ENTERPRISE INFORMATION SYSTEMS INTEGRATION
Proposal of an Approach based on User Profile and Needs Analysis
Boulesnane Sabrina and Bouzidi Laïd
SICOMOR- IAE, University Jean Moulin- Lyon 3, 6, cours Albert Thomas 69008, Lyon, France
Keywords: Information and Communication Technologies ICT, Information System IS, user profile, users’ information
needs, three-dimensional approach.
Abstract: The advent of Web technologies has influenced the development and the use of Information System (IS) in
organization. On the social level, the new technologies massive integration affects the actor’s linguistic
practices. One of the challenges which should be surmounted by organizations is the formulation of
information needs. We propose in this paper a mediation approach allowing various users to create a
favourable context to an "exact" expression and interpretation of their information needs. This approach
represents a competitive resource to these organizations, situated in an uncertain and changing business
world.
1 INTRODUCTION: RESEARCH
CONTEXT
The integration and the use of ICT and IS are key
elements and necessary for Small or Medium
Enterprises (SME) development (Reix, 2004).
The “modern” management is characterized by
the optimal exploitation of enterprise information
resources. What guaranteed to these organizations
not only the acquisition and the conservation of its
economic competitiveness but especially assures its
survival and development (Laudon & Laudon 2006).
In this intensive innovation context, Consulting
Companies assists them to integrate and develop
ICT and information systems strategy. SME are
confronted in this context to problems of users’
information needs interpretation.
1.1 Problem Description
ICT field is very complex, dynamic and in perpetual
evolution and information used in order to identify
needs are more and more difficult to be determined.
Furthermore, users profiles implicated in the process
are heterogeneous and different. This situation
makes the needs interpretation by Consulting
Companies difficult to be clarified and analyzed.
1.2 Hypothesis
Our main hypothesis is to consider that the problem
of informational needs’ formulation and
interpretation is due to: the human actor’s variation
and the profile’s heterogeneity; the diversity of their
socioprofessional environment; the complexity of
technological context. In order to study this problem
and to clarify our hypothesis, we propose a new
conceptual approach which gives us the global basis
to our analysis. We finish by a presentation of a
system assisting consulting actors in their costumer
needs’ interpretation.
2 CONCEPTUAL
METHODOLOGY
This analyze must be focused on a theoretical
approach allowing us to understand and have a
global overview of SME’s technological
environment and essentially on their needs’
formulation and interpretation. Our research is based
on a methodology, called “three-dimensional
approach”, used for designing and auditing IS. This
methodology is centred on human factors’ analysis
(Bouzidi, 2001). Developed in the research
framework of SICOMOR team (Système
d’Information COmmunicants Management et
310
Sabrina B. and Laïd B. (2007).
ENTERPRISE INFORMATION SYSTEMS INTEGRATION - Proposal of an Approach based on User Profile and Needs Analysis.
In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - HCI, pages 310-313
DOI: 10.5220/0002386703100313
Copyright
c
 SciTePress

ORganisation), this approach is used to determine
and to specify: the ICT role within an activity
(activity dimension); the human factors’ place
(human dimension); the new technologies’
integration (technological dimension).
After this general presentation of the conceptual
approach, we propose to give more details about the
different levels of analysis.
2.1 Activity Dimension: The Impact of
Professional Environment
Activity dimension analyzes the various and the
main functions of the activity studies. It identifies
the information flow exchanging between actors and
gives a general overview of the costumer needs
interpretation’ problems. Because SME integrating
ICT and IS comes from different domains (industry,
tourism, transport…), the activity dimension
analyzes the characteristics of the various
environments: costumers enterprise and Consulting
Companies. The activity dimension gives special
attention to three major levels.
The First level concerns the relation between
organisational characteristics of companies and the
information needs’ formulation. This “organizational
level” describes the global environment of
companies. We focused here on the socioeconomical
environment and essentially on the place giving to
the client’s information needs.
