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User oriented implementation of an enterprise system component Per Magnusson Master’s Thesis Human-Computer Interaction User oriented implementation of an enterprise system component - Sociological, organisational and human-computer interaction aspects Mars-Augusti 2002, KTH / Renault Trucks Student: Per Magnusson, [email protected] School of Engineering (Software Design) and Business Management Academic Supervisor and Examiner: Professor Yngve Sundblad Supervisor Renault Trucks: Gilles Bayon

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Page 1: Master’s Thesis Human-Computer Interaction · Master’s Thesis Human-Computer Interaction ... Of the 60 000 vehicles that are produced each year, ... share for France was 35 %

User oriented implementation of an enterprise system component Per Magnusson

Master’s Thesis Human-Computer Interaction

User oriented implementation of an enterprise system component- Sociological, organisational and human-computer interaction aspects

Mars-Augusti 2002, KTH / Renault Trucks

Student: Per Magnusson, [email protected]

School of Engineering (Software Design) and Business Management

Academic Supervisor and Examiner: Professor Yngve Sundblad

Supervisor Renault Trucks: Gilles Bayon

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User oriented implementation of an enterprise system component Per Magnusson

User oriented implementation of an enterprise system component - Sociological,organisational and human-computer interaction apects

The master’s project took place at the spare parts division of Renault Trucks in Lyon,

France. The mission was to the help the financial controlling services in verifying IT

procedures and implementing an enterprise system component. The phases of the mission

were:

1) To verify, correct, simplify and document the procedure of separating the income for

the companies that used the services of the spare parts division

2) To configure and to do the final, user-oriented implementation of an enterprise system

component

3) To investigate future issues concerning the integration between different enterprise

systems

The project gave insight to sociological, organisational and human-computer interaction

aspects of enterprise systems. To get a more theoretical approach to the thesis, these issues

became the focus of the analysis. The main conclusions were that enterprise systems seem to

be a way of life, which means that they continuously have to be configured and modified.

They take a very important role in the organisation and they may create frustration for the

users who do not master them. Furthermore, the human-computer interaction could be

largely improved for enterprise systems by using established design guidelines. Finally,

Norman’s model (described in the text) could be applicable to enterprise systems, if it

recognised the importance of the organisation as a major influence when the user is forming

her conceptual model of the system.

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User oriented implementation of an enterprise system component Per Magnusson

Användarorienterad implementering av en affärssystemskomponent – med

människa-datorinteraktion-perspektiv, sociologiska perspektiv och organisatoriska

perspektiv

Examensarbetet ägde rum på Renault Trucks reservdelsdivision i Lyon, Frankrike.

Uppdraget bestod i att hjälpa ekonomistyrningsavdelningen att verifiera deras IT-procedurer

och att implemetera en affärssystemskomponent. Uppdragets faser var:

1) Att verifiera, korrigera, förenkla och dokumentera proceduren för att separera

resultatet för företagen som använde sig av reservdelsdivisionens tjänster.

2) Att konfigurera och göra den slutliga, användar-orienterade implementeringen av en

affärssystem-komponent

3) Att utreda framtida frågeställningar angående integrationen mellan olika affärssystem

Examensarbetet åskådliggjorde människa-datorinteraktion-perspektiv, sociologiska perspek-

tiv och organisatoriska perspektiv för affärssystem. För att åstadkomma en mer teoretisk

vinkling på rapporten, så fokuserades analysen på dessa aspekter. De huvudsakliga

lärdomarna var att affärssystem skall ses som en livsstil, vilket innebär att de ständigt måste

konfigureras och modifieras. Systemen har en mycket betydelsefull roll i organisationen och

de kan skapa frustration bland användare som inte behärskar dem till fullo. Vidare, så kan

människa-datorinteraktionen för affärssystem förbättras avsevärt genom att använda

väletablerade designregler. Slutligen skulle Normans modell (beskrivs i texten) kunna

tillämpas på affärssystem om hänsyn togs till organisationens inverkan på användarens

konceptuella modell av systemet.

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User oriented implementation of an enterprise system component Per Magnusson

Foreword

This report describes my master’s project at Renault Trucks in year 2002. It is written for

the Swedish master’s project course (examensarbete) in Human-Computer Interaction, at

the Department of Numerical Analysis and Computer Science (NADA) at the Royal

Institute of Technology (KTH). I also chose to do the project as a French Master’s Project,

with a separate report, for the technical university where I did an exchange prior to the

project, Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble (INPG). Large parts of the reports are

common, and I therefore chose to write both reports in English.

