Authors:
Erno Salmela
1
;
Ari Happonen
1
and
Jukka Hemilä
2
Affiliations:
1
Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland
;
2
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Finland
Keyword(s):
Project management, SME, knowledge management, e-business, ERP, web.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
B2B, B2C and C2C
;
Biomedical Engineering
;
Communication and Software Technologies and Architectures
;
Data Engineering
;
e-Business
;
e-Business and e-Commerce
;
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Health Information Systems
;
Information Systems Analysis and Specification
;
Knowledge Management
;
Ontologies and the Semantic Web
;
Society, e-Business and e-Government
;
Software Agents and Internet Computing
;
Web Information Systems and Technologies
Abstract:
The aim of this study was to explore the applicability of web-based information systems to the business processes of small knowledge-oriented service companies from Finland. The study explains the current status of web applications in the corporate sector researched, and discusses the future possibilities for applying web-based information systems, taking into consideration the special features of the sector. The applications have mainly been focused on contacts with authorities, paying invoices, marketing on public web sites and extranet services for customers. In two of the cases, web systems were used rather extensively in service processes. These two cases were far ahead of the others in applying web-based systems. However, also they applied web-based solutions mainly in the company's internal processes. In the studied companies, the application of web systems should in the future focus more on knowledge management support than on the automation of individual transactions. In man
y of the studied cases, the automation of transactions is not even sensible due to their small number. The application of web technologies to knowledge-oriented work based on creativity and innovation seems, however, to be challenging since the related processes normally produce unique solutions tailored to customers’ needs, which cannot easily be replicated and thus automated. Therefore, the automation of the entire creative process is impossible, but web technologies may produce added value to individual stages of the creative process, such as collecting and distributing data.
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