Kerstin V. Siakas

International Hellenic University · Information and Electronic Engineering

In the ever-increasing competitive and customercentered global market, the role of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is essential to the performance, longevity, competitiveness and profitability of enterprises. The study aims to provide an overview of the impact of emerging technologies on traditional CRM and Social CRM. Therefore, through a c...

The use of computers has become ubiquitous and spread out to every part of our personal lives and businesses. Computer Ethics focuses on the questions of right and wrong that arise from the development and deployment of computers. Thus, it urges that the social impact of computers must be analysed. In software engineering, the Software Process Impr...

Requirements’ volatility refers to additions, deletions, and modifications of requirements during the system development life cycle. Different approaches in software development, including Agile and DevOps, have addressed requirements volatility by increased user participation throughout the whole development process.In this paper we analyse requir...

Due to the fierce competitive global market, enterprises need to face and overcome new challenges and requirements to stay ahead of competition. Cyber‐physical systems, Internet of things, and digital twins are some of the contemporary technologies that are used in the context of Industry 4.0 in order to instill intelligence into the industrial sec...

The COVID 19 pandemic brought to light pre-existing social inequalities across the world and within countries. The disadvantaged groups of people suffered the most in terms of loss of life and loss of livelihood. The economic impact across the world has challenged even the most advanced economies. The negative impact on the economy as well as the q...

The digital prevalence on everyday life caused by the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has drastically impacted the whole world. The educational domain was no exception and has been affected by this rapid shift to online and virtual learning environments. Social media are widely used as a means to share ideas and opinions, acquire knowledge, get inf...

This paper provides the preliminary analysis based on the survey which we conducted on Strategic Orientation (SO) and Customer eXperience (CX) issues. The results indicated that both understanding, and business perspectives are important. The findings also show that especially in designing human-based services, the view based CX should be emphasize...

The Software Process Improvement methodology plans and implements improvement activities to achieve specific goals, for example, increase development speed, achieve higher product quality, and reduce costs. The approach paves way for the implementation of SPI innovations in software organisations. Innovation is the successful implementation of nove...

The abrupt outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic throughout the world in March 2020 resulted in the sudden closure of all schools, colleges and universities, institutions, and an unprecedented pivot to remote learning. Students and teachers were confronted with the the overwhelming challenge of migrating from the traditional face-to-face or hybrid m...

The SPI Manifesto provides a framework for guiding software development organisations in their improvement efforts. Based on the Values of People, Business and Change, which are supported and informed by one or more of the ten principles, the designer and developer can avoid pitfalls, minimise risks and make their business successful. It has been e...

Over a decade has passed since the inception of the SPI Manifesto. The fact that the signatories of the manifesto emanate from both the academic and the industrial communities enables a robust exchange of ideas and experiences. Continuous enrichment and refinement have been evidenced in publications, industrial projects, and consultancy across both...

This paper focuses on the collaborative aspects of requirements elicitation, in the context of software, systems and service development. The aim is to identify and understand challenges of requirements elicitation in general and in distributed environments. We focus on human, social, and cultural factors that have an impact on communication in the...

Industry 4.0 is universally referred to as the fourth industrial revolution. It is a current trend of automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies. The computerisation of manufacturing includes, amongst other, cyber-physical systems, the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing and cognitive computing. There are many challenges in th...

The digitalisation of everyday life has influenced the way 21st century students access information and acquire knowledge. Consequently, students’ educational requirements have drastically been modified. Augmented reality can be used as a means to satisfy these unprecedented needs. Moreover, the gamification approach when used in conjunction with a...

Over the last year, the whole globe has been significantly affected due to the rapid and worldwide spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically influenced various sections of everyday life. Drastic changes have been brought about in the educational sector with the need to rapidly switch from traditional face-...

Students, as digital natives, are fascinated by social media as they use it in their everyday lives. However, not only opportunities but also challenges for education have arisen with the new bottom-up approach of using social media for educational purposes. In order to investigate different aspects of social media adoption and use in higher educat...

The social disruption caused by the sudden eruption of the Corona Virus pandemic has shaken the whole world, influencing all levels of education immensely. Notwithstanding there was a lack of preparedness for this global public health emergency which continues to affect all aspects of work and life. The problem is, naturally, multifaceted, fast evo...

Power point presentation at the INSPIRE Conference in London in 2020 named Challenges of Rapid Migration to Fully Virtual Education in the age of the Coronavirus pandemic� Experiences from across the world�by 34 co-authors from 14 countries A great experience from 14 countries from all over the world.