I would like to thank Yngve Sundblad (supervising professor KTH), Gilbert Leconte and

Jean-Luc Guffond (supervising professors INPG), the enterprise system research group at

INPG, Gilles Bayon (industrial supervisor Renault Trucks) and Christine Logmo (Renault

Trucks) for valuable support during my Master’s project.

Per Magnusson

Candidate for M.Sc. in Engineering (Software Design) and Business Management

September 2002, Stockholm

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User oriented implementation of an enterprise system component Per Magnusson

Table of contents

1. Project description and analysis____________________________________________ 1

1.1 Renault Trucks and the Financial Controlling Services (FC) __________________ 1

1.2 The mission and its context_____________________________________________ 2

1.3 Introduction to the subject and areas of analysis ____________________________ 7

2. Phase 1: Familiarisation with the IT environment, ongoing operations and incomeseparation of different companies using the services__________________________ 14

2.1 Mission and methods ________________________________________________ 14

2.2 Results ___________________________________________________________ 20

3. Phase 2: Final user oriented implementation of an enterprise system component ___ 21

3.1 Mission and methods ________________________________________________ 21

3.2 Results ___________________________________________________________ 26

4. Phase 3!: Small study on future issues _____________________________________ 27

4.1 Mission and methods ________________________________________________ 27

4.2 Results ___________________________________________________________ 27

5. Observations and analysis _______________________________________________ 28

5.1 Observations ______________________________________________________ 28

5.2 Sociological and organisational aspects of enterprise systems _________________ 30

5.3 Human-computer interaction aspects of enterprise systems ___________________ 32

6. Conclusions and recommendations________________________________________ 37

6.1 Conclusions _______________________________________________________ 37

6.2 Recommendations __________________________________________________ 38

7. References____________________________________________________________ 39

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1

Project description and analysis

1.1 Renault Trucks and the Financial Controlling Services (FC)

The master’s project took place between March and August 2002 at Renault Trucks. Renault

Trucks was formerly known as Renault Véhicule Industriel (V.I.) and is a part of the Volvo

group since 2001. Renault Trucks manufactures a broad range of heavyweight vehicles and

employs around 15 000 people. Of the 60 000 vehicles that are produced each year, 45 % are

sold in France, 50 % in the rest of Europe and 5 % in the rest of the world. The market

share for France was 35 % in year 2001 and for the rest of Europe 12 % (source: internal

documents and supervisor Gilles Bayon).

The project was carried out for the financial controlling services (FC) of the spare parts

division management. The spare parts division management is located at the headquarter of

Renault Trucks outside Lyon, France. The division is one of the most profitable at Renault

Trucks, with a gross profit margin of more than 40 % (source: supervisor Gilles Bayon). It

has a market share of 60% for the accessible market, but due to an upcoming market

deregulation, this large share will be difficult to defend. Apart from new spare parts, the

division also sells renovated and used spare parts.

The financial controlling services (FC) has several assigned duties. The FC does financial

reporting, budgeting and several types of analyses. The analyses are often done in

collaboration with the marketing services, and they could for example concern the

profitability of certain product types or clients. An analogy of financial controlling is that of

the thermostat. When the temperature is dropping, i.e. the profit, this is noted by the

thermostat who raises the temperature, which in financial controlling means analysing why

the profit is dropping and taking corrective actions. During the last years, emphasis has

however moved from corrective actions to pro-active actions based on anticipation of the

future (Cooper et al., 1998).

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1.2 The mission and its context

The project involved assisting the financial controlling services (FC) in verifying the

function and usage of the newly installed enterprise system and to suggest or implement

improvements. Practically all data that the FC is using originates from the enterprise system.

It is therefore imperative that the FC masters the system and is certain of the data accuracy,

so that its analysis becomes reliable and serves as good support for decisions.

One year before the beginning of the project, the spare parts division replaced a large part of

its information systems and programs with SAP R/31. A reason for the change was that the

organisation wanted to integrate its information and thus support a change in its operations.

Previously, each country branch and its country specific warehouse made the deliveries

within each country. The organisation wanted to change this by having the central

warehouse in France take care of the major parts of the deliveries. The number of national

smaller warehouses was to be reduced (see figure 1.1). To co-ordinate the change and to

integrate the activities the organisation chose SAP and specifically its sales and distribution

module as the information backbone.

DistributionwithCDIPRDistributionwithCDIPR

Distributionw. branches

CDI R

CDIPR

Figure 1.1: The starting point of the change project is to the left: a large number of deliverieswere made from smaller country-specific warehouses. The goal of the IT system was to supportthe change is illustrated to the right, where one warehouse, CDIPR, makes most deliveries.

