Enabling Business Domain-Specific eCollaboration

How to Integrate Virtual Cooperation in Product Costing

Diana Lück

Chair of Information Systems, esp. IS in Manufacturing and Commerce, Technische Universität Dresden, Germany

Keywords: Integrated Virtual Cooperation, Business Domain-Specific eCollaboration, Product Costing, Accounting

Information Systems, Enterprise Systems Integration, Enterprise 2.0, CSCW.

Abstract: Due to digitalization and the rising relevance of knowledge work, virtual cooperation in enterprises is

increasingly important. Product costing is an example of a business domain that is characterized by a high

demand for communication, coordination, and information exchange. Time and location-based restrictions

underline the necessity of computer-assisted support in collaboration. However, an approach to integrate IT-

support for virtual cooperation directly into the core process of business domains like product costing is still

missing. To overcome this challenge, we show how to enable Business Domain-Specific eCollaboration based

on the design principles for integrated virtual cooperation in product costing. This paper presents how to

combine collaboration support directly with the process of this particular business domain.

1 INTRODUCTION

Virtual cooperation enables working efficiently

around the limitations of time and place. In

enterprises, this empowers teams to collaborate even

though they are situated in different locations and

time zones. The relevance of corporate structures that

support virtual collaboration are found to increase,

especially in business domains characterized by a

high demand for information exchange and

communication (Riemer et al., 2009; Alqahtani et al.,

2014; Andriole, 2010).

Product costing is one such example of a highly

collaborative business domain due to the numerous

participants involved in the costing process. Dealing

with cost estimations of manufactured goods is very

typical in the discrete manufacturing industry, which

includes products like automobiles, electronic

devices, and technical equipment. Because 70% of

the costs of goods sold are already set during product

development, early product costing has a high

potential to influence costs. In particular, when the

costs of a new product whose development cycle has

just begun are determined, collaboration is a

significant factor in success due to the diverse sources

of information that are necessary and essential in the

process (Drury, 2008; Saaksvuori and Immonen,

2004). A prior study of ours showed that, in

collaborating, primarily traditional methods like

physical meetings and telephone calls and generic

tools such as emails and online conferences are used.

However, in the exploratory survey that we organized

with business experts the majority of participants also

reported an unsatisfying level of IT support for

collaboration in product costing, and problems related

to that (Lück and Leyh, 2016a). Therefore, we

introduced the approach of Business Domain-

Specific eCollaboration in order to tackle the

challenge of integrating virtual cooperation support

directly into the core process of particular business

domains. Based on strong feedback on the topic from

practice, we continued with the business domain of

product costing as a showcase. We conducted

interviews with experts from practice who pointed out

that there is a high demand for integrated virtual

cooperation support in product costing and we

determined the requirements for such an IT support

system (Lück and Leyh, 2016b).

In this paper, we aim to develop a concept for a

sociotechnical collaboration system for product

costing. To analyse how to connect the support for

collaboration with the systems used to solve tasks in

daily business, we address the following research

question:

• RQ1: According to the requirements derived

from the collaborative processes in product costing,

how can virtual cooperation be integrated into the

Lück, D.

Enabling Business Domain-Speciﬁc eCollaboration - How to Integrate Virtual Cooperation in Product Costing.

DOI: 10.5220/0006274902090216

In Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2017) - Volume 1, pages 209-216

ISBN: 978-989-758-247-9

209

domain by enabling Business Domain-Specific

eCollaboration?

To answer this question, we have structured our

paper as follows. After we explain the background of

this paper in section 2, we describe the requirements-

based design principles for Business Domain-

Specific eCollaboration in the context of product

costing in section 3. In section 4, we present our

approach for integrated virtual cooperation before

concluding the paper with a summary and outlook in

section 5.

2 BACKGROUND

The costing process of goods in the discrete

manufacturing industry is an example of a business

domain involving a multitude of departments with a

high degree of collaboration. Typically, managerial

accounting keeps an eye on the financial aspects,

engineering contributes construction-related

information, and the sales team negotiates with

customers and reflects the feedback from the market.

