A role-driven component-oriented methodology for developing collaborative commerce systems
Introduction
Many companies have sustained their success by continually interacting with their business partners. However, when we look at the current business styles, we can often see what they are missing: strategic collaborations among stakeholders. These collaborations result in an agile and highly integrated ‘virtual’ enterprise [16], [23]. Developing the strategic collaborative relationships is particularly crucial for the competitive virtual enterprise; stakeholders can offer competitive benefits for their business community.
Collaborative commerce (c-commerce) is a paradigm in which a variety of business stakeholders with core competences collaborate interactively via the Internet and the related integration technologies. By strategically partnering with capable stakeholders on the basis of core competences, the c-commerce alliance can lead to competitive advantage [7]. The stakeholders may collaborate on product designs, procurement plans, demand forecasts, manufacturing schedules, distribution activities, and transportation movements. A primary objective is to harness product information and application assets accessible to the stakeholders in a commerce community including manufacturers, distributors, dealers, service groups, and end consumers [7], [24].
The requirements for implementing c-commerce are complex and ever-changing. Because companies can be usually divided into their own organizational silos, information sources are fragmented accordingly. Therefore, c-commerce needs to be designed to synthesize the fragmented information. C-commerce should aggregate information from a variety of sources to provide an integrated view of those sources [23], [45].
The stakeholders need to share valuable business contents and develop community-oriented strategies to collaborate with each other. C-commerce may evolve from the perspective of (i) interactive activities, (ii) strategy focus, and (iii) business contents, as depicted in Fig. 1. First, c-commerce emphasizes collaborative interactions beyond simple communications or transactions. The emphasis is on collaboration among the participating stakeholders for their value enhancement [1], [23]. The collaboration mechanism may be based on well-defined roles for each stakeholder; the roles should be determined by focusing their core competencies on the maximization of the competitive advantage for the c-commerce community. Second, although stakeholders have their own local strategies, a community-oriented strategy is more important—a consensus is essential. Third, stakeholders need to understand and share more business contents such as knowledge and expertise; a collaborative system to exchange knowledge on products and services is important.
Developing a c-commerce system is not a trivial task. Developers must systematically reassess the norms that guide the design and maintenance of their c-commerce systems. However, c-commerce is relatively new; there have not been many studies, which can cover its modeling complexity. Major previous methodologies include the allied concurrent engineering methodology (ACEM) [8], the specifications of coordinated and cooperative activity (SOCCA) [50], the inter-organizational workflow (IWOF) [51], and the inter-enterprise electronic commerce (IEEC) [45].
These previous methodologies have several weaknesses. First, c-commerce involves multifarious external stakeholders to fulfill a community goal. However, previous methodologies lack a modeling capability of analyzing the dynamic roles and responsibility interactions of the stakeholders. Second, they do not provide formal steps in developing the system. Because they lack this semalessness, it is not easy to analyze whether c-commerce activities satisfy initially required services. Third, they are not flexible to adapt to evolving c-commerce.
In order to alleviate their weaknesses, we propose a role-driven component-oriented methodology (RCOM). RCOM links the stakeholders' requirements to technical details in a seamless fashion. The role is useful for analyzing these requirements; it can specify the complex behavior of multiple stakeholders [2], [13] while addressing their dynamic interactions [5], [9], [15]. Roles work together to accomplish a goal proactively [18] and can describe stakeholder behaviors in terms of design patterns [26], [54]. Furthermore, the component-oriented approach offers several benefits such as reusability, rapid development, cost effectiveness, and dynamic service [20], [29].
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides an overview of our methodology. Section 3 describes the methodology in further detail using a real-life case. Section 4 compares our methodology with others. Section 5 concludes the paper.
Section snippets
Methodology
This section defines the terminology employed in our methodology, and then introduces its architecture.
Methodology details
This section describes each phase of RCOM in further detail by illustrating a real-life company in South Korea. For the purpose of confidentiality, the company will be referred to as ‘H Company.’
H Company produces elevator and escalator systems for the commercial sector. Its sales amount to half a billion US dollars and its exports constitute 60% of gross sales. Since starting in 1972, H Company has progressed incessantly. Currently, the company is looking forward to a new direction based on
Methodology comparison
Among previous methodologies, SOCCA, IWOF, ACEM, and IEEC place an emphasis on inter-organizational collaborations. RCOM is compared with these methodologies.
Methodologies can be categorized into formal and informal [11]. The informal methodologies do not specify detailed activities for each phase; the linkages of outputs are not proposed [49]. For formal methodologies such as RCOM and ACEM, not only development activities, but also linkages of their inputs and outputs are described. Typically,
Conclusion
C-commerce may be the ultimate evolution of electronic commerce and its joint commerce plans are required and executed [23]. C-commerce is a network of partnerships or strategic alliances. It may face conflicting threats in a dynamic and complex business environment [7]. Aggressive early adopters are now leveraging strategic advantages. These adopters are forming c-commerce alliance and collaborating product designs, procurement plans, demand forecasts, manufacturing schedules, distribution
References (55)
- et al.
