Value proposition

About: Value proposition is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 3582 publications have been published within this topic receiving 88855 citations.

Requirements Engineering in Software Startups: A Systematic Mapping Study

Abstract: Startups have high failure rates due to their inability to attain a sufficient product/market fit, i.e., delivering a solution that best matches the user needs in the market. Requirement engineering is the activity that could help startup teams identify the value proposition that provides high value to the users and continuously innovate it. The objective of the study is to analyse the state of art of the requirement engineering research in the context of startups, as available in the literature. The analysis of the research area highlights the research trends to achieve two things i.e., (a) predict how much support the startups can get from the literature for enhancing their success rates and (b) identify the research gaps to motivate researchers to conduct future research that could be adoptable in startup contexts. Systematic mapping is conducted on studies extracted from the four bibliographic databases (IEEExplore, ACM, Springerlink and ScienceDirect) and studies extracted by using a forward snowballing approach. Individual studies are coded to yield the classification scheme. Formulated schemes and those already available in literature, were populated with information extracted from the abstracts of the studies. The research is mostly focused on generic requirement engineering and product validation activities. The research is conducted mostly as evaluations (empirical studies) with the outcome of providing theory to the research community. Major underlying motivation of the research is to attain the product/market fit. However, research studies focusing on requirement documentation, prioritization and elicitation are losing focus from 2017, 2018 and 2019, respectively. The literature lacks the studies that reports research solutions which are validated in laboratory settings or in real contexts, experience reports, opinion papers and philosophical papers. The positive side of the finding is that the number of requirement engineering research studies in a startup context have increased in the past five years. At this instant, unfortunately the literature has limited ability to support startups by providing solutions (for instance, research solutions, evidence to support decision makings, best practices, experiences etc.) that are adoptable in their real context. Uniform focus of the researchers across all sub-activities of requirement engineering is required with effort distributed across different research types that supports startups, not only by providing validated solutions but experience reports, opinions, new conceptual frameworks and empirical evidence that can aid their decision making.

Ethical Customer Value Creation:Drivers and Barriers

Abstract: There is a long-standing discussion on the positive interactions between enterprise value creation and business competitiveness. The corporate value can be seen as being created from three major sources within the cycle – from employees, from processes, and from customers or investors through reinvestment. To achieve competitive advantages, a firm must create more value than its competitors in the industry. Emphasizing that, firms should explore the positive drivers of customer value creation, allowing for a true value creation that will lead to increments in competitiveness. In reality, however, there are also barriers that hinder customer value creation. Targeting the above issues that have not yet been explored or analyzed, we have collected related literature at the first stage. Based on these presumable assumptions, this paper then conducts an empirical study by surveying and analyzing the relevance given by the investigated leading machinery measuring equipment firms in Taiwan, regarding the concerns as drivers and barriers in relation to customer value creation. This paper especially aims to answer several key questions: What drivers revolving around employees and processes can facilitate the organization to create more value for its customers? Conversely, what barriers block the organization from creating value for customers in examining the same dimensions? Does value creation direct an organization’s profitability and competitiveness? Our questionnaire survey results show that the most recognized and agreed drivers of customer value creation in consideration of employees are “distinctive skills”, “personal experience”, “learning and training”, and “team work”; and, in regard to the firm’s processes, the key drivers are “innovation and evolution”, “RD and, in terms of processes, they are “short of core technology”, “poor resource support”, and “bad services and attitudes”. Furthermore, our in-depth interview outcomes reveal that “capital sufficiency” and “mergers and acquisitions” are in practice considered to be other important customer value creation drivers; in contrast, “cultural and structural barriers” and “short of mechanisms to measure customer value creation effectively” are viewed as additional critical barriers to customer value creation.

Improving Procurement Performance with E-business Mechanisms

Abstract: E-procurement — e-business mechanisms deployed on procurement — offers many recent and innovative methods that can improve procurement in different ways. The key challenge of e-procurement, however, is how to apply the various e-procurement applications in such a way that they improve the procurement practice and sourcing strategy of a company. There is a demand for an investigation that scrutinizes the e-procurement value propositions and explains how e-procurement applications can improve procurement performance, and that demand motivates this Ph. D. thesis. Five case studies were conducted with the purpose of finding out how the case companies had worked with e-procurement, what specific e-procurement applications they had investigated or implemented, and the expected or actual benefits of doing so. An e-procurement framework was developed in order to investigate how various e-procurement applications operate. The e-procurement framework is a matrix made up of two dimensions, a list of generic procurement tasks and a list of e-business value creation mechanisms. The generic procurement tasks could be grouped in four procurement areas, namely strategic procurement, purchasing process, internal tasks, and external tasks. E-business value creation mechanisms were grouped in three major themes: novelty, efficiency, and coordination. This framework was then used to position the case companies’ usage of e-procurement applications. It was also used for positioning the literature on e-procurement. The thesis also includes three papers that go into detail regarding issues like differentiation, alignment and usage of marketplaces. Deploying e-procurement applications requires that the procurement groundwork has been laid down. Procurement strategies must be present, and preferably aligned with corporate strategy. Processes and procedures must be mapped and understood; supplier relationships must be set up so the full potential of suppliers’ capabilities is acquired. When this foundation has been established, it is time to assess how different e-procurement applications can leverage the procurement work and pick the one(s) that offer the best prospect of improving the procurement performance even further. E-procurement is after all not a remedy for poor procurement work; it is a possibility to improve the performance of procurement work that is already working well even further. (Less)

Realising the value proposition for healthcare by incorporating KM strategies and data mining techniques with the use of information and communication technologies

Abstract: Data permeate all areas of healthcare and permit the appropriate delivery of the correct services at the right time for each patient at the point of care. The application of internet-based ICTs (Information Communication Technologies) to healthcare is a necessary but not sufficient solution to address today's healthcare challenges. To improve access and quality, and thereby realise the value proposition for healthcare, healthcare organisations must maximise the data and information generated by them and which flow through these ICTs. This goal can be reached by embracing the techniques of Data Mining (DM) and the strategies of Knowledge Management (KM). When coupled with evidence-based medicine, and the introduction of various internet-based ICTs such as electronic medical record systems and e-health initiatives, KM and DM create strategic imperatives for healthcare organisations to maximise both the clinical and administrative benefits from their application of internet-based information and communication technologies to healthcare.