Simulation Modeling to Assess the Added Value of Electronic Commerce.doc.docVIP

THE ROLE OF SIMULATION IN E-BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION Vloga simulacije pri uvajanju elektronskega poslovanja MOJCA INDIHAR-STEMBERGER, JURIJ JAKLIC, ANDREJ KOVACIC University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Economics Kardeljeva ploscad 17, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia Email: mojca.stemberger@uni-lj.si, jurij.jaklic@uni-lj.si, andrej.kovacic@uni-lj.si VESNA BOSILJ-VUKSIC University of Zagreb, Faculty of Economics Trg J.F.Kennedya 6, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia E-mail: vbosilj@efzg.hr ABSTRACT Business renovation is a key aspect of electronic business and a high-level strategy for managing change that generally cannot be handled by continuous improvement and organizational restructuring methods. Business process modeling and the evaluation of different alternative scenarios for improvement are usually the driving factors of the business reengineering process. In this paper, business process simulation is investigated as a tool for deriving new knowledge on current business processes, such as additional in-depth understanding of how the process is executed and the identification of the sources of the problems observed during the process execution. The main objective of the paper is to investigate the potential benefits and outcomes of e-business transitioning that can be assessed in advance by using simulation modeling. An example is presented of how simulation modeling can be used understand a procurement process and to evaluate how the proposed improvements and the introduction of electronic business will influence the system performance. Keywords: simulation modeling, business-to-business (b2b), business process reengineering (bpr), business renovation, procurement. povzetek Pri uvajanju elektronskega poslovanja je izredno pomembna prenova poslovanja in ustrezna strategija na najvi?jem nivoju. Ponavadi tega ni mo? dose?i zgolj z neprestanim izbolj?evanjem in z manj?imi organizacijskimi spremembami. Pri prenovi poslovanja in ovrednotenju razli?nih scenarijev sprememb v izvajanju posl