Design and implementation of a collaborative engineering information system for allied concurrent engineering
International Journal of Computed Integrated Manufacturing
(2000) - et al.
The category concept: an extension to the entity relationship model
Data and Knowledge Engineering
(1985) - et al.
Behavioral analysis of component-based systems
Information and Software Technology
(2001) - et al.
Assessing organizational obstacles to component-based development: a case study approach
Information and Software Technology
(2000) - et al.
The balanced scorecard, competitive strategy, and performance
Business Horizons
(2002) - et al.
Guiding the construction of textual use case specifications
Data and Knowledge Engineering
(1998) - et al.
A reference system for Internet based inter-enterprise electronic commerce
Journal of Systems and Software
(2002) - et al.
A methodology for building content-oriented hypermedia systems
Journal of Systems and Software
(2001) - et al.
Methodologies and website development: A survey of practice
Information and Software Technology
(2002) Process-oriented architectures for electronic commerce and inter organizational workflow
Information Systems
(1999)
Internet Business Models and Strategies: Text and Cases
An object data model with roles
Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage
Journal of Management
A survey of multimedia and web development techniques and methodology usage
IEEE Multimedia
A more complete model of relations and their implementation: roles
Journal of Object-Oriented Programming
Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with Application
What people are saying about Windchill
Associations and roles in object-oriented modeling
A form-based approach for database analysis and design
Communication of the ACM
Developing usable web sites: a review and model
Internet Research: Electronic Networking Applications and Policy
Human–Computer Interaction
Objects, Components and Frameworks with UML
Inside Distributed COM
Gartner Group identifies c-commerce supply chain movement: an emerging trend in collaborative web communities
Web engineering: an introduction
IEEE Multimedia
Extending object-oriented systems with roles
ACM Transactions on Information Systems
Core competence for sustainable competitive advantage: a structured methodology for identifying core competence
IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management
Cited by (32)
What prevents consumers that are aware of Airbnb from using the platform? A mixed methods approach
2021, International Journal of Hospitality ManagementCitation Excerpt :Lack of efficacy was supported by Tussyadiah and Pesonen (2016) to be the main barrier to using peer-to-peer accommodation rentals if consumers found the technology system to be hard to operate and if they did not know how it worked. This construct was later redefined by Tussyadiah and Pesonen (2018) as ‘issues in familiarity’, the consumers’ perception that using an online platform requires to master complex technology (e.g., Chong et al., 2009; Park et al., 2004). In this study, the familiarity and efficacy factor was also demonstrated to be a strong determinant, signalling the consumers’ limited knowledge about how the platform works, and the importance of increasing the familiarity towards such business model (Tussyadiah and Pesonen, 2018).
The (de)motivation factors in choosing Airbnb amongst Vietnamese consumers
2020, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism ManagementCitation Excerpt :The lack of perceived value, unfamiliarity and safety concerns demotivate consumers to use Airbnb in Vietnam. This confirms the literature (Chong et al., 2009; Kim et al., 2005; Park et al., 2004) and can be, at least partially, attributed to the lack of trust among Vietnamese tourists in using Airbnb (Guttentag, 2016; Tussyadiah & Pesonen, 2018), especially among its non-users. Hence, measures need to be put in place by Airbnb management to reduce the effect of the latter factors on consumer purchase intentions.
The influences of knowledge exchange on organizational c-commerce success and crisis readiness: The case of the crisis of an automobile manufacturing and merchandising group
2014, Decision Support SystemsCitation Excerpt :A considerable part of the success of c-commerce depends on companies' efforts to collaborate with their distributed supply chain partners to better manage inter-organizational knowledge flows to create value for all partners through increased labor productivity, decreased costs, and process and product innovation [1,4]. Collaborative interactions among c-commerce partners should go beyond simple communications or transactions to facilitate business-content-related knowledge flows among stakeholders to form either a consensus or group-oriented strategies for achieving collective objectives [52]. Research indicates that the distinction between knowledge and information is contingent on context and the individuals in that context, and that one individual's knowledge can be another's information [2,82].
A design pattern coupling role and component concepts: Application to medical software
2011, Journal of Systems and SoftwareCitation Excerpt :A particular component description formalism, involving a graph-based representation, is proposed for the transparent retrieval of functional units of composition (i.e. roles), regardless their distribution over components providing them. To our knowledge, the coupling of both role and component concepts has never been considered, except in the context of a development methodology (Parka et al., 2004), this being out of the scope of this paper. The application of the proposed pattern for developing a set of software programs dedicated to medical applications.
Enterprise Information Portals in support of business process, design teams and collaborative commerce performance
2011, International Journal of Information ManagementStrategic agent based web system development methodology
2008, International Journal of Information Technology and Decision Making