The Software Process Improvement (SPI) Manifesto is based on three basic values: people, business focus and organisational change underpinning the philosophy of SPI. In turn, these values bring up to date certain SPI principles serving as a foundation for action in software development. The authors of this paper carried out a pilot expert validatio...

Advances in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and the digitalisation of everyday life have drastically influenced the way 21st century students access information and knowledge. As students are significantly affected by the digital era, they are constantly handling digital information, they seek to be directly connected, they require p...

Social media plays a vital role in providing us with information about different aspects of our daily lives and it has evolved in an integral part of modern society. Moreover, social media has increasingly gained credibility in recent years as a bottom-up platform where people can communicate, collaborate, create and share content and interact. Hen...

In today's competitive business environment increasingly large numbers of organisations use distributed teams in their international operations. This paper provides a basis for discussion and analysis of knowledge sharing between distributed team members working in a global context in different organisational and national cultures. Examining the di...

A value proposition is important to businesses and their success, because it analyses the needs of customers or users and what they are willing to pay for. This study aims to make explicit the process of integrating/involving the customer/user in the innovation process and of conceptualizing customer value creation, by identifying different perspec...

Software Process Improvement (SPI) has been founded on the belief that a well-defined and executed process is likely to produce a high-quality pro-duct. Improving a product might provide insights for future improvement efforts. However, this bottom-up approach does not necessarily lead to improvement, considering in particular that software product...

Literature on systems development has been progressively identifying the importance of social aspects in systems development. However, there is often a failure of participants in the recognition, and fulfilment, of ethical duties concerning the concepts of health, safety, and well‐being. A rational appeal can be made to normative defensible ethical...

Due to successive technological advancements, developments and innovations, the global industrial landscape has drastically transformed over the last years. The fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) aims at transforming traditional industries into intelligent ones by incorporating innovative technologies. Industry 4.0 enables physical assets...

Due to successive technological advancements, developments and innovations, the global industrial landscape has drastically transformed over the last years. The fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) aims at transforming traditional industries into intelligent ones by incorporating innovative technologies. Industry 4.0 enables physical assets...

It is beyond doubt that the digital era has drastically influenced the everyday life and pursuits of modern students. Due to the technological advances and digitalisation of life, students’ needs and requirements regarding education have changed. Hence, they are seeking for more fun, interesting, motivating, engaging and interactive learning enviro...

Due to rapid technological advances, information and software systems play a vital role in today’s society. Demands for high quality products and services that meet the ever-changing users’/customers’ needs and requirements are continuously increasing while simultaneously bringing about fierce global market competition. DevOps is the new software d...

Nowadays, social media and social networks are increasingly used in business as they have drastically changed the way the community works, communicates, collaborates, socialises, creates content and shares knowledge and ideas. However, in particular, IT professionals and practitioners need to be aware of online security and privacy issues and the p...

Nowadays, students are significantly influenced by the digital era and are constantly handling digital information. As a result, they form their personalities in the light of flexible communities, pursue to be directly connected, require prompt responses and social interaction and prefer learning based on experiences. Undoubtedly, modern students a...

Internet of Things (IoT) is a rapidly growing innovative technology with various applications, functions and services in everyday life and in a wide range of markets and industries. It can be defined as a global dynamic information network that involves interconnected devices and objects and aims at the mutual interconnection and interaction among...

Problem-Based Learning (PBL) is a non-traditional teaching and learning method of education which is particularly suitable for engineering students as preparation for their future professions. Instead of following a curriculum with lectures and classes, students are presented with a problem and collaborate in small groups with an instructor that ac...

Family businesses are known for making sound contribution to the next generation but also to the economy. Greece has a number of competitive family businesses that belong to small and medium enterprises (SMEs). A challenge they face is how well they can adapt to marketing communication channels, especially digital, as means to increase market share...

In the post-truth era we are constantly bombarded with "news" which is fabricated, distorted, and massaged information, published with the intention to deceive and mislead others. Such "news" has come to be known as "fake news". The influence of fake news can have profound socio-political and cultural effects when translated into action. The abilit...

Embarking on any programme of study in any format requires motivation and sustained dedication. Distance Education (DE) enables students who may be restricted from attending face-to-face classes by their professional and personal conditions including distance from the place of study, work, family, or health. DE is pursued at the student’s own time,...

Recent trends in the world economy, including globalization and advances in ICTs and social media, have enabled networking as a business model. As a result, distributed teams have emerged. This chapter provides a basis for discussion and analysis of knowledge sharing between distributed team members working in a global context in different organiza...

Simulation of systems as a research method by experimenting with a computer model of real objects, phenomena and processes is designed to gain new knowledge about them. Visual interactive simulation models can also be used in learning to gain new knowledge for the learner. If these educational computer models are implemented on the basis of exact m...

