Business

Résumé

Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or buying and selling products (such as goods and services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for profit." Having a business name does not separate the business entity from the owner, which means that the owner of the business is responsible and liable for debts incurred by the business. If the business acquires debts, the creditors can go after the owner's personal possessions. The taxation system for businesses is different from that of the corporates. A business structure does not allow for corporate tax rates. The proprietor is personally taxed on all income from the business. The term is also often used colloquially (but not by lawyers or public officials) to refer to a company, such as a corporation or cooperative. Corporations, in contrast with sole proprietors and partnerships, are a separate legal entity and provide limited liability for their owners/members, as well as being sub

Source officielle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business

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[Context] IT modelers create models to communicate their conceptualization of an organization and to facilitate the collaboration between business and IT people. The story they convey in their models is how the corporate IT systems fulfill the business peopleâs needs. The business people who must validate these models often have no IT background. Therefore, IT modelers need to create models that non-IT individuals understand. [Motivation and Problem] We explore the understanding of models created with IT notations by non-IT individuals. We enable IT modelers to create models such that non-IT readers can understand. We also enable IT notation designers to design notations that help modelers to create models that non-IT readers can understand. [Idea and Results] We perform an explorative qualitative case-study for two modeling notations, SEAM and i*, by using two cases: car-maintenance service and meeting scheduler, in order to investigate how readers interpret models. Readers evaluate our models and identify the elements that are difficult to comprehend. We create improved models by making these elements easier to comprehend, so that readers understand the modelerâs story. We reduce the misalignment between the modelerâs story and the readersâ perceptions of this story. We improve models without changing the identity of the underlying notation. [Contributions] Our contributions address modelers and designers of IT notations. For IT modelers, such as IT architects, service designers, and consultants, using IT notations (e.g., UML, BPMN, ArchiMate), this research provides the means necessary to create models so that readers, unfamiliar with the notation, understand. We recommend to modelers to model: (i) the relation with reality, by focusing on the readersâ conceptualizations, (ii) the rationale, by using the questions, options, criteria and their assessment, and (iii) the story, by using story-phases: context, conflict, climax and closure. In addition, we provide them with a modeling process for creating models. For designers of IT notations, this research provides the means necessary to design notations. We recommend to designers to design: (i) the relation with reality, by identifying implicit elements in the modeling notation by evaluating readersâ understanding of what elements represent, (ii) the rationale, by using visual cues to guide readersâ understanding of the problem, and (iii) the story, by creating models in which different stories are told to elicit readersâ understanding of what happens in the model. In addition, we provide them with a design process for designing notations.

EPFL2016

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The Borel Family From Neuchâtel to San Francisco : From shoemaker to banker Did you know that the Cable Car was owned by Swiss citizens? BACKTRACKING : PRIVATE FINANCING OF PUBLIC METROPOLITAN INFRASTRUCTURES Executive Summary: Did you know that one of San Francisco most famous fixtures, the Cable car, was owned by Swiss citizens? Through this detailed study of the Borel family, and its business and investment plans we will observe an example of private financing of public metropolitan infrastructures in the 19th Century and see if it can teach us lessons for tomorrow’s needs? TOPICS Looking at today’s infrastructures, one does not always remember how much work contracting firms had to accomplish in order to produce our contemporary standard of urban comfort . What is to be said of yesterday’s planners or engineers and the credit they deserve? We often hear stories of local events brought to epic proportions, but who are the responsible players who really proved the feasibility of regional infrastructures? Who actually did support, sponsor or finance such achievements? The present study is a trial to propose a new view over such apparently hidden business phenomenons. This research shows us an inspiring case-study of local entrepreneurs who gather key success-factors. The author concentrates on the economic aspect of infrastructure financing to which modern metropolitan society owes its specific urban growth. Contemporary challenges such as job creation, globalisation, technology transfer and local economic development are all interconnected to metropolitan development. XIXTH CENTURY METROPOLITAN INFRASTRUCTURES FINANCING Le Temps, 30th July 1998, D. Masmejan : «Alfred Borel, Auguste’s elder son, enters the finance world. He meets an extraordinary businessman fate. His understanding of the economic impact of the Californian Gold Rush allows him to seize the opportunity of the westward American expansionism. He sails to San Francisco in 1855 where he is the founder of the «Alfred Borel & Company», followed in 1856 by a Mortgage fund (the “Caisse Hypothécaire” bank). The same year sees the foundation of Credit Suisse in Zurich. Alfred Borel investment bank participates in very important infrastructure projects in California and elsewhere in the second half of the XIXth century. At first, its investment into the worldwide famous San Francisco Cable Car is marginal and then becomes overwhelming. Other investments include the “Los Angeles Railway Company” or the “United Railroad Company”, the San Francisco Waterworks, other banks and real estate.» DETAILED RESEARCH ALLOWING TO UNDERSTAND FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING The author reviews financial decision-making through personal correspondence and private accounting in some of those completely documented yearly archives. The «sixth Switzerland» well-connected to the Presbyterian «Huguenot International» cosmopolitan network leads us to detailed research and discoveries. The accounting of 1866 to 1884 goes through the 3rd and 4th San Francisco City real estate crises that the mortgage bankers Borel brothers had to endure. Alfred Borel faced the 2nd Californian real estate crisis (which resulted from the first loss of public interest in gold mines in the years 1854-1858). Then he went back to Switzerland after the death of his father and uncles in order to reconstitute the Swiss end of the pipe connecting his bank’s investors to the Borel family network. He left duty of the day-to-day San Francisco business to his younger brother Antoine after having set up asset management rules. Together both brothers explored new ways of diversifying the investment of the funds they are managing and place them into infrastructures networks. Taking shares «upstream» into equipment industries (for instance the wire works delivering the precise traction rope of cable cars) or other real estate assets, allowed them to guarantee superior interests payments to European investors or creditors in comparison with other financial markets. This anticyclical economic strategy set up their financial success that occurred during the 5th local economic recession, which coincides with the beginning of the big worldwide Victorian economic crisis (1880-1895). UNIQUE SPECIFICITY OF THIS RESEARCH This research process is rarely accomplished in engineering and architecture schools, construction and infrastructures institutes or research centers. The integrity of construction professionals precludes their questioning « where does the whole process originate from?». Builders ultimately considered themselves as «honest craftsmen» that have to dedicate their energy and resources to the proper technical execution of the clients wishes and orders. Customers duty is then to write the project’s specifications and thus to initiate its process. The author of this case-study demonstrates the feasibility of comparisons between similar structural change periods in the XIXth century and the years 1990-2000. Hence, a new theme of interdisciplinary studies for engineers could be implemented by promoting this systemic approach between urban infrastructure financiers, suppliers and users. Last but not least, the insider observations and outsider revelations which are featured in this work are seldom considered in an engineering historical approach. It is not often that an author with a contemporary outsider vision has access to family archives that entirely document bicentennial confidential banker correspondence.

EPFL1999

Chargement

Understanding stakeholders’ needs is necessary to design requirements for organizations and IT systems. We present a systemic modeling method to identify and categorize stakeholders within value networks, to analyze the relationships between these value networks and to infer IT requirements from this analysis. We illustrate the approach with an association who needs a web site. Thanks to this method, requirements that closely support the business strategy can be identified.

2006

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EPFL1999

EPFL2016