1 For more information on SAP, see next chapter

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As a result of the SAP implementation, the old mainframe system that the FC used for its

analyses did not function as before, due to a less detailed data interface. During a transitional

year, when the masters project took place, the FC was mining their data from a data

warehouse connected to SAP. However, the year following the project, the FC was

planning to start using an SAP controlling component for a large part of their analyses. The

mission of the master’s project had to do with these evolutions. Specifically, the mission was

divided into the following three, more or less consecutive, phases.

1) Familiarisation with IT environment, ongoing operations and income separation of

different companies using the services

This phase involved learning the IT environment and more specifically the query

tool of SAP Business Operations Warehouse (BW). BW is a data warehouse where

transaction and client data are being stored and updated daily. My mission was to

verify, correct, simplify and document several different queries to determine the

monthly result of a separate company that was using the spare parts distribution

centre’s services. Furthermore, the mission was extended to involve several problems

with the retrieval of the daily revenue. The phase was an introduction to the tasks

performed by the FC and it served as a springboard to the next phase.

2) Final, user-oriented implementation of an enterprise system component

This phase included learning and analysing an SAP controlling profitability analysis

component. The controlling component had already been installed and the goal was

to make it fully functional, so that it could be used for accurate analyses. This meant

introducing provisions of costs that were not given by the invoicing component of

the SAP’s sales and distribution module. Furthermore, the income statement in the

controlling component, and especially the provisions were compared to the ones

present in the accounting system and errors were corrected. The specific

requirements of the FC for the controlling component were analysed and

adjustments were made or communicated to the IT department.

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3) Small study on future issues

A small study was to be done during the mission, to see how the relation between the

controlling component and the accounting system that was about to be replaced,

would be in the future. It was also intended that the roll-out of the controlling

component to other countries would start. However there was not enough time to

fully pursue this objective.

On the next page, the general development of the enterprise systems for the FC is described

in figure 1.2. The relation between the general development and the specific phases of the

master’s project is also described.

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ControllingFrance

AccountingFrance

ControllingFrance

AccountingFrance

Less detailed interface

Old system for France- Inventory management- Ordering & invoicing

SAPControllingFrance

ControllingFrance

AccountingFrance

Mainframe

SAP R/3

Interface

SAP for Europe- Inventory management- Ordering & invoicing

ControllingFrance

AccountingFrance

SAP BusinessOperationsWarehouse (BW)

Less detailed interface

SAP for Europe- Inventory management- Ordering & invoicing

SAPControllingFrance

SAP for Europe- Inventory management- Ordering & invoicing

SAPControllingEurope

SAP Accounting Europe andintegration with Volvo

Figure 1.2: The ongoing change in the IT environment for the Financial controlling services

The first picture shows the old mainframesystem, where inventory, ordering andinvoicing were handled by mainframe systems.These mainframe systems communicated datato the accounting and controlling system withan interface. In each country there were specificsystems (Franch system is shown here).

The second picture is the next step, where SAPhad been implemented to handle the inventory,ordering and invoicing. The interface thatconnected SAP with the accounting andcontrolling was less detailed, which meant thatsome data had to be mined by the financialcontrolling services from a separate datawarehouse connected to SAP. The mission of thefirst phase was to verify the queries that weremade with SAP Business Operation Warehouseto separate the income between the companiesthat were using the spare parts service. Prior toSAP, it was not possible to do this separationat all in the accounting system.

The third picture shows when the controllingmainframe system is replaced by an SAPcontrolling profitability analysis component.The second and largest phase of the master’sproject was to make the final, user orientedimplementation of this component, by makingit fully functional and adapting it to user needs.

The last picture is illustrating the future, wherethe accounting system will be replaced and SAPcontrolling will be rolled out in Europe. Thelast third phase in the master’s project was toconduct small studies on these issues. However,there was not much time in the end for thisphase

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The project had a cross-disciplinary character with computer scientific, sociological and

business perspectives. In the field of computer science, a general understanding of databases,

query languages and how enterprise systems work was beneficial. From a sociological or

organisational perspective, it was important to understand the organisation, its practices, its

operations and the role of the FC within it. To understand the daily operations of the FC

and the business logic behind the programs, knowledge of management accounting and

controlling was essential.

