Business Information Services Research Articles

Factors Affecting Performance of Micro and Small Scale Enterprises (Case of Karat Town, Konso)

The aim of the study was to examine factors that affects the performance of micro and small scale enterprises with the special emphasis on manufacturing, construction, service, trade and urban agriculture sector in Karat town. The study sought to achieve the following objectives: examining effect of business information services, analyzing the effect of access to finance, determining the effect of access to infrastructure, examining the effect of managerial experience and lastly investigating the effect of working premises on performance of MSEs in karat town. The study was applied explanatory research design. In order to get the representativeness of each sector stratified random sampling technique was used to select sample of 185 MSEs. The study used close- ended questionnaires to collect the primary data from the sample respondents. Correlation and multiple regression analysis were used to analyze the data. The result of the study indicated that there is positive and significant relationship between the dependent and the independent variables, but the effect of access to infrastructure on MSEs’s performance was found positive and insignificant. 62.5 percent variations in performance were explained by the predictor variables.

Financial literacy in Hungarian libraries: Survey-based steps for implementation

In Hungarian libraries, the development of financial literacy (FL) is either not present at all or is very low in intensity. The Hungarian government strategy does not involve libraries in FL development. Based on the dissemination of information and digital literacy, there are numerous good examples worldwide proving that libraries, reaching all of their users, can effectively take part in financial education and, built thereon, business development and business information services. This can increase their social recognition and even supplement their funding. In 2022, for the first time in the country, the authors conducted a survey among Hungarian librarians to assess the current situation, to identify what hinders the expansion of services related to FL, and what tasks should be performed and what innovations should be introduced in libraries. The survey also seeks to define which fields of competence are to be acquired by librarians. It also reveals the forms of external professional cooperation that are necessary to organise library programmes strengthening financial awareness. The results provide valuable information not only for Hungary, but also internationally, since they showcase the challenges that the library system of a former socialist country in Europe faces after three decades of market economy in this current, market- and profit-oriented world.

PEST-based Analysis of the Competitive Environment for E-commerce in China's Agriculture

E-commerce in agriculture is an advanced business model that can improve the outstanding contradictions in the market circulation of agricultural goods in China. Chinese agricultural e-commerce is still at the primary development stage of online agricultural business information services. The study uses the PEST analysis tool of competitive intelligence theory, the author analyses the macro-competitive environment of Chinese agricultural e-commerce industry from four perspectives: political, economic, social and technological. The results of the study show that although there are still many shortcomings in the credit system and standardisation of products from agriculture sold online in China, the basic hardware conditions are already in place. The largely conventional ideologies of farmers' users are the biggest barrier to the growth of agricultural e-commerce. Farming-related online shopping enterprises should fully recognise the need for agricultural e-commerce. They should help farmers change their traditional thinking and increase their understanding of agricultural e-commerce in accordance with national agriculture policies.

Classification of Adversarial Attacks Using Ensemble Clustering Approach

As more business transactions and information services have been implemented via communication networks, both personal and organization assets encounter a higher risk of attacks. To safeguard these, a perimeter defence like NIDS (network-based intrusion detection system) can be effective for known intrusions. There has been a great deal of attention within the joint community of security and data science to improve machine-learning based NIDS such that it becomes more accurate for adversarial attacks, where obfuscation techniques are applied to disguise patterns of intrusive traffics. The current research focuses on non-payload connections at the TCP (transmission control protocol) stack level that is applicable to different network applications. In contrary to the wrapper method introduced with the benchmark dataset, three new filter models are proposed to transform the feature space without knowledge of class labels. These ECT (ensemble clustering based transformation) techniques, i.e., ECT-Subspace, ECT-Noise and ECT-Combined, are developed using the concept of ensemble clustering and three different ensemble generation strategies, i.e., random feature subspace, feature noise injection and their combinations. Based on the empirical study with published dataset and four classification algorithms, new models usually outperform that original wrapper and other filter alternatives found in the literature. This is similarly summarized from the first experiment with basic classification of legitimate and direct attacks, and the second that focuses on recognizing obfuscated intrusions. In addition, analysis of algorithmic parameters, i.e., ensemble size and level of noise, is provided as a guideline for a practical use.

