Good practices for tele-working & business incubators.

Carutasu, George ; Turcoiu, Titi ; Botezatu, Cornelia Paulina 等

Abstract: New leading technologies in ICT has emerged to special manufacturing policies, regarding sharing resources and manufacturing facilities or out-sourcing activities, in order to obtain better economical results by lowering the direct and indirect manufacturing costs and increase the quality of the products. This article presents two combined research projects developed, first to sustain the SME's in very beginning, acting together as a virtual enterprise and, second, to offer an IT infrastructure, lowering so the TCO, which is affect the final price of the product. In this manner are presented the business incubator for SME in course to be realized and also the information system usable by incubated SME, accurately designed for their business needs.

Key words: e-business, virtual enterprise, tele-working, KMS.

1. INTRODUCTION

ICT last period development produce a large scale movement, from old style of manufacturing to e-business concept. A more refined view, offer an image of ICT usage, among the product and business lifecycle. This, together with the globalization process, having no commercial border for large, emerged to special developed sustaining effort for SME's in early stage of development.

Many of this, accordingly with current studies, considering the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for the services offered by ICT, and also the lack of knowledge about the targeted market (because of high costs implied to realize effective market studies, as principal source of failure.

Large companies, with a larger ITC budget extensively use sophisticated informatics tools to sustain their activity, such as CRM (Customer Relationship Management), ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) or PLM (Product Lifecycle Management). Also, the software suppliers propose large training and customization process, many of this being unsuccessful or are not accomplish the required ROI.

The benefits of large e-support for business and manufacturing is indubitable, but in early stage of SME development, the resources immobilized for achieving this technology could be used for other purposes, as potential for needed growth.

A solution for SME support is the business incubators, as growth catalyst, space where, 20-30 SMEs are developing together and use in common information and resources. So, first advantage to be incubated is a preferential rent for bureaus and manufacturing facilities. Second advantage is to have for free business and manufacturing consultancy and technological transfer. A third is advantage is the usage of IT infrastructure and common knowledge database (Botezatu, 2006).

The incubation is divided in two periods. First sixth months for incubation, the rent and all other services are for free, only new SMEs being approved for incubation. In the next period the price for above mentioned service is increased, for each month.

The purpose of incubation is not to funding indirectly the SMEs, but with this facilities granted, the objective is to assure a better rate of survival in the most critical period of development for an enterprise.

2. INCUBATION SEVICES

The Business Incubator (CPRU-ITA) is set inside of University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest--Human Resources Training Center in cooperation with Romanian-American University with the support of Romanian R&D Ministry INFRATECH Program, having a budget of 150 000 euros, the developing period being 10 months. The project start was in May 2007. So, to assure the consultancy for SME, 3 consultants for technological transfer, intellectual property and law were employed.

The IT infrastructure is covered by a wired network connecting 40 computers and 2 servers, all together with a database system which will detailed in section 3.

Furthermore, a over 800 sqm. building space is offered for SME activity, encouraging by low rent prices and annexed services the SME incubation.

The incubator will offer technical support for at least 20 SME, from industrial domains such as: automation, ICT, mechanical engineering and transportation. Another target share is services for those above mentioned domains, including long life learning. The Incubator facilities and services are:

* Entrepreneurs and employees training;

* Manufacturing facilities, including industrial equipments;

* Administrative and secretariat services;

* Support for SME registration and preparing the business plan;

* Equipment acquisition and technological transfer;

* Technical/economical evaluation of products and services produced by incubated SME;

* Industrial lobby or other promotion service to develop new products or services;

* Management strategy and administrative planning to achieve objectives in different domains: manufacturing, technological transfer, sells / acquisition, marketing, finance;

* Funding and financial guarantees for SME, international cooperation a "joint venture".

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

3. GOOD PRACTICES FOR TELE-WORKING

Another issue for this debate is good practices for teleworking, second project presented. The SIMVAPS project no. 126.3/20.07.2006 is on course, having 3 years duration, with over 300 000 euros national funding budget. It main objective is to determine a set of good practices for tele-working and to develop an information system dedicated to assist the mobile workers, offering the appropriated tools for they specific needs.