Secondly, a “functional level” identifies the
various functions assured in a Consulting
Companies’ context. The most important functions
in our study are: information needs’ formulation and
interpretation, recommendation and implementation
of the solutions. We attach a particular importance to
the place of actors needs’ satisfaction.
Finally, a “temporal level” describes the role of
management information needs and knowledge
capitalization in this context. In effect, the rapid
evolution of ICT and IS fields requires that
companies capitalize knowledge to guarantee a
customer’s satisfaction.
Activity dimension assemble the organizational
information needs. The different information will be
then consolidated by the human dimension and be
exploited optimally by the technological dimension.
2.2 Human Dimension: Identification
of User’s Profile
The research paradigms’ evolution in Information
Science allows more and more the implication of
real user’s information needs and its social
environment. The “user-centred approach” situates
the users of IS in the center of the studies
(Chaudiron & Ihajadene, 2002).
The three-dimensional approach is based on
user-centred paradigm. In effect, understanding the
actor’s information behaviour is indispensable to
identify their profiles. The human dimension gives
necessary information to analyze the characteristics
of actors who intervene in the activity both at:
- The IS conception level (consultant actors),
- The IS exploitation level (customer actors).
On the one hand, this comprehension starts with
the individual characteristics’ identification which
we called “endogenous parameters". The most
important parameters giving us human information
behaviour’s comprehension are: the training profile,
the professional profile (competence and
performance). On the other hand, considering actors
just in an individual perspective is insufficient if we
want to have a global vision of their information
behaviour. It seems necessary to describe very
precisely the characteristics of their social
environment: it’s what we qualify as "exogenous
parameters" (Boulesnane & Bouzidi, 2006 a).
The endogenous and exogenous parameters
allow us to define the human actor’s characteristics
but also to understand the origin of the formulation
and the interpretation needs’ problems.
In a pragmatic study, realised between 2003 &
2005 in a context of Consulting Companies, we
identify a set of endogenous parameters such as: the
training profile, the "speciality" and the domains of
expertness, the technological knowledge. Organized
around contextual and social criteria, the exogenous
parameters can be resumed by: the function and the
roles assumed in the organization, the costumer
company’s qualification in terms of ICT and IS and
the socioeconomical environment.
The list we identify is not detailed and
exhaustive; the quality of every parameter depends
largely on the actors certainly but also on the nature
of the real company needs in terms of ICT
integration and IS conception (Boulesnane &
Bouzidi 2006 b).
The human dimension can allow consultant
actors to identify the customer’s profiles and to
anticipate their information behaviour and needs
formulation.
2.3 Technological Dimension
The role of technological dimension is to analyze the
human actor’s problems in a Consulting and Advice
context. The objective is to give to their necessary
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Analysis
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information to optimize their activity. This
dimension defines the fundamental technological
elements and the basis of an approach helping them
in terms of needs’ formulation and interpretations.
This dimension is based on various levels:
- A functional level identifying the main functions
realized by this technological helping approach
and describing also performances and limits of
its adaptability and use.
- An organizational level describing the necessary
material and human resources to adapt and
facilitate ICT and IS integration.
- An operational level determines the pertinence of
a human actor’s assistance in their activity. As
well as it’s accentuate the importance of an
accompanying phase changes during the
integration of new technologies.
2.4 The Interaction between
Dimensions
The three-dimensional approach represents
simultaneously a theoretical and pragmatic frame.
We can determine the various angles of view to
understand the needs’ formulation and interpretation
problems. Every dimension gives us necessary
information and knowledge in use to clarify the
principal axis of our study. The complementarily
and the interaction between these elements (activity,
human and technological dimensions) clarify the
fundamental basis of our analysis and the solution’s
proposal.
The three-dimensional approach helps us
certainly to understand our problem. It offers a
global framework and allows us to represent and to
formulate our research study. However, we think
that it’s necessary to specify here that our case study
has a linguistic origin. In effect, the needs’
formulation and interpretation are largely based on
linguistic expressions. An important part of our
approach will be focused on the identification of
user’s profile and their information referential.