Business Development Services Providers: Pathways and Involvement of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises in Arusha City and the Moshi Municipality, Tanzania

This paper aims at determining Business Development Service Providers’ (BDSPs) pathways and involvement of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in development and delivery of Business Development Service (BDS). The study was conducted in Arusha City and Moshi Municipality, in Tanzania. A total of 65 BDS providers and 254 MSMEs were sampled and a cross-sectional research design was used for this study. Respondents were selected by using a purposive and a simple random sampling procedure. Data were collected using a questionnaire and focus group discussions (FGDs). Qualitative data was analysed using content analysis, while quantitative data were analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Results indicated that most of the pathways utilized by BDS providers in service delivery to MSMEs were seminars, trainings and workshops. Others were vocational training, incubators, technical transfer and promotion of appropriate technology, trade fair exhibitions, and consultancy as well as business information services. However, there were no institutionalized approaches regarding BDS delivery approaches among the surveyed BDS providers. Similarly, the surveyed BDS providers indicated limited MSMEs involvement in needs assessment, service designing and delivery approaches. Due to several constraining factor such as inadequate financial resources, lack of coordination and inadequate BDS providers’ information and awareness among MSMEs. The study concludes that it is not possible to determine which pathway is the most appropriate to follow in delivering services to MSMEs. Therefore, the choice of the pathway depends mostly on the focus of the providers delivering BDS. The study recommends that BDS providers need to ensure that their delivery pathways are clients oriented by involving them in the whole process of service delivery particularly in the needs assessment, services designing and delivery. Furthermore, the study recommends that the policy makers advocate for strategies that will facilitate MSMEs involvement in BDS designing and the delivery processes. Such strategies should include MSMEs capacity building and the use of appropriate participation methods. Likewise, the strategies should focus on improving MSMEs involvement in the BDS delivery process to ensure sustainable MSMEs development is achieved.

Challenges for Model-Driven Development of Strategically Aligned Information Systems

Model-Driven Development (MDD) has been proposed as an alternative to the traditional development of information systems, given its ability to integrate different stakeholders into the information system engineering process. Currently, longtime researched MDD methods and modern no-code and low-code platforms support the generation of the working code of the information system and services. However, in today’s continuously changing environment, organisations need to align the information systems and services with the business structure, strategy, and processes they support. This article shows the design challenges for integrating business strategy information into a model-driven development method. We applied a set of mechanism experiments on an MDD method composed of three modelling frameworks with demonstrated semantic consistency, that covers the organisational, business process, and information system levels to identify information loss and transformation coverage issues that prevent the generation of information systems and services that are strategically aligned. The challenges were discussed with experts, confirming the relevance of avoiding the overlapping between the strategic and business process concepts, providing organisational-level constructs to express strategic ends and means, and considering the organisational structure in the modular design of business process and information systems and services.

‘Never let a good crisis go to waste’ – The 2020 Business Information Review Survey: Part III

Part III of the 2020 Business Information Review survey, this is the world’s longest running conversation about business information services and their management, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary. The third installment of the 2020 survey captures the participants’ reflections on a range of topics that are shaping their operations including supplier relations, client engagement as well as providing a summary of their 2021 priorities.

‘Never let a good crisis go to waste’ – The 2020 business information review survey: Part II

This is Part II of the 2020 Business Information Review survey. This is the world’s longest running conversation about business information services and their management, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary. The second instalment of the 2020 survey captures participants’ reflections on a range of topics that are shaping their operations including the operating environment, technology and content trends.

Business information services in public libraries: a case of Anjo City Library

Business information services in public libraries: a case of Anjo City Library

The determinants of financial performance of small and medium scale enterprises in Badulla district

Small and Medium Enterprises are backbone of the economic growth in all countries. SMEs make up a large part of Sri Lanka's economy as well. There is limited information related to the relationship between socio-economic factors and the financial performance of small and medium scale enterprises in Badulla district. Therefore, the objective of this study is to attempt to investigate how for the determinants as socioeconomic factors influencing on the financial performance of small and medium scale enterprises in Badulla district. Simple random sampling method was applied to select 100 SMEs in Badulla district. The data were collected using structured questionnaires. Univariate and multiple regression analysis were employed in data analysis. Extents of the influence of Socio-Economic factors on SMEs were measured using two groups of variables Social and Economic factors such as Access to Infrastructure, Support of Family Members, Availability of Managerial Experience, Business Information Services (Social factors) and Access to Finance, Government Policy and Regulations, Macro-Economic Indicators (Economic factors). The results suggest that Social factors are found to have high influence on the performance compared to the Economic factors on the performance of small and medium scale enterprises in Badulla District. As personal factors, Age of the owner, investment level, experience and marital status of the owner are also having influence on the performance of SMEs Badulla District. It is recommended that the government should have attention to improve IT skills of SMEs owners because, of lack of IT skills of owners. To develop SMEs and improve their managerial skills, government should implement granting credit facilities, entrepreneurship training programs, counseling services and research and development in a spread and regular basis for Badulla District SMEs.