It is widely recognised that technology offers a chance to redefine, or at least change, learning and education for the better. A virtual learning environment (VLE) is a Web-based platform for the digital aspects of courses of study. They are typically deployed within educational institutions, especially in Higher Education (HE). The development an...

Agile methodologies have been widely used in software development for more than a decade now. They have shown promising results to the persisting software crisis, defined as the inability to develop software on time, on budget, and within requirements. Many companies have adapted, tailored and customised the agile processes to fit their own organis...

Literature on systems development has been progressively identifying the importance of social aspects in systems development, to the extent that this process has been considered a socio-technical system. More often than not there is a failure of participants in the recognition, and fulfilment, of ethical duties concerning the concepts of health and...

In today’s competitive business environment most activities in global relationships (subsidiaries, outsourcing, joint ventures) are carried out by multi-cultural and multidisciplinary teams which may be collocated or distributed. The members of these teams comprise a variety of experts of diverse cultural, organizational, and professional backgroun...

Aligning Software Process Improvement with the business and strategic goals of an enterprise is a core factor for process improvement. Achieving success in Software Process Improvement (SPI) has shown to be a problematic challenge for countless organisations. SPI, as a discipline, can be described as a set of use cases, each use case describing the...

Social Customer Relationships Management (CRM) is a current business trend providing new channels of two-way communication with customers through social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter etc. Social CRM enables companies to interact in an easy and contemporary way directly with customers as well as to track customer interactions and their soci...

This paper discusses the adoption and use of social media in Higher Education (HE) as a contemporary approach to actively involve students in their learning process. The Unified Technology Adoption approach was identified as a suitable underlying theory for our study, which comprised a survey involving two HE institutions in both Greece and Finland...

It is widely recognised that innovation is required for economic growth on a number of levels, such as in Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs), large organisations, regions and nations. Innovation is an important driver for organisational survival, sustainability, improvement, long-term productivity and economic growth. However, innovation in...

Social Customer Relationships Management (Social CRM) is a contemporary business trend applying reciprocal communication with customers through social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter etc. The social CRM landscape is attracting significant attention from customers and enterprises alike as a sustainable channel for managing, tracking, and impr...

Social Customer Relationships Management (CRM) is a current business trend providing new channels of two-way communication with customers through social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter etc. Social CRM enables companies to interact in an easy and contemporary way directly with customers as well as to track customer interactions and their soci...

Successful transfer and sharing of knowledge rely mainly on social attitudes, behaviours and networks, rather than ICT-based networks. The availability of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) facilitates the management of projects in general. ICTs are central to both managing Information Literacy projects and providing access to learni...

Facebook is a very popular social media platform used by a significant number worldwide. There is strong evidence that Facebook may also facilitate learning activities, however there is not much research about the implementation of Facebook as a learning tool in higher education. In this study the authors investigate the use of a Facebook group amo...

Traditional challenges in the relationships between IT departments and business units are no longer accepted by users. IT departments need to actively adopt entrepreneurial mindsets to meet the new market requirements. Some researchers argue that the responsibility for application software is shifting from IT professionals to the users of the softw...

The concepts of market orientation in innovation practices and its interrelationship with business success has been explored from a number of perspectives for establishing deeper understanding of the role of the customer/user in the innovation process. User oriented design offers a significant role in the success of innovation of products and servi...

Traditional challenges in the relationships between IT departments and business units, such as a low governance and service transparency, commercial challenges including low response time and limited re-use, lack of customer orientation, and poor quality of IT support are no longer accepted by users. IT departments need to actively adopt entreprene...

The persistent software crisis has led to many different approaches for developing software projects on time, within budget and according to customer requirements. The objective of risk management is to identify potential problems before they occur and to plan and carry out risk-handling activities in order to mitigate potential risks. Risk managem...

The purpose of this paper is twofold. On the one hand, the paper draws a comparison between the national entrepreneurial potential and characteristics in Romania and Greece, using the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) statistics. On the other hand, the paper aims to investigate the students' entrepreneurial potential and the role of education,...

The process of transforming creative ideas into commercially viable businesses are recognized as the core idea of entrepreneurship. Successful entrepreneurship are based not only on luck and money, but on excellent skills on: creativity, risk taking, marketing, management, leadership, forecasting and planning, communication and others. These can be...

In today's competitive business environment increasingly large numbers of organisations use distributed teams in their international operations. This paper provides a basis for discussion and analysis of knowledge sharing between distributed team members working in a global context in different organisational and national cultures. Examining the di...