The approach we propose in the following
section is the result of a practical study realised
between 2003 & 2005 in a context of ICT and IS
integration. The mediation approach is based on
linguistic and technological information and
essentially on actors referential’s convergence. We
present here the main conclusion which allows us to
elaborate this information mediation’s approach.
3 THE APPROACH OF
INFORMATION MEDIATION
We observe in this practical study some situations
where a “not specialist” customer uses a “multiple
expression” to identify their information needs. This
category of actors, who are not specialized in new
technologies and IS fields, tends to use some terms
in a non appropriated context. This situation creates
difficulties in terms of needs’ identification and
interpretation.
3.1 The Data Collection Method
The first analysis phase consisted to constitute a list
of terms used by the “not specialist” customers. This
list is established by the analyze of documents
giving by Consulting Companies. These documents
resume customer needs’ formulation. The lists of
vocabulary contain around fifty concepts and
expressions, we cite: Database, Database
Management Systems, Data mining, Data Werhouse,
Expert System, ICT, Information System, Knowledge
Base, Decision Support System, Informatics System.
In the second phase, a linguistic analysis
identifies some semantic relationships which we
consider as "contextual relations". Even if the
approach is based on language analysis, we were
interested more by the pragmatic level. In effect, we
observed that human actors make confusion between
concepts: they tend to associate some terms with a
second interpretation level which we call
“contextual synonymy”.
This analysis allows us to become conscious that
the users substitute the terms according to:
technological context (technological dimension),
their profile in terms of expertness in New
Technologies and IS field (Human dimension), their
company category (Activity dimension).
The corpus treatment allows us to collect groups
of terms characterized by identical semantic
relations. In order to organize and to structure these
concepts and the relations between them, we use the
graph theory. Our objective is to have a synthetic
view about the different terms and the contextual
relations related them. We give in the following
figure an extract of the graph and the conceptual
relations.
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Figure 1: Concepts & contextual relations.
The concepts representation in this way allows
Consulting Companies to investigate the various
confusion case created by their costumers.
3.2 Global Strategies: Progression in
the Analysis
The various confusion cases are constituted by a set
of "term candidates” which determine what we call
an “interval of confusion”. This interval represents
the subgraph constituted by the various concepts
commuting with the confusion term. If the terms are
in a direct commutation with this last one, the
interval is qualified as “immediate interval”. On the
contrary, if the subgraph is composed by terms in an
indirect commutation: the interval is “indirect”.
The immediate interval exploitation allows
starting the information research and the information
needs’ analysis. This first level contains the terms
candidates immediately in commutation with the
confusion term. The transition to the indirect interval
is possible only if users wants to refine their research
and needs analysis.
Furthermore, the approach assisting consulting
actors in their activity depends certainly on tools of
information representation and exploitation, but the
human expert represents the ultimate decision-maker
who oriented the information use. In effect, the
approach is based on heuristics method. The
fundamental objective of this method is not to
guarantee the most efficacious way but to assist the
user by the proposition of potential ways which he
can follow to resolve his problem. These ways are
constituted by the various intervals (immediate and
indirect). The user dispose of several ways and he
can progressively contract these ways to refine the
costumer’s information needs.
The approach of information mediation offers to
the user, according to the customer profile, terms
and concepts which concerns the confusion cases.
The development of this interface gives to the user
rapid and pertinent answers.
4 CONCLUSIONS
The main research goal of the reflection presented in
this paper is to analyze the users’ information needs
in a Consulting Companies. This activity is
composed by different populations which are
characterized by a variety of their information
referential. The relevance and quality of the
approach we propose in this context depends not
only on indexing tools and information acquisitions
but also on the user, on its profile and on its
information seeking methods.
At present, we envisage to refine our system by:
- An improvement of user’s classification
(endogenous and exogenous parameters),
- A corpus analysis’ extension,
- A technological prototype which valid our
hypothesis based essentially on the actor
referential convergence.
This knowledge capitalization tool assists
Consulting Companies in the analysis of users’
information needs.
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Network
ERP
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B
ase
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Data Werhouse
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