Taking advantage of the opportunities that semantic technologies generate for improved
information technology systems presents a number of challenges to management
of the Australian timber and wood products industry. One of these challenges
is the need to form strategic alliances with trading partners who accept the need to
commit to an external ontology, thereby giving up some autonomy (Colomb, 2005).
Semantic technologies make strategic alliances more achievable due to the improved
cross organisational information flows allowing the exchange of real-time business
data. The increased proficiency in handling information flows has been shown to
bring competitive advantage to an organisation (Levy, Loebbecke, & Powell, 2001).
Business processes may need to be changed and translation software employed to
meet the ontology requirements, but alliance partners internal processes are then no
barrier to interoperability. Freedom from the need to have tightly coupled information
systems with multiple trading partners offers the potential to reduce maintenance
costs, McComb (2005, p.
Pages:
736
737
738
739
740
741
742
743
744
745
746
747
748
749
750
751
752
753
754
755
756
757
758
759
760