In addition, the procurement department contacts

suppliers in cases where a part of the product should

not be produced in-house, but purchased. Further

interaction partners are common in product costing,

illustrating the high complexity of the collaborative

process (Drury, 2008; Warren, 2014).

Therefore, we initiated a research project about

virtual cooperation in product costing. The first step

was the investigation of the current collaboration

support (Lück and Leyh, 2016a). We discovered that

the usage of common eCollaboration tools is

insufficient and remains unsatisfying with room for

improvement. Nearly 90% of the total product costing

workload consist of collaborative work, which makes

the support of these activities essential to ensuring

efficiency throughout the costing process. The

complexity of the process needs to be reduced by

clarifying who the participants are and what their

tasks are as well as showing the progress of the

costing process (Lück and Leyh, 2016a). Data

management is often detached from the cooperation

process, since using spreadsheet programs such as

Microsoft Excel remains highly common (Fiedler and

Gräf, 2012; Hansen et al., 2009; Schicker et al.,

2008). Thus, an integrated support concept could

provide further benefits, such as increasing data

consistency, speeding up the business process, and

raising productivity (Alqahtani et al., 2014; Back et

al., 2012; Lück and Leyh, 2016a).

Collaboration support has undergone an

astonishing evolution since the 1980s, especially

from a technological perspective (Grudin, 1994). In

today’s business environments, enterprise 2.0 tools

such as blogs and social networks are widespread

(Kemsley, 2010; Koch and Richter, 2009; McAfee,

2006). In response, research has focused on adopting

eCollaboration, its success factors, or the impact of its

use (Alqahtani et al., 2014; Andriole, 2010;

Hasenkamp, 2001; Patel et al., 2012). However,

integrated support for collaboration in the costing

process is still missing, and the existing

eCollaboration solutions cannot adequately support

the process. In the exploratory study of our first

research step experts from practice confirmed that

opportunities to cooperate virtually in a way

connected to the process of daily business tasks

appear to be missing, and we encountered that such

integral approaches have yet to evolve. The

examination of prior research confirmed that

collaboration support with a focus on the integration

into the core process is a research gap justifying

further investigation (Lück and Leyh, 2016a).

Consequently, we proceeded the research project

by conducting a requirements analysis for the

integration of virtual cooperation in product costing

(Lück and Leyh, 2016b). In expert interviews,

product costing specialists explained the

collaborative costing process in their company and

what IT tools they use for it. They also described the

problems they currently see and the needs they have

regarding a system that should support the

cooperation in product costing. Based on the

interviews, we derived a requirements model. How

we performed the data analysis and developed the

model is described in detail in our second research

paper (Lück and Leyh, 2016b). We utilize the

elements of the requirements model as design

principles for the collaboration support system that

we present in this paper. Hence, we explain the

requirements-based principles in the next chapter.

3 REQUIREMENTS-BASED

DESIGN PRINCIPLES FOR

INTEGRATED VIRTUAL

COOPERATION

To establish a substantiated foundation for our

integrative cooperation approach (see chapter 4), we

elaborated a requirements model in a prior research

step (Lück and Leyh, 2016b). From July to September

2015, we interviewed 14 experts; half of them

working in companies in Germany, the other half in

companies in the United States. Because product

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costing is a relevant business domain across diverse

industrial sectors, we involved experts from four

different industries: the automotive, consumer goods,

high-tech, and machine-building industries. To

understand the different perspectives on collaboration

in product costing, we included IT experts,

controllers, and managers in the interviews. The goal

was to investigate the collaborative process in product

costing and its current IT support in order to identify

the requirements for virtual cooperation support.

Further details are presented in the respective

research paper (Lück and Leyh, 2016b).