The project work was to be guided by interviews with different users of the systems and by

reading manuals and documentation. The method was to interrogate IT professionals, co-

workers of the FC and other employees to obtain information and in that way understand

the function of the systems and the data interfaces. After this, several tests would be done to

understand how the systems were functioning and how the configuration affected them. By

doing tests errors were to be discovered and corrected by changing the configuration. A

"secondary method" was to observe the role of the enterprise system in the organisation. I

conducted a small "field study" to get a more theoretical approach to the project, trying to

analyse enterprise systems and their sociological, organisational and human-computer

interaction aspects. These areas of analysis are described in the subject introduction in the

next chapter.

The equipment that was used during the project was a personal computer with access to the

different systems. A time plan was established during the first week of the project. The

duration of the different phases was difficult to estimate and the plan therefore became a bit

arbitrary. Because of the prolonged first phase, the time plan was continuously modified

during the project.

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1.3 Introduction to the subject and areas of analysis

As stated, the Master’s Project had computer scientific, sociological and business perspectives.

Due to this cross-disciplinary character, the project was undertaken in the wide field of

human-computer interaction. Another description of the project subject could be software

design – business – leadership, which is the project student’s specialisation. It was early

decided with the academic supervisor that the analysis and the resulting thesis would not just

be based on the actual project work and its methods, but also on the project student’s

observations during the project. This was made to allow a more theoretical analysis of the

organisational, sociological and human-computer interaction aspects of enterprise systems.

This theoretical analysis would serve as a basis for a conclusion and a recommendation.

First, enterprise systems and the related research field, information systems research, are

introduced. The contemporary leading paradigm seems to be to consider the information

system as a part of a larger social system. To understand the role of the information system

within this larger social system, different cognitive and sociological theories are described.

This is followed by some general human-computer interaction theories. To my knowledge,

there have been few attempts to describe the human-computer interaction for enterprise

systems. Finally, the areas and questions of analysis are presented.

The very kernel of the project is the enterprise system, a sort of advanced information

system. Enterprise systems are also known as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

The enterprise system in this project, SAP, is the most common with a world market share

in year 2000 of just under 30 % (Davenport p.304, 2000). Like most enterprise systems, SAP

has modules for most functions in an enterprise. The latest version, SAP R/3, has twelve

modules. Three of these modules, the sales amd distribution, the financial accounting and the

controlling modules were involved in the Master’s project. SAP runs on a client/server

computing architecture, which means that some part of the processing is done on a server,

and some on the clients, i.e. the desktops. It has a central database and communication

between the modules is either direct or indirect with the help of the database (Doane, 2001).

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Davenport (2000) believes that enterprise systems change ways of doing business. They

should be justified in business terms instead of just technological terms and if properly

employed, they can even be a source of competitive advantage. An implementation of an

enterprise system has of course a large impact on the organisation. It often calls for a

reengineering of the organisation and its processes, to comply with the ’best practices’ of a

process, defined by the enterprise systems. By having the best practices, more efficient and

less costly operations are achieved, and the implementation is thus justified in business terms.

Furthermore, enterprise systems are in some sectors according to Davenport even a pre-

requisite for being able to compete. This seems very much to be the case of the spare parts

industry. Rubython (2002) describes what happened to MG Rover’s spare parts business a

few years after the BMW takeover. BMW management decided to change the subcontractor

and this also meant that the previous mainframe system was replaced by SAP, which was

installed by the new subcontractor. The implementation was very unsuccessful and largely

due to this, the availability of spare parts dropped from 98 % to 76 % and the profitability

was destroyed. For MG Rover, a working enterprise system was imperative to compete

successfully. Although SAP appears to be more advanced than the previous system,

Rubython claims that SAP is complicated and that it takes a long time to have it properly

functioning.

Enterprise systems do not only function as support for the everyday operations, such as

production control. Enterprise systems can also be seen as decision support systems. The data

are mined from the central database and then analysed and presented so that it can serve as a

good basis for decisions. This is the case for financial controlling, where the goal is to turn

"raw" data into knowledge. The vision of this field called ’knowledge management’ is, as

presented by Davenport (p. 275), that ’the interaction between systems and humans

becomes more collaborative; while the system itself can have some decision-making

capability programmed into it, the system also acts as an extension of the human ability to

store and process knowledge.’ It is basically about letting the systems do the complex analysis

and leave the decision-making to the humans.

The academic field that enterprise systems belong to is information systems research. The

field used to be very focused on actual technology but in the later years it has taken a more

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wide approach, recognising that the information system is a part of a larger real-world

system where human actors, organisations and the information systems interplay (Zhu et

al., 2000 ; Lundeberg, 1995). Jan et al. (2002) describe the development in the field since the

1950’s as having had three stages: a mechanical stage, an organismic stage and a social stage.

