Improving ERP Usability Through User-System Collaboration

IMPROVING ERP USABILITY THROUGH USER-SYSTEM COLLABORATION Extended Abstract Wendy Lucas, Tamara Babaian, and Heikki Topi CIS Department Bentley College, Waltham MA, 02452 INTRODUCTION Recent studies strongly suggest that enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems have unintuitive user interfaces that hinder usability, frustrate users, and ultimately interfere with their successful adoption and utilization in organizations. We contend that applying the principles of collaboration (Bratman, 1992) to systems development provides a means for addressing the gap between the capabilities of the ERP system and harnessing those capabilities to meet each user’s individual objectives. By “collaboration,” we refer to the collaboration between the user and the system, as opposed to using computing technology to support collaboration between users, which is commonly referred to as computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW). We believe that the more aligned the technology is with the user’s goals, the better it will be able to respond in a collaborative manner to the user’s needs, enhancing both task performance and satisfaction with the process. COLLABORATION THEORY FOR INTERFACE DESIGN AND EVALUATION Grosz (1996) and Shieber (1996) suggest that human-computer interaction should move from a master-slave model, in which the human user issues commands to the system, to a model based on collaboration between the system and the user in order to provide an adequate level of