Investment decision and coordination of green agri-food supply chain considering information service based on blockchain and big data

Researches about the fusion application of Big Data and blockchain have appeared for a long time, many information service providers have launched information service business based on Big Data and blockchain (hereafter, ISBD). However, in the green agri-food area, the ISBD application does not popularized. A vital reason is that many decision makers do not know how to make an optimal investment decision and coordinate chain members after adopting ISBD. The core of this problem is to study the issue of investment decision and coordination in a green agri-food supply chain. To solve this problem, firstly, combining with the status of Chinese agricultural development, we proposed a more suitable supply chain structure in the fusion application environment of Big Data and blockchain. Then, we chose a green agri-food supply chain with one producer and one retailer as research object and revised the demand function. Afterwards, considering the changes of agri-food freshness and greenness, we built and analysed the benefit models of producer and retailer before and after using ISBD, and then a cost-sharing and revenue-sharing contract was put forward to coordinate the supply chain. Findings: 1) When the total investment cost payed by producer and retailer is in a certain range, using ISBD will help chain members gain more benefits. 2) If chain members want to gain more benefits after using ISBD, they should try their best to optimize costs by extracting valuable information. Results can offer a theoretical guidance for producer and retailer in investing in ISBD, pricing decision and supply chain coordination after applying ISBD.

The Nexus between Co-production and Willingness: Business Counselling in the Microfinance Sector

Microfinance plays a vital role to alleviate poverty through the development of micro-enterprises. Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) provide services such as microcredit, savings, insurance, and business development services (BDS) to their clients. BDS are non-financial services such as business training, market linkages, and information services which are provided by Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) to its clients. BDS helps owner-managers improve sales and profits and enable MFIs to achieve higher loan repayment rates and higher potential for client retention. The counselors of MFIs provide BDS to owner-managers of micro-enterprises. This study focuses on the co-production of BDS where a counselor of MFI and the owner-manager of a microenterprise engage in the co-production of services. For a successful co-production, the client (i.e. owner-manager in this study) has to play an active role by exercising three client factors, namely ability, clarity of the role, and motivation. Thus, the objective of this study is to explore how the client/owner-manager motivation (i.e. willingness) affects the co-production of BDS in counseling within a microfinance setting. A multiple case study method was used to conduct the present study by choosing six Sri Lankan MFIs as cases, where the selection of cases and respondents was based on a purposive sampling method. A counselor and an owner-manager representing each MFI were interviewed for data collection and thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. The findings show that economic factors, sanctions, and contextual factors influence the willingness of owner-managers to co-produce BDS with counselors of microfinance institutions (MFIs). The findings contribute to knowledge and practice domains related to microfinance. Keywords: willingness, motivation, business counseling, co-production, microfinance.

The use of ict by sme\u2019s in Zambia to access business information services and investments: barriers and drivers

The research aimed at answering key questions regarding the use of ICTs among SMEs in their businesses with an analysis and consideration of the possible factors that enable ICTs to be valued, as drivers and the possible factors that deter them not to be recognised as business development agents to be the barriers. The research was conducted on a sample of 60 SMEs with no formal business registration and 40 SMEs with formal business registration with a response of 76.7% and 87.5% respectively. Results disclosed that ICTs are a major aspect in business operations, formally and informally with the major drivers happening to be the reduction in cost and ease of doing business. The major challenges were the expense at which ICTs come with and the poor ICT infrastructure. There is a relation between the investment in ICTs in businesses with the increase in productivity as 67.04% of the respondents confirming the effect of implementation. The study recommends that Government fully implements the framework for ICTs laid in its Seventh National Development Plan (7NDP) to make ICTs available for socio-economic development through infrastructure development, reduction on taxes laid on ICT related goods and through Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) that seek to enhance the communication.