’In the mechanical stage, the information system role is to support organisations as a

machine and information system missions are to support transaction processing systems and

operational control. In the organismic stage, the information system role is to support

organisations as an organism and information system missions are to support transaction

processing systems and all levels of management. In the social stage, the information system

role is to support organisations as a social system and information system missions should

take account of the organisation, its components and other organisations of its larger

systems.’

To try to explain the role of the information system in these larger social systems, there are

several cognitive, sociological and even biological theories that could be used. Suzi et al.

(2001) described some of these, when they tried to explain the specific role of information

technology as a ’mediator of collaborative activities’. These theories were activity theory,

situated action, distributed cognition and stigmergy. They are described in the following

paragraphs and I believe that they also could serve as frameworks when describing the

general role of information systems.

Activity theory is a sociological theory that seeks to model activity systems for the interaction

between subjects (humans) and objects (artefacts). It recognises that subjects transform

objects and vice-versa. Focus is on practice, to understand everyday practice in the real

world. The principle behind activity theory is that ’human mind comes to exist, develops,

and can only be understood within the context of meaningful, goal-oriented, and socially

determined interaction between human beings and their material environment’.

Situated action is more of a cognitive theory that recognises that there is no planned action,

but rather situated, circumstantial action that does not follow a plan. Situated action

considers the agent as an opportunistic improviser responding to environmental conditions

in an unfolding situation. Suzi et al. relate situated action to collaborative activity by stating

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that ’the context of an action is extremely important and artefacts must therefore be

considered having an important role in any action, being part of environmental conditions’.

The primary unit of analysis in the framework of distributed cognition is a distributed,

socio-technical system. The cognitive system consists of people working together, and the

artefacts they use. Distributed cognition studies the representation of knowledge inside the

heads of individuals and in the world. It has been criticised for equalling artefacts and

humans.

After describing these theories, Suzi et al. suggested that a complement to the described

theories to explain ’artefact-mediated collaborated activity’ is the biological theory of

stigmergy. Stigmergy explains the co-ordination paradox, i.e. the connection between the

individual and the societal level: looking at the behaviour of a group of social insects, they

seem to be co-operating in an organised, co-ordinated way, but looking at each individual,

they seem to be working as they were alone and not involved in any collective behaviour. As

an example, stigmergy seeks to explain how ants communicate indirectly through objects,

i.e. building materials and chemical traces.

Human-computer interaction is a large field and there are several interesting theories and

guidelines. Schneiderman (1998) defined the classical eight golden rules of interface design in

the following way:

o Strive for consistency

o Enable frequent users to use shortcuts

o Offer informative feedback

o Design dialogs to yield closure

o Offer error prevention and simple error handling

o Permit easy retrieval of actions

o Support internal locus of control

o Reduce short-term memory load

Normans theories have like Schneidermann’s eight golden rules had a large impact on

human-computer interaction. He defined in his book ’The Design of Everyday Things’ the

fundamental principles of designing for people as

o provide a good conceptual model

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o make things visible

o give feed back

There are different kinds of conceptual models (see figure on next page). ’The design model

is the designer’s conceptual model. The user’s model is the mental model developed through

interaction with the system. The system image is the result of the physical structure that has

been built (including documentation, instructions and labels). The designer expects the user’s

model to be identical to the design model. But the designer does not talk directly with the

user – all communication takes place through the system image. If the system image does not

make the design model clear and consistent, then the user will end up with the wrong

mental model.’ If the user ends up with the wrong mental model, it can lead to possible

errors made by the user and slow learning. To achieve a mental model that is fairly coherent

with the real system it is important that the system image is well designed and thus makes

efficient usage possible. I believe that it is important to recognise that the mental image of

the user, does not only depend on the system image but also on the user’s former

experiences, for example from other programs (see figure 1.3 on next page).

To make things visible includes, according to Norman, to visualise the conceptual model of

the system, the alternative actions, and the results of actions. Finally, Norman stresses the

importance of feedback, to be able to see the result of what you have done and make possible

corrections.

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Figure 1.3: The conceptual models according to Norman, slightly modified by adding formerexperiences for the user.

As stated, to my knowledge, there have been few studies that have treated the human-

computer interaction with enterprise systems. One interesting study was made by Howie et

al. (2001). The focus of the study was not the human-computer interaction of enterprise

systems but how to model an underlying complex system with a computer program. Howie

et al. claimed that dynamic decision-making in complex systems can be improved by

designing human-computer interfaces according to well-accepted human factors design

guidelines. The article is based on the work of Sterman, a Canadian management scholar,

who formulated the misperceptions of feedback (MOF) hypothesis. From Sterman’s

perspective, ’people’s poor performance in dynamic decision-making tasks in complex

systems can be attributed to the fact that the information needed for high performance is

available but not heeded.’

