Project «PANDA»

PANDA is an FP6-IST project (IST-027169) which aims at developing a powerful framework of e-business services dedicated to serve and facilitate international e-collaborations and efficient operations of SMEs in the European ERP/CRM Industry. PANDA’s overall aim is to speed up the integration process of the European ERP/CRM industry by:

• Broadening the opportunities for international e-collaborations based on local actors and alliances;
  
• Addressing current inefficiencies in the European ERP/CRM value chain operations regarding process automation, time and cost efficiency, scheduling and availability of resources, rapid response to customer demands, quality of provided services, etc.

Benefits

PANDA project targets to bring substantial benefits to European ERP/ CRM industry and its end customers (enterprises of all business sectors). In particular, PANDA is expected to:

• Speed up the integration process of ERP/CRM industry by facilitating and supporting the expansion of national ERP/CRM actors (mainly SMEs) in other EU-28 markets;
  
• Automate procedures and increase the efficiency of the ERP/CRM value chain operations;
  
• Provide end customers of ERP/CRM systems with higher transpa¬rency on prices and services, additional options in ERP/CRM solutions and benefits arising from an increased competition in an integrated European ERP/CRM market;
• Support local SMEs particularly in the New Member States and Accession and Candidate Countries in expanding and developing their activities, by participating in flexible e-collaborations with other key local and international ERP/CRM actors.

Objectives

• Develop a partnership based e-business model as a Request-Based Virtual Organisation (RBVO) service;
• Develop an innovative framework of sector-specific Service Level Agreements (SLAs);
• Develop an integrated environment, prototype Web-platform, based on SOA, Web Services and Intelligent Agents;
• Perform 2 international case studies for prototype testing, validation and assessment;
  
• Prepare the ground for exploitation by the European ERP/CRM industry.

Innovation

PANDA innovates by further elaborating on the concept of Request-Based Virtual Organisations (RBVOs) supported by the use of a new generation of sector specific Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and enhanced by the usage of Intelligent Agents, to address current inefficiencies in the ERP/CRM value chain operations.
RBVOs are a special kind of highly dynamic Virtual Organizations, the members of which are able to negotiate and define business collabora­tions by taking into account both their qualitative and quantitative as­pects. In PANDA, an RBVO is formed when different ERP/CRM value chain actors (e.g. ERP Vendor, national representatives, dealers, con­sultants, etc.) have to collaborate to provide a solution to an end-cus­tomer. In other words, an RBVO in PANDA is a subset of an ERP/CRM value chain which undertakes to implement an international / interre­gional ERP/CRM project.
SLAs act as the regulating framework of e-collaborations among RBVO members (value chain actors) incorporating all the business, financial and legal aspects that are essential when considering the real environment in business. In PANDA, SLAs are also handled and utilized as instruments for the management of customers’ expectations rather than playing simply the role of a financial and technical contract.
The organisation and functioning of RBVOs’ activities, within the regulating framework of SLAs, will be automated and served by a Multi-Agent System (communities of Intelligent Agents) developed to orchestrate and automate procedures and operations on the basis of the business policies and actual performance of the participants.

Outcome

PANDA’s outcome will be an integrated prototype B2B web-platform dedicated to serve in a cost-efficient way international e-collaborations among actors (mainly SMEs) of the European ERP/CRM Industry.
PANDA platform will:

• Be adequately generic and able to serve (easily customised for) various types of ERP/CRM value chains of different characteristics regarding their organisational structure, procedures and roles;
• Automate the processes within ERP/CRM value chain operations such as: (i) RBVO identification, negotiation and agreement, (ii) RBVO monitoring and management during implementation and (iii) RBVO evaluation and assessment;
• Support the rapid on demand formation of dynamic multinational consortia of ERP/CRM value chain actors (RBVOs per market or per project);
• Facilitate the management of interregional / international networks of ERP/CRM value chain actors;
  
• Support the expansion / internationalisation of activities (particularly for ERP/CRM Vendors) in other European countries.

Project «PANDA» documents