The requirements depict the design principles for

our concept of integrated virtual cooperation in

product costing that we present in chapter 4 in this

paper. They are aggregated in a requirements model

(Lück and Leyh, 2016b), which is illustrated in Figure

1. The model consists of four requirement areas that

cover 18 requirements (i.e., abbreviated R in the

model) as well as three system prerequisite areas

comprising six constraints necessary to enable IT-

based collaboration support (i.e., represented by C in

the model). The requirement area called Product Cost

Monitoring should give experts a clear overview of

the costing processes to keep the participants

informed about the status of the costing process. One

necessary component is the subscription in order to

track an object manually or automatically. The

presentation of which tasks have been completed,

what has yet to be done, and whether any issues

remain unaddressed enables product costing experts

to understand and control the process. To make users

aware of the status of the costing process, information

about the exact progress is necessary. Showing

information about the status, errors, and changes

enables system-based monitoring, simplifies the

coordination, and improves the controlling of the

process. Moreover, Product Cost Monitoring should

provide analytical functionality. The results of

product costing analyses can influence how to

collaborate in the team. Therefore, analytics also have

to be embedded.

The second requirement area is the Costing

Workflow. To collaborate virtually in product costing,

every user should be able to participate in a self-

initiated, ad hoc workflow. Costing Workflow has to

be a flexible tool for the coordination of tasks. The

presentation in form of a dashboard and via

notifications helps to raise awareness of the actions

each user has to perform. Consequently, the system

has to inform participants about their workload and

the tasks they have to complete. Furthermore,

tracking functions are required in order to automate

sequences of steps in the collaboration process.

The requirement area Task Integration allows

utilizing the task concept of the Costing Workflow in

all IT systems used for product costing. To obtain

necessary data in the collaboration process, it is

common that participants determine information

from several information systems. Relevant data

input has to be synchronized among the different IT

systems in order to avoid inconsistencies. To

coordinate tasks that are handled externally,

interfaces connecting the relevant IT systems need to

be realized in order to manage data from other sources

automatically.

Figure 1: Requirements model.

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The requirement area Collaboration Groups

should support the definition of teams and the areas

each team should be able to access. It is needed to

administer the members of the collaboration teams as

well as the areas the team members should be allowed

to access.

Furthermore, the requirements model shows that

there exist preconditions for enabling integrated

virtual cooperation in product costing. System Access

for all participants of the collaboration process is a

prerequisite for using the full capabilities of the

system. Another precondition is System Performance.

Since users have to wait for results in order to proceed

to the next step, when there are time restrictions in the

system, the performance is critical and has to be taken

into account. System Assistance is a major asset of

standardized systems. Hence, implementation and

operation knowledge from experts is a precondition

for the success of the collaborative system.

As part of the prior research step, we also

evaluated the requirements model in an expert session

with 11 product costing specialists in December 2015

(Lück and Leyh, 2016b). None of the participants

were involved in the expert interviews in order to

ensure that nobody who suggested requirements in

the interviews assessed them as well. All participants

were from Germany. The experts from several

companies in different relevant industries described

the requirements model that we established for

integrated virtual cooperation in product costing to be

satisfactory. They agreed to the structure of the

model, its requirement areas, and their subdivisions,

and nobody indicated that any additional requirement

area was missing. The evaluation proved that all

constructs of our model have significance for

integrated virtual cooperation in product costing. No

changes to the model were deemed necessary, and the

modular composition was evaluated to be very

positive. The holistic approach to Business Domain-

Specific eCollaboration received excellent feedback

and participants confirmed that the requirements

represented the demand for integrated virtual

collaboration in product costing (Lück and Leyh,

2016b). The requirements-based design principles

serve as the fundament for the collaboration system

we conceptualize as follows.

4 APPROACH FOR

INTEGRATED VIRTUAL

COOPERATION

To integrate virtual cooperation in product costing,

we developed an approach addressing the

requirements described in chapter 3. The approach is

divided into three user-centric aspects: Monitoring

and Initiation comprises how virtual collaboration

can be coordinated and how the process can be

tracked. Execution and Progression explains in what

Figure 2: My Home screen.

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way cooperation is executed in the system. The

underlying concepts regarding the enablement of

those cooperation functionalities are defined in the

section Permissions and Subscriptions.

