Tailoring of ERP client user interfaces to increase process-orientation using a model-based approach

摘要

Even though the number of organizations buying Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems has grown extensively during the last decade, we frequently hear anecdotes telling about users' frustrations when introduced to the complex and hard to use user interface (UI) of these systems. The UI of today's ERP systems is constructed of hierarchical menus where transactions are considered the atoms. By using methods from the field model-based user interface design, we suggest breaking this complexity by tailoring the ERP UI based on information about the user, her context and the specific task she is performing. The underlying data model of the ERP system can not be changed, but the structure of the elements in the user interface could be rearranged to support the user's natural workflow when processing through different transaction screens to solve a task. In addition we suggest combining this with a tailored model-view that illuminates how the user's tasks relate to and affect the overall business processes.