A role-driven component-oriented methodology for developing collaborative commerce systems

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2004.02.002Get rights and content

Abstract

As the commerce environment becomes more competitive, companies are compelled to adopt a collaborative commerce (c-commerce) paradigm to sustain a competitive edge over the Internet. C-commerce demands a variety of collaborative interactions among multiple stakeholders. In order to develop c-commerce systems, this paper proposes a role-driven component-oriented methodology (RCOM), which consists of four phases: collaboration analysis, component analysis, component design, and implementation. The roles can help implement well-defined business functions, while the components enable the production of reusable artifacts in a systematic fashion. Accordingly, RCOM is likely to help improve the system development process. To demonstrate the practical usefulness of this methodology, a real-life case is illustrated.

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

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