itais 2013

DsNAA DATABASE FOR STRATEGIC NETWORK ANALYSIS IN ITALY

Authors: M. A. Bochicchio, B. Livieri, A. Longo, P. Di Cagno

Presenting author: Barbara Livieri email: [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

Objective

Propose a prototype of a new web-based system, called DsNA (Database for strategic Network Analysis) for:

KPIs monitoring for networks and firms;

Benchmarking of similar firms or networks;

Statistical analysis.

Barbara Livieri– X Conference of the Italian Chapter of AIS – Empowering society through digital innovations (itAIS 2013) – Milan, December 14th – 15st

DsNA

Online database

Performance management

Benchmarking

Information and Communication

Technologies

Context

Cooperation Competitive advantages

Why?

Lack of tools and methods to quantitatively track the effects of alliances on firms and to link goals and KPIs outside of traditional organizational boundaries

What should firms and networks monitor?

How should firms and networks compare KPIs?

50% of alliances fails


Lesson learnt for firms

Accountability

SAs monitoring Changes

Strategy definition

Partner selection

Context

Performance measurement is relevant in all phases of the SA’s lifecycle

Pre-alliance phase

Operational phase

Conclusion phase


Related works


Performance management and PM have a key role in the assessment of SAs and of how the SA is affecting firms.

• Consolidate literatureFirms

• Few works with no attention on quantitative aspects

Effects of the SA on firms

• Guidelines, performance measurement tools and enforcements methods

SA

PM in SAs can be focused on three aspects

Motivation and theoretical foundation

PM has an high degree of complexity in inter-organizational settings

it is not yet possible to analyze in detail which costs and which revenues of a firm are ascribable to the SA (lack of multi-level studies)

However, “if you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it”

Firms’ and SAs’ managers could benefit from quali-quantitative information allowing them

a) to better understand if SAs are a good choice for them

b) to comprehend what to expect from a SA

c) to monitor how their firm/SA is going


Motivation and theoretical foundation

An acceptable solution is benchmarking: comparison of firms or SAs with similar ones.

But…why is an online service for benchmarking useful?

a benchmarking system requires for many information, which are not accessible at a reasonable cost to firms (especially, SMEs).

So…less expensive information


Scenario

Chance to develop such a benchmarking system


Worldwide

GlobalizationCooperation

and networks

Importance of SMEs

SBA (2008)

Network agreements

Europe Italy

DsNA system

Database for strategic Network Analysis

1. GOAL-STAKEHOLDER DIAGRAM;

2. MAIN SOFTWARE ELEMENTS OF THE SYSTEM

3. MAIN IMPLEMENTATION ASPECTS

4. EARLY TEST PHASE

Goal-stakeholders diagram


Networks’ manager

Firms’ managers

Policy makers

Network associations

Researchers

For each of them:

Complete set of goals and constraints;

Functional and non-functional requirements

Internal stakeholders

networks’ managers

firms’ managers

external stakeholders

policy makers

network associations

researchers

Goals and stakeholders: firms

Goals

Firms (managers and directors)

Pre-alliance phase

G.1 Evaluating network

suitability for specific business

goals

Operational-phase

G.2 Firm assessment

G.2.1 Financial analysis

G.2.2 Benchmarking

G.3 Share information

(costs, suppliers, performance, …)

RequirementsG.1 Evaluating network suitability for specific business goals (competitiveness, improvement and increase of advertisement, growth of R&D)

R1 (DL). Information objects: firms, network agreements, financial statements, items. (Stored data)

R2 (BRL). KPIs calculation rules, privacy anonimization, (derived data)

R3 (BRL). Visibility - managers and directors can see (DD): their own analytic data;

Information on other firms of the network, depending on each firm choice;

synthetic data of other firms and networks;

R4 (PL). Reports and dashboards on R3 objects

R5 (PL). Filtering, search, ordering and comparison on R1 objects

R6 (PL). Overall navigation


Internal stakeholders: networks

Goals RequirementsG.5 View statistics (synthetic data)

R1 (DL). Required info: network size, firm size, industrial sectors, firms and networks age, performance trend, …

R2 (DL) Information objects: Firms, network agreements, financial statements, items, sector.

R3 (BRL). KPIs calculation rules, trend analysis and comparison, descriptive and inference statistics indicators, privacy anonimization

R4 (BRL). Visibility: synthetic data of other firms and networks;

R5 (PL). Statistical reports on R3 objects;

R6 (PL). Filtering, search, ordering and comparison on R1 information and R2 objects;


Network’s managers

Operational-phase

G.2 Firm assessment


G.2.2 Benchmarking

G.3 Share informatio

nG.4 Network evaluation

G.4.1 Projects assessment

G.4.2 homogeneity

G.4.3 distribution of

benefits

G.5 View statistics (synthetic

data)


External stakeholders (sneak-peek)

Goals RequirementsG.6 Definition of new ratios

R1 (DL). Information objects: all the information objects defined in the model, data coming from external sources and stored as couples “attribute-value”, metadata on new ratios (Stored data).