System Image• Documentation• Education• Graphical

Interface• Manipulation

Possible differencesbetween conceptual

models

User• Former experiences

Mental Image(User’s

ConceptualModel)

Designer• Communicates system

functioning throughsystem image

Real System(Designer’sConceptual

Model)

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Howie et al. suggested the following hypothesis. ’People do not do well because their

knowledge of system structure is less than perfect. In this case, poor performance is caused

by lack of knowledge rather than some fundamental psychological limitation. On this

reading, improved performance could perhaps be achieved through training by helping

people to develop more accurate mental models of the system they are controlling.’ The

thesis was demonstrated with experiments conducted with two programs. Both programs

simulate a supply chain and the goal is to optimise the system by reducing costly high

inventory levels as well as back-logs. One program had a ’main-frame’-like, primitive

graphical interface, whereas the other program was designed with the following

acknowledged human-computer interaction guidelines:

o Wherever possible, take advantage of people’s natural tendencies (e.g. reading from

left to right and from top to bottom)

o Wherever possible, take advantage of people’s existing knowledge (e.g. through the

use of metaphors)

o Present information in a graphical, rather than just a text-based, fashion to exploit

people’s powerful pattern-recognition capabilities.

o Show, not just data, but also relationships between data so that people can develop a

more accurate mental model of the simulation.

The experiments showed that the users of the second program achieved a better result.

These guidelines could therefore be useful to consider when designing enterprise systems.

As demonstrated, there are several aspects of enterprise systems. With the help of my

observations during the project, the areas of analysis will be

1) Sociological and organisational aspects

How do my observations relate to the theories presented by Suzi? What is the role of

the enterprise system in the organisation?

2) Human-computer interaction aspects

Do enterprise systems (or rather SAP R/3) follow interface design guidelines like the

ones of Schneidermann and Howie. How applicable is the theory of Norman?

After having analysed these areas, the conclusions or the theses will be made. This will lead

to general recommendations of how enterprise systems can be managed.

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2. Phase 1: Familiarisation with the IT environment, ongoing

operations and income separation of different companies using

the services

2.1 Mission and methods

The first phase of the project lasted eight weeks. Primarily, the mission was to verify,

correct, simplify and document the income separation between different companies that

were using the services of the spare parts division (see figure 2.1). To do this the activities

performed by the financial controlling services (FC), the IT environment and the query tool

of SAP Business Operations Warehouse (BW), which was to be used for the separation, had

to be learned. By providing this familiarisation with the IT environment and the

organisation, the phase served as a spring-board to the ’real’ mission in the next phase of the

project, that is the full system deployment of a profitability analysis component. During the

phase, problems arose with the retrieval of the daily results. The mission was therefore

extended to help the FC resolve the problems. As a result, the first phase took eight weeks

instead of the five weeks initially planned.

Figure 2.1: The first phase was not directly related to the ongoing change in the ITenvironment. With the newly installed SAP it had become possible to separate the incomebetween the different companies that were using the services of the spare parts division. Theprimary mission of the phase was to verify, correct, simplify and document the queries thatwere being used.

The first week of the phase was used to read system manuals, to formulate the mission and

to make a time-plan. It was quite difficult to understand what the master project was about

and, as stated, the time plan therefore became a bit arbitrary. The manuals and documents

used for the orientation of the IT environment were mostly Renault Trucks’ own material.

SAP for Europe- Inventory management- Ordering & invoicing

Controlling

France

Accounting

France

SAP Bus ine s sOperationsWarehouse (BW)

No possibilities to separatethe income in the old mainframe accounting system

?Several queriesdesigned to separatethe income

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They were quite simple and served as fairly good introductions to the systems. As an

introduction to SAP Business Operations Warehouse (BW), a meeting was held with a

Master’s project student whose mission was to secure the BW user environment. The

meeting provided a theoretical foundation and the student provided system manuals and

documentation.

BW is a data warehouse provided by SAP to use for data mining. ’Data warehouse’ is simply

signifying a large database. In this case, the database was separate from SAP’s central

database. The BW database stores SAP client and transaction data and it is updated with daily

intervals. A major advantage of having a separate database instead of using SAP’s database is

that it reduces internal traffic within SAP. The system performance is thus improved for

SAP. Furthermore, the performance of BW is improved by having special pre-defined states

with accumulated transaction data. This reduces the response time for the queries. Finally,

performance is perhaps improved by the client user interface. It is specific for BW and I

found it more user-friendly and flexible than the query tools in actual SAP that I used later

in the project. The BW client user interface is an Excel macro, in which the user can define

and store specific queries for each pre-defined state (see picture 2.1 on next page). There are

for example states to retrieve the monthly revenue, the stock level and to list invoices. Each

state has numerous attributes that can be selected or excluded. This makes it possibly to do

very specific queries, for example to retrieve the revenue for a certain client, on a specific day

and for a specific spare part. The response of a query is on the form of an excel-sheet.