4.1 Monitoring and Initiation

The first aspect of our integrative approach is how

steps of the cooperation process can be triggered and

how to supervise the process.

We designed the My Home screen as an entry

point for all collaboration-related issues. It enables

the user to get an immediate understanding regarding

the status of the objects he or she is subscribed to as

well as his or her assigned tasks (see Figure 2). The

My Home screen is integrated in the main application

to enable users to collaborate directly in the costing

system preventing media breaks and reducing manual

effort (Lück and Leyh, 2016a). On the left-hand side

of the My Home screen one can find a tile view of all

the objects the user is subscribed to with a summary

of all issues (e.g., ‘Deadline overdue’ or ‘3 tasks

completed’).

Clicking on a tile item opens the Product Cost

Monitoring screen, which provides detailed

information regarding the selected object, as shown

in Figure 3. Covering the requirement R5 Status

illustration, this screen provides information about

existing tasks and their state of completion. The same

applies for checklists and flags. By summarizing

recent actions in a ‘What’s New’ area, users obtain

awareness about the latest changes in the

collaboration process. In addition, the screen shows

existing errors, addressed as R4 Error indication. This

enables the user to take immediate action on a certain

issue, e.g., to request a price for a cost item that is

Figure 3: Product Cost Monitoring screen.

Figure 4: Dialog windows for task and checklist definitions.

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missing. The Product Cost Monitoring screen also

gives central access to the analytical functions R6

Editing history and R7 Comparison. The editing

history displays a chart with the chronological course

of all changes made by the processors and the

comparison function provides the possibility to match

different objects in order to analyze potential

differences. The navigation bar to the left enables

switching between the objects the user is subscribed

to.

In addition, the Product Cost Monitoring screen

enables initiating cooperation steps by creating and

assigning new tasks as well as checklists, which is

addressed by the requirements R8 Task creation, R9

Task assignment, and R12 Checklist. Clicking on the

link ‘Create New Task’ opens a dialog window in

which the user can specify all necessary data. The

corresponding data source that should be worked on

can be selected, enabling integrated data processing

(see Figure 4). Additionally, a description and due

data can be entered and the task can be assigned

directly to the favored processor. The option ‘Review

of Changes’ lets the initiator decide whether he or she

wants to check the changes when the task is finished

before committing them to the system. At times, tasks

affect other systems and data comes from those

systems. In cases where the assignee works with an

external system, synchronization can be activated via

the corresponding checkbox. Doing so enables the

processing of tasks externally, which addresses R15

Interfaces. The integration of this input has not only

automation benefits, but also allows mistakes to be

avoided that result from copying data manually from

one system to another. The link ‘Create New

Checklist’ provides a dialog window that enables the

user to specify a consecutive sequence of tasks to be

completed and/or flags that need to be set, as shown

in Figure 4. Processors can be assigned to all items

and a trigger can be added, e.g., to determine that a

multi-level review process should be initiated if a flag

called ‘Ready for Review’ has been set.

4.2 Execution and Progression

The central element for the collaboration execution is

the My Tasks screen, displayed in Figure 5. This

screen represents the requirement R10 Dashboard of

the requirement area Costing Workflow. The user can

navigate to this view by clicking on a task in the My

Home screen (see Figure 2). It is a key instrument

raising awareness and keeping each user informed

about his or her workload. Here the user also sets the

status of the tasks –in progress, in review, or done –

which is reflected in the status illustration of the

Product Cost Monitoring screen.

When the user changes the status of a task, a

notification is automatically sent to every user who

follows the object that the task belongs to via his or

her Product Cost Monitoring screen addressing R3

Change notification. Thus, everybody who is

involved is immediately informed about the progress.

A similar procedure is triggered whenever a new task

is sent or a new checklist is activated. In these cases,

a task notification is forwarded to the assignee as

required by R11 Task notification. By these means,

no manual effort is necessary to keep participants

informed.

Another element of the collaboration execution is

the capability to set flags (R13 Flag setting). This

allows to set an object to a particular state, simply by

choosing the appropriate flag. Setting a flag also

triggers the dispatching of a change notification in

Figure 5: My Tasks screen.