R2 (BRL). Visibility – New ratios can be public, private or shared among specific groups (e.g. alliances or homogeneous type of enterprise or user defined groups). Each group or user can see:

new ratios; metadata on new ratios;

R3 (PL). Organization of new ratios – New ratios have to be ‘groupables and searchables’ according to multiple criteria.

R4 (PL). Reports and dashboards on R2 objects’ usage.


External stakeholders

Operational-phase

G.2 Firm assessment


G.2.2 Benchmarking

G.3 Share informatio

nG.4 Network evaluation

G.4.1 Projects assessment

G.4.2 homogeneity

G.4.3 distribution of

benefits

G.5 View statistics (synthetic

data)

G.6 Define new ratios

System architecture and implementation

DsNA is a Web System composed by two main application:

a) a data integration subsystem

b) a front-end

We decided to use the classic three-layer architecture. LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP)

architecture integrated with the jQuery v.2.0 library to support asynchronous page update.

Why? Problem size: less than 5000 firms and

related financial statements for 5 years

Estimated workload: less than 10 concurrent users


Collet financial statements Load in the db

Computing KPIs

Present KPIs to

stakeholders

System architecture and implementation

STRATEGIC ALLIANCE

FIRM SECTOR

ITEM REPORT

ITEM TYPE

KPIs (i.e., ROI, ROE, EBITDA, NFP, ROS, ROA) and the benchmark values evaluation performed through SQL views

SQL views made KPIs very fast to implement and very simple to test.


Main elements of the data model

Presentation aspects

The presentation aspects of DsNA have been modeled and implemented through a navigation tree and through a page template associated to each user type.


Validation

The validation of the prototype concerns four aspects:


Performance (tested on 192 firms and 75 networks)

Usability (tested on 192 firms and 75 networks)

Features (through an expert review)

Coherence with existing literature

Validation

Performance test Load test Assumption:

1000 unique visitor per day

20 concurrent users

standard server (quad-core Pentium with 32 GB of RAM)

Result: response time < 3 s


Performance (tested on 192 firms and 75 networks)

DsNAInputData integration

Speed: 8 s/file

Estimation for around 3681 firms: 9 hours

Every four months

Validation

Test10 graduate students of the course of Data Management (MSc in Management Engineering – University of Salento) to:

We explained DsNA features;

We asked them to execute some tasks: to work on a subset of 20 KPIs for a period of two months and to evaluate not only the usability but also the service continuity and the delivered quality;

The 10 students answered a short survey on technical and usability aspects

ResultsThe 10 students pointed out a number of mistakes and errors in navigation, which allowed us to correct and improve the design of the Web Applicationand the structure of the service before the actual go-live


Usability (tested on 192 firms and 75 networks)

Validation

Test We selected a recognized expert panel

composed by: 2 employee of the Commerce Chambers of

Lecce, whom operate with SAs;

4 business literacy and consultancy experts.

We explained the problem and the scenario

We asked them to test if the requirements make sense for firms and SAs, assigning to each requirement a degree of importance (on a scale on 1 to 7).

Results

It resulted that requirements meets firms and networks’ needs, although some improvements can still be done.


Features (through an expert review)

Validation

At the current state of research it is not possible to complete a field evaluation of the service:

prospective users cannot have a clear understanding of the possible applications of the system, until it is in a more advanced stage of prototyping.

The proposed approach (based on benchmarking) and tool (online database) are well known and documented both in scientific literature and in industrial field.

database systems are commonly used to store and analyze data of enterprises

performance benchmarking is well known to enhance competitiveness.


Coherence theory [27]

Discussion and conclusions


DsNA allows

to perform a benchmark analysis of firms and SAs with homogeneous characteristics,

to better understand the economic trends of SAs and

to better understand if, and in what measure, firms obtain benefits from a SA.

SAs can become a suitable solution also for firms that lack of the economical and managerial resources required to enforce a complex and homogeneous performance measurement system in the whole ecosystem

Discussion and conclusions


With the prototypical system, we achieved the following results:

acceptable evaluation and publication costs of benchmarking data;

the evaluation of firms in network agreements, with a detailed description of their characteristics (e.g., sector, place, employees); the evaluation of a broad number of KPIs and related sector benchmarks.

Future works will include the extension of the system with more advanced anonimization techniques, the creation of a collaborative version of the platform to foster data exchange and Web 2.0 interaction among stakeholders in the perspective of e-participation and the use of taxonomies and ontologies to analyze the link between business goals and KPIs.

Thanks!

Email: [email protected]

Website: http://dsna.unisalento.it (available soon)

mailto:[email protected]

http://dsna.unisalento.it/

http://dsna.unisalento.it/

itais 2013

Technology

digital innovations

firms saguidelines

comparison of firms

sas managers

assessment of sas

barbara livieri email

strategic network analysis

networks monitor