technological, Market and Organizational Change, 3rd Edition Chichester, Wiley. von Halle, B. (2002) Business Rules Applied, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York. Electronic sources: Agile Alliance

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Annika Granebring, Peter Thilénius and Péter Révay Coop Sweden

www.coop.se

International Organization for Standardization

www.iso.org

Nimbus, a strategy software vendor

http://www.control-es.com/

Retail Business System AB

www.rbs.se

Sun Microsoft: SOA/people, platforms, processes & practices

www.sun.com/soa

Sundblad & Sundblad ADB-Arkitektur Uppsala.

www.2xSundblad.com

The Object-Role Modeling (ORM) homepage, managed by Terry Halpin www.orm.net Trader, example of a procurement system Whole Foods Market, 2005 Annual Report

.

www.candidator.se/Links/Trader.pdf www.wholefoodsmarket.com/investor/ar05_list.html

Windows workflow foundation

wf.netfx3.com

Conference: AbilityForum: Modern integration och SOA – ett paradigmskifte i utvecklingen av IT för ökad affärsnytta och mer effektiv integration, [conference] 2006-05-17 arranged by Ability Partner Europé AB at Bonnier Conference Center in Stockholm, speakers from: IBM, SAP Nordic, Apoteket, Vattenfall, Jordbruksverket, Sandvik, Sonic Software, Microsoft, Zystems by Semcon, and Sun Microsystems. www.abilitypartner.se

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