With basic comprehension of BW, the first mission was initiated. At the time of the project,

Irisbus had started to use the services (i.e. the storage and distribution of their spare parts) of

the spare parts division. Irisbus, a bus manufacturer, was originally a joint venture between

Renault Trucks and the Italian-based Iveco Trucks, and became later fully owned by the

latter. It was not possible to separate the income between Renault and Irisbus in the

accounting system, the mainframe system that depended on data from SAP. Therefore, the

separation of income had to been done once a month with the help of BW. A former FC

employee had designed the separation queries about half a year prior to the beginning of the

project. He had done this by asking different users of the system and the BW administrators,

which attributes to use in the queries. The same employee gave me a short introduction and

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showed the queries. In a sense, he had done the initial work, and the mission was to verify

and correct the queries, as well as to simplify and document the process.

There were four queries, and for Irisbus they determined the revenue, the provision of joint

product type revenue, the stock level and the stock movement respectively. The basis for the

separation was a special attribute that was assigned to each product type. The attribute,

which was called the ’analysis code’, determined if the product was specific for Renault

Trucks, Irisbus or both companies. With this being the basis for the separation, the actual

queries might not seem too complicated; it was just a question of assigning certain attribute

to the queries. However, there were several specific attributes in the queries, which needed

explanation. They needed explanation since they were describing the underlying real-world

system and its particularities. Moreover, though the queries had been executed each month,

they had not been properly verified and updated.

Picture 2.1: The BW client user interface. The user designs the queries and launches them. Theresult appears on an excel sheet (in the background).Source: screen dump from my personalcomputer.

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The queries were studied by doing tests to see the impact of different attributes. The former

FC employee helped by either explaining the reasons for the attributes or referring to

professionals that knew about, or had even made, the queries. The queries were gradually

verified, updated and corrected during two weeks. As an example, there was a client list in

one query, which should contain all specific clients for Irisbus. The work consisted first of

finding out why the list was there. Second, clients were added to the list after asking the

sales department, if there had been any new specific clients for Irisbus since the last update.

Finally, there had to be a less complicated way, than to manually add clients every month.

Apparently, there was a list for specific Irisbus clients in SAP, which was also present as a

possible query attribute in BW. The problem was that this list was not complete, and it could

not be, since some clients were not able to order the common product types, if they were

classified as specific Irisbus client. Therefore, it was concluded that there was no less

complicated way of having the list updated.

There seemed to be confusion about the conditions that were used in BW. Different

departments used different constraints and no one really seemed to know why to use them.

When investigating the explanations of the logic behind the constraints, I often had to

consult several people to get an explanation. After two weeks, when it was time to do the

monthly closure, the overall picture was however fairly clear. The monthly closure was done

by me. The modified queries were successful, except the fact that there seemed to be an

unexplainable difference between the stock level query and the stock movement query. It

seemed as if stock was disappearing and it called for further investigation. Besides this

problem the focus of the mission changed from verifying and correcting to simplifying and

documenting.

Simplifying meant that when the responsibility for the monthly closure would be handed

over to an FC employee, she would find the process simple. Furthermore, to make the

process easy to understand, a manual and process documentation was to be written. The first

step in the simplifying process was to have all query references on different sheets in one

instead of several Excel files. This meant that instead of launching five consecutive queries,

the requests could be launched all at once. Furthermore, on one sheet, there was a

description of the steps of the monthly process to execute (see picture 2.2 on next page). To

determine the different revenues from different organisational units, an Excel table with all

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the clients and their origin was used. A look-up was made with an Excel formula for each

invoice to verify the organisational unit. The process was simplified and more automated by

integrating the lookup formulas in the Excel file with the result of the queries. Finally, each

month the data from the queries were consolidated in one income sheet table. By writing an

excel macro, and by integrating the table in the excel sheet together with the queries, this

process was also simplified.