Service Innovation in Local Government: Analysis of Business Information Services in South Sulawesi Province, Indonesia

Abstract This article aimed to determine and analyze the implementation of innovation forms as well as the factors supporting and inhibiting the implementation of innovation in local government level. The research was conducted in three regions in South Sulawesi province: Bantaeng, East Luwu, and Makassar. The results of the research showed that the service innovation implemented in South Sulawesi was quite varied but has the same objective, i.e giving satisfactory service of business licenses for society. Bantaeng Regency Government implemented click innovation, changes employees’ behavior without illegal charges and license delivery to applicant's home. Similarly, the East Luwu Regency government intensively innovated the management and one-day issuance of business license. While the Makassar Municipal Government focused more on weekend service innovation, delivering and picking up license documents. Supporting factors for service innovation in the three regions were regulation and commitment of the local governments while the inhibiting factors of innovation implementation were the limited fund and incompetent personnel in service duties.

Exploring the future of Business Information Services in the financial sector

This research study looks at the role of Business Information Services (BIS) within financial services and what its future may look like in light of changing internal and external environmental factors. The research is gathered from global investment banks and equity houses and considers the role technology is playing in the development of the BIS department of the future. We review different operating models, how these are affected by internal and external changes and look at future drivers and future scope developments. We also consider the influence of knowledge management services on BIS and discover that although there are some links, there is very little strategic interaction between the two.

Provision of Business Information Services by Public Libraries to Small- Scale Business Enterprises

This study explored the business information services offered to small-scale business enterprises (SBEs) by public libraries in Meru County, Kenya. Public libraries are community information centres, hence well-placed to serve the small-scale business community. A quantitative approach and survey research design were adopted. Data were collected from 296 SBE traders and 20 staff members from three public libraries in Meru County using well-structured questionnaires and interviews. Quantitative data were analysed with the help of SPSS software while a thematic analysis was used on qualitative data. The provision of business information services to SBEs in public libraries was in a desolate state owing to inadequate business collections, the lack of sufficient information and communications technology (ICT) facilities, poor awareness of business information services, a poor reading culture, and weak collaborations of public libraries with stakeholders. There is an indispensable need to establish insightful and holistic business information services at public libraries and to institute measures that would foster their utilisation by SBEs. This can be achieved by elevating library facilities, enhancing outreach programmes, ensuring adequate funding, engaging knowledgeable business services librarians, embracing ICT in service delivery, and by having an appropriate policy framework.

Information Finding Practices of Knowledge Workers in the Field of Business and Economics

It is important for knowledge workers in the business sector to have access to information on companies, countries, investment opportunities, and projects. Survey of information finding practices of professionals in Kuwaiti companies showed that use of web sites, internal reports, and consulting with colleagues were preferred approaches for finding work related information. Business professionals also frequently used organizational sites, reports from financial analysts, business information services, and social media in seeking information. They listed lack of adequate information in databases and non-availability of information related to local financial situation as barriers to effective information finding. They considered their information finding skills as reasonable but wanted to get more training in searching online databases and web-based sources. The study showed that business organizations ought to make arrangements that frequently used sources were accessible to their employees on regular basis. It is also desirable that training in information skills is arranged by for enhanced information literacy at work.

Dynamic Guaranteed Cost Compression for Time Series Big Data

Query processing technology has recently received a lot of attention in the business intelligence and information service communities. However, the existing approaches can not efficiently optimize the query performance in the uncertain big data environment. In this paper, we propose QPPUBG, a novel and efficient query processing platform for uncertain big data. QPPUBG mainly includes four modules: (i) query equivalence reconstructing for uncertain big data; (ii) multiple query optimization over probability relation components; (iii) query execution plan constructing over probability relation components, and (iv) physical implementation solution of query for uncertain big data. Specially, QPPUBG can support the possible world instance semantics and efficiently handle arbitrary decision spaces. Moreover, QPPUBG can seamlessly integrate the above four modules into the modern parallel computation frameworks. We present the extensive experiments that demonstrate QPPUBG is both efficient and effective.

Cloud Technologies in the Promotion Strategy of Integrated Communications

The article analyses prospects for business development under the conditions of a digital revolution-introduction of cloud computing. The article examines economic indicators of the development dynamics of modern communications system and analyses sociological data on cost behaviour of business information services. Data on the development strategy of cloud technologies in the system of integrated communications is outlined.

Delivering value

The author discusses the results of Business Information Review’s 25th Business Information Survey, commenting from a US perspective. Trends in providing value-added deliverables, working with data, working with vendors, open access and open-source resources, technology, mobile access, skills, and hiring are highlighted. The article concludes that trends in business information services in the US and UK are closely aligned and that we must continue to look for opportunities to add value to business information services. The US/UK use of non-English language sources, acting on the big data opportunity, the importance of information technology enablers, and user-centric design appear as areas of potential difference.