This cover e-job market, e-commerce facilities, information portals for different domains with business opportunities. The system is conceived as a Knowledge Management System (KMS), where all registered user contribute with their knowledge for knowledge database. All data is verified by system administrator.

The categories selected as target group for this project are:

* Telehomeworking, for the employees who use their own residence as working place, as over-time being employed in an enterprise;

* Multi-location eWorkers, for people that frequently change their work place (sellers or trainers);

* eLancers, which have their own business based on internet facilities;

* Independent workers, having several employers, with a determined task and period work contract.

SIMVAPS present a three-tier structure, using large implemented Operating Systems and Database Servers: MS W2003 Servers and MS SQL 2005. The concept of data' is referred to three different layers: Data layer, Information layer and Knowledge layer (Botezatu, 2007).

Data layer, where primary data are inserted in the system, information. All data are stored in a data warehouse as main repository of the historical data.

Information is data obtain after aggregation process, using aggregate functions depending on subject, interconnected by communication nods existent between organizations involved named data mart.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

This concept supposes a repository of data gathered from operational data and other sources that is designed to obtain knowledge. So, the information is obtained from data warehouse after suffering a data mining process.

Also, an OLAP (On- Line Analytical Processing) system is provided, to assure a framework for the analysis of multidimensional data. Metadata are expressed in a condensed data mine-able format, or one that facilitates the practice of data mining (Goldman, 2005).

The third layer, knowledge is resulted after two separate processes of knowledge discovery and prediction. Knowledge discovery provides information for AS IS stage of the system, having a readable form and being understood by a user.

Otherwise, the second process, forecasting, or predictive modeling provides predictions of supposable future events, having in mind preset scenarios and can be transparent and readable for some algorithms or opaque in others, such as neural networks (Caron, 2004).

Each phenomenon must be modeled with specific or combined methods in order to assure more accurate result of prediction, methods tested in time, based on history records. The system infrastructure is presented in figure 2, where are underlined the layers mentioned above together with its components (e.g. Predication, Notification, OLAP etc.).

4. CONCLUSION

In order to sustain the SME in early development and other highly risk activities, which include new technologies involvement more concentrated must be made. Large ICT support offer boundless opportunities for manufacturing and business. New technologies are highly costing for SME or independent workers.

So, an Application Service Provider structure (ASP), which offer access for many type of users is needed. The main advantages of IT outsourcing is a low TCO, highly quality of services available all the time, having technical support from ASP (Carutasu, 2007).

Combined project and efforts, such as Business Incubator and KMS for tele-working offer a cheap access to sophisticated information system other services, that otherwise could reach easily an over million EU budget (such as ERP, CRM or Business Intelligence solutions).

The main idea claimed in this paper is the outsourcing process applied to ICT, management and training activities, for SMEs and teleworking. The authors participate to above mentioned projects, as project leader or member of research team, into design and implementation process, final results being expected to end of 2008.

5. REFERENCES

Botezatu, C.P., Botezatu, C. & Caruta[degrees]u G. (2006). The development and the implementation of the integrated management system, Annals of DAAAM for 2006 & Proceedings of the 17th International DAAAM Symposium, pp. 053-054, 2006, ISSN 1726-9679, ISBN 3-901509-57-7

Botezatu, C.P., Botezatu, C. & Carutasu G. (2007) Designing KMS information system, SIMVAPS preliminary research report, phase 2/2007

Carutasu G. (2007), Business software applications, Ed. Universitara, ISBN 978-973-749-136-7, Bucharest

Caron, E. & Daniels, H. (2004) Diagnosis in the OLAP Context. ERIM Report Series Reference No. ERS-2004-063-LIS

Goldman, E. (2005) Data Mining and Attention Consumption, Privacy and technologies of identity: a cross-disciplinary conversation, Springer