Business Administration and Economics

Modelling plays a key role in the development and evolution of business information systems. Models represent the different perspectives of a system and enable goal-oriented communication between stakeholders. At the Department of Business Information Systems in Essen, innovative approaches to modelling are developed to meet the information demands of the various stakeholders and help master the increasing complexity of system development and evolution. Research activities similarly cover the use and evaluation of these new modelling approaches. These activities are performed within EU, DFG and BMBF-funded projects and for industrial partners. Some of the projects are domain-independent, while others are geared towards a specific application domain.
Domain-independent results were achieved in two areas: in Business Modelling (Professor Ulrich Frank), various specific modelling approaches (e. g. object models, architecture models) relating to software systems were integrated with modelling approaches relating to action systems (e. g. business models). Incorporating the aspect of security in modelling methods (Professor Stefan Eicker) is especially important for the development of modern information systems.
In the domain of e-learning, important contributions made to educational processes modelling (Professor Heimo Adelsberger) were incorporated in the related DIN standard PAS 1032.
The Net Economy domain (Professor Tobias Kollmann) works on business models for company startups in the classic web (shopping portals), Web 2.0 (social web, mobile communities), and the future Web 3.0 (requested shopping, customised shopping).
Mastering complexity in the development and evolution of modern and complex information systems is significantly enhanced by the use of such modelling.