Family firms are important, not only because they make an essential contribution to the economy, but also because of the long-term stability they bring, the responsibility they feel and the values they stand for.

Social media is changing the nature of marketing by utilizing the power of Word of Mouth through a bottom-up approach, user commitment and crowd-sourcing. The utilization of social media for reaching out to a specific target group involves the creation of a social media strategy and the exploitation of the suitable social media for gaining added va...

Our lives are swamped with information available through modern technologies. Living in what has come to be known as the Information Society is defined by increasingly higher information intensity governing our lives and our workplaces. The ability to rapidly generate, publish and transmit digital data irrespective of time and place is enabled by t...

In today’s highly competitive and rapidly changing environment, e-businesses constantly have to modify their business processes, i.e. the flow of documents and tasks in a business also known as workflow. More flexible Workflow Management Systems are required to support these constantly changing processes. In this research a platform independent arc...

Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs), including family businesses, recognise the link between successful businesses and the use of marketing tools. They understand that successful use of marketing tools needs to be at the heart of the business. Despite the powerful means of the World Wide Web (WWW) in international marketing, and its low cost...

Despite many advances in the field of Information Literacy since the 1990s, there remain enormous challenges in both the advanced and the developing countries. There is marked variation in the degree of adoption, implementation and degree of success of Information Literacy initiatives and programmes even across the European Union member states. For...

Purpose – This paper aims to present the Cultural and Organisational Diversity Evaluation (CODE) model and its subsequent electronic tool, aiming to assess the cultural fit of global partners. Design/methodology/approach – The study is a longitudinal study for gaining profound insights into cultural differences and for increasing understanding of...

Didactic, teacher-centred approaches and rote learning have long been discredited and gradually replaced by participative, interactive and creative learning sessions. Formal classroom sessions are being replaced or augmented by self-directed study increasingly in distance mode. The evolution and affordability of technologies enables massive partici...

In today’s highly competitive and rapidly changing environment, e-businesses constantly have to modify their business processes, i.e. the flow of documents and tasks in a business also known as workflow. More flexible Workflow Management Systems are required to support these constantly changing processes. In this research a platform independent arc...

Social Responsibility (SR) concerns the way in which organizations achieve their goals. This paper focuses on the overview of the SR as well as the endpoint of the continuous development of SR, the ISO 26000 standard and its core subjects. The aims are to give Information Technology (IT) professionals a better understanding of how to identify the c...

This paper aims to reveal experiences gained from multicultural and multidisciplinary virtual collaborative teamwork within projects sponsored by the EU. The members of the consortium, often unknown to each other, comprise a variety of experts of diverse cultural, organisational, and professional backgrounds. Within the project lifetime they are co...

The family businesses play an important role regarding the dynamism and strength of the European economy, long-term stability and sustainability. Many of the challenges facing family businesses also concern Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs), but due to the fact that family businesses involve three overlapping elements (the family, the busin...

Family businesses, irrespective of scale and field of operation, legal form, industrial activity, level of socio-political activity and market development, play a significant role in the strength and dynamism of the worldwide economy and its long-term stability. They have been a backbone of corporate life across nations forming a corner-stone of so...

Family businesses are complex systems which require good strategy, leadership, and committed personnel in order to thrive. Compared to other businesses family businesses are characterized by two dynamic and sometimes conflicting reference systems, the family (the emotional) and the company (the professional). Succession is mentioned in the literatu...

Business improvement is a hot topic in all business areas. In the last years, the unstoppable emergence of the use of social media by organizations and individuals alike has opened this tool for knowledge networking purposes. In this paper, the authors shed some light on how the traditional knowledge management approach has changed to a networked a...

Software development projects and projects in general fail regularly. These quality failures manifest themselves in late deliveries, over-budget, not satisfying the users’ requirements and more importantly in poor reliability. There are three main categories of quality attributes namely system qualities, such as availability, modifiability, perform...

Family businesses are complex systems which require good strategy, leadership, and committed personnel in order to thrive. Compared to other businesses family businesses are characterized by two dynamic and sometimes conflicting reference systems, the family (the emotional) and the company (the professional). Succession is mentioned in the literatu...

Project valorisation is paramount for gaining value in an increasingly competitive world. There is evidence that the majority of projects even when they are completed within budget and time fail to valorise (disseminate and exploit) their results so that they can deliver value to the organisation. Projects often have many stakeholders with d...

Maintaining standards continue to be a paramount focus for most institutions in higher education but in a competitive and continuously changing environment a strategy for continuous enhancement is of strategic importance. In this paper we studied and outlined the quality enhancement strategies of three universities n three different countries. Desp...