Nowadays, there is a belief that organizations should keep improving different aspects of theirenterprise to remain competitive in their business segment. For this purpose, it is required to understand the current state of the enterprise, analyze and evaluate it to be able to figure out suitable change measures. To perform such a process in a systematic and structured way, receiving support from powerful tools is inevitable. Enterprise Modeling is a field that can support improvement processes by developing models to show different aspects of an enterprise. An Enterprise Modeling Method is an important support for the Enterprise Modeling. A method is comprised of different conceptual parts: Perspective, Framework,Method Component (which itself contains Procedure, Notation and Concepts), and Cooperation Principles. In an ideal modeling process, both the process and the results are of high quality. One dimension of quality which is in focus in this thesis is efficiency. The issue of efficiency evaluation in Enterprise Modeling still seems to be a rather unexploited research area.

The thesis investigates three aspects of Enterprise Modeling Methods: what is the meaning of efficiency in this context, how can efficiency be evaluated and in what phases of a modeling process could efficiency be evaluated. The contribution of the thesis is an approach for evaluation of efficiency in Enterprise Modeling Methods based also on several case studies. The evaluation approach is constituted by efficiency criteria that should be met by (different parts of) a method. While a subset of these criteria always need to be fulfilled in a congruent way, fulfillment of the rest of the criteria depends on the application case. To help the user in initial evaluation of a method, a structure of driving questions is presented.

All organizations aim at making progress in their carrier. Therefore, they should have a clear image about the current (AS-IS) and the desired state (TO-BE); and based on that figure out the actions they should follow for moving from AS-IS to TO-BE state. Enterprise Modeling (EM) is a support for this purpose and requires applying the proper tool, i.e. an Enterprise Modeling Method (EMM). However, this application process requires to be efficient. This means the intended results (models) should be achieved, whilst the resources are used in a worthwhile way. This paper concentrates on how to conduct an efficient EMM application process. The foundational idea behind this research is that if behavior of an EMM (and its different parts) is foreseeable, the results will be closer to the stakeholders’ preferences and the resources will be used in a more worthwhile way.

Each organization should make progress to remain competent in its business. Enterprise Modeling (EM) helps in understanding the current and planning the future states, followed by proposing improvement actions in an enterprise. To receive support from EM, we should start a process of using an Enterprise Modeling Method (EMM), that likewise any other process needs using resources. As resources are expensive, we prefer not only gaining results, rather using resources reasonably, i.e. performing an efficient process that supports the process quality. To realize if we have an efficient EMM, we should evaluate its efficiency. In this paper we present a method for efficiency evaluation of EMMs for general case of application. This method contains efficiency criteria and questions for evaluating their fulfillment. Then it is applied to the Enterprise Knowledge Development for appraising the evaluation method. The paper ends with a number of conclusions about the evaluation method.

All organisations have to keep improving different aspects of their business in order to survive in their businessarea. This improvement can be done in different ways, including as business and IT alignment. There existdifferent ways of performing business and IT alignment, such as applying EMMs. Enterprise Modelling (EM)is an area that has been built up with the intention of improving business practice and management. AnEnterprise Modelling Method (EMM) is a systematic way of building models that are to be used for planningimprovements. For this purpose, it is needed to make an evaluation of methods capabilities in supportingbusiness and IT alignment. According to all above, the results of this paper include a list of EMMs that areapplicable in business and IT alignment.

In this era information is considered as an important factor on par with capital, human resources and material. The most important task for an information worker is finding the right information To support the business process and work task at hand. After a time when finding the needed information was a big challenge, we are now in a situation where the problem called “information overload” has arisen. This paper concerns the improvement of information flow within an organisation for a person having a certain role. The focus of the work is on finding the factors (Qualifiers) which affect the information needs of the user and the actions which should be carried out to fulfil them, as well as suitable IT tools. The actions are classified into two groups: Information System Classification and Organisational Measures. The qualifiers are found using interviews with experts from the information logistic field.

Enterprise Modeling (EM) is an area that has been built up with the intention of improving business practices and management. An Enterprise Modeling Method (EMM) helps in achieving these goals by developing models that show the current and future state of an enterprise. The improvement is contingent on what is needed to be improved from one side and what capabilities the candidate method has, from the other side. Therefore, it is vital to pick up and work with suitable methods. This paper presents the results that were obtained while conducting the initial steps of research, which aims at determining the ways of developing efficient enterprise models. At this work pace, the main interest is discovering what characteristics an EMM should have to be considered applicable in the analysis of an enterprise and its context. Collecting a relatively complete set of characteristics that an EMM should have will help in nding out the shortages and anomalies of the available EMMs; and this will result in developing solutions to these problems.