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order to keep participants up-to-date on the latest

state. Furthermore, users can leave comments and

notes in order to discuss issues in the system. This

addresses requirement R14 Discussion.

4.3 Permissions and Subscriptions

The fundamentals of the collaboration system are

realized via permissions and subscriptions. The

permissions handle the authorization in the

collaboration system represented by the requirement

area Collaboration Groups with the requirements R16

Team definition, R17 Area definition, and R18 Team

area linkage. A Team Definition screen was designed

in order to give the administrator the opportunity to

specify teams and their members. After creating a

team, specified by a team name, the members can be

selected from a list of the available users in the system

(see Figure 6). This assignment can also be reversed

by deselecting the users that should not be part of the

team anymore. In an Area Definition and Linkage

screen, the areas of access can be specified and linked

to the defined teams. For each access area, a

description and a reference have to be defined. The

reference specifies which object(s) should be

accessible by the respective area. For linking a team

to an access area, the team has to be chosen from a

drop down displaying all teams from the Team

Definition screen.

Subscriptions enable users to choose the objects

that they want to follow. This functionality is divided

into automatic and manual subscription, as requested

by requirement R1 Automatic subscription and R2

Manual subscription. When a user creates a new

object, he or she is automatically subscribed to it, sees

all relevant information in his or her Product Cost

Monitoring screen, and receives change notifications.

The user can manually unfollow this object, but also

follow any other object that is part of his or her access

area. A pin visualizes the subscriptions. Wherever

objects appear in the screens, the user has the

opportunity to click on the pin in order to (un-)follow

the item, providing a high level of integration (see

Figure 2 and Figure 3).

5 SUMMARY AND OUTLOOK

In this paper, we presented an approach to enable

Business Domain-Specific eCollaboration by

integrating virtual cooperation directly into the core

processes of a business area. As a showcase, we chose

the business domain of product costing due to its high

demand for communication and information

exchange as well as the necessity of an integrated

solution. In our initial study, we discovered that

particularly because the collaboration support is

detached from the systems in use, the process suffers

from data inconsistency, missing integration and a

lack of transparency (Lück and Leyh, 2016a). As a

next step in our research project, we derived a

comprehensive requirements model for integrated

virtual cooperation in product costing. The

requirements serve as design principles for the

cooperation support system (Lück and Leyh, 2016b).

In the research step presented in this paper, we

developed an integrative approach for Business

Domain-Specific eCollaboration. It enables virtual

collaboration in product costing based on connections

among daily work routines, data sources, and the

collaborative needs of the specific business domain.

A monitoring screen summarizes the status of all

relevant elements, providing insight into the progress

of the costing process. By enabling the initiation of

Figure 6: Team definition screen.

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virtual cooperation directly in the system,

collaboration is accelerated and manual effort is

reduced. Moreover, data consistency can be increased

as the necessity for manual data input is decreased. In

addition, the task dashboard screen aims at

establishing awareness about the workload for each

participant in the costing process. Notifications

automatically inform users whenever there are new

tasks or changes. Automating the collaboration

process aims at increasing productivity and avoiding

mistakes resulting from manual efforts. Our approach

gives full flexibility for integrated virtual cooperation

by providing a subscription concept that allows each

user to decide which costing objects are of interest to

him or her. Likewise, the permissions concept enables

an easily adaptable authorization management in

order to define who should participate in the

collaborative process and which system areas they

should be able to access. In conclusion, the approach

for Business Domain-Specific eCollaboration covers

all identified requirements for integrated virtual

cooperation in product costing. Nonetheless, the

design principles also depict system constraints that

need to be fulfilled. We excluded them from our

investigations, as those are external limits given by

the costing systems in use.

The next step in our research project is the

evaluation of our approach for integrated virtual

cooperation in product costing. The validation should

help to further improve the concept for the

collaboration system that we later intent to test in a

real-world setting. Subsequent research could also

cover the investigation of further business domains

with relevance to this research topic.

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