Lancer requêtes BW

1. Actualiser les requêtes

1. Copiez une version actuelle de RecapCP.xls à O:\DCAV_CG\Per\SéparationIRISBUS

2. Actualiser les requêtes en cliquant sur les fleches tournant (sur outil SAP Business Explorer)

3. Repondez oui à question et choisissez les dates

4. Sauvegardez et sauvegardez sous O:\DCAV_CG\Per\SéparationIRISBUS\mois

2. Actualiser les tableaux pour Irisbus

1. Ouvrez , les chiffres sont directement copiées

2. Dans le fichier xxxxxx; Ouvrez le feuil le mois actuel. C opiez et mettez special - valeurs' les valeurs avec 'collageau feuil recap vue irisbus

3. Sauvegardez et sauvegardez le fichier sous O:\DCAV_CG\?????

?

CAIris.xls

Picture 2.2: A description of the steps to execute was on one sheet in the excel file with thequeries. The first large step, was to refresh the queries by performing four consecutive actions.The second large step, was to update income statement tables by performing three actions.

By interrogating professionals that worked with the stock ledgers, the problem with the

difference between the stock level query and the stock movement query was solved.

Apparently, there were certain movements that were not taken into account with the stock

movement query. These movements were either scraps or ’other inventory differences’.

Two queries were designed, so that the data could be introduced in the income statement.

The unexplained difference in the income statement had thus been resolved.

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Though the project focus changed from the separation of revenue to the mission described

in the next paragraph, the next month’s closure was still performed by me. This gave me the

opportunity to verify that the simplification had been done accurately. For the closure the

following month, and the months after, responsibility was handed over to a collaborator in

the FC. With the help of the documentation and the manual she seemed to manage the

simplified process and the closure was made successfully.

As previously stated, my mission was partially extended, to involve an important part of

daily operations. Everyday, an extraction of the revenue was done with the help of BW. A

few queries were used to extract the revenue and another query was used to verify it. For

long, there had been a small difference between the result of the queries and the verification

query. In April, the was a major difference and the mission became to analyse why this large

difference was there, and second, to verify and correct the queries so that even the small

differences would be eliminated.

Isolating the major difference was fairly simple. By using excel and its pivot-tables the results

of the different queries were compared. When looking at the result for each day it was

found that there had been an error in the BW database one day when the data had been

accumulated. The data in one state, originated in fact from the state that was used for the

verification. When data was accumulated to the former, it was accumulated twice during one

day, which explained the major difference. The IT department was notified of the problem

and it was corrected.

To understand and correct the small difference between the daily revenue query and its

verification turned out to be more difficult. There were several attributes in the queries and

they all had to be verified. This time, the work was doing closer with the IT department

Eventually, after a few weeks and a few changed attributes the queries had been verified, and

the small difference had been eliminated.

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2.2 Results

The major accomplishment of the first phase was that the separation process was verified

and documented. The FC employees have a fairly intense workload; they have enough work

by just performing the daily activities. The solution was someone from the outside, with IT

skills, who could do this verification without spending time on the daily activities. The

verification meant that the information and data accuracy improved, and hence the

accounting became more accurate. Furthermore, the process was made easier, which meant

that when responsibility for its execution was handed over, time was saved. At the time of

the project, every BW user could access each saved query and make changes to it. Though

this problem was being corrected (by another project student), its was still valuable to have

documentation that explained why the attributes in the queries were there. Finally, by

helping the FC to analyse the retrieval of the daily revenue, the differences that existed

between the queries were eliminated, and the retrieval became more reliable.

There was also an indirect result obtained from the first phase. I had learned Renault

Trucks’ activities and its organisation, as well as the particularities that were related to SAP

and its transaction flows. Without this introduction, the next phase would probably have

taken much more time. In this sense, the phase served as a stepping stone to the next one.

The decision, that the phase would be extended to involve the daily retrieval of the revenue,

had an impact on the rest of the project. It took time from the next phase. On the other

hand, the daily retrieval was essential for the FC’s analysis and the extension of the phase

therefore added value.

Apparently, there was no special method used in the first phase. It was mainly a question of

organising and working in a structured way to fully analyse the problem. By interrogating

and testing I got a clear picture, and this knowledge was capitalised by writing documen-

tation

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3. Phase 2: Final user oriented implementation of an enterprise

system component

3.1 Mission and methods

The mission of the second phase was to do to the final user oriented implementation of a

controlling component to be used for profitability analysis (see figure 3.1). The controlling

component had already been installed and the goal was to make it fully functioning, so that

it could be used for accurate analyses. This involved introducing provisions of costs, by

applying a certain percentage to the revenue or the product cost. The phase took around

twelve weeks.

More specifically, the mission was to adjust the percentages and their application criteria so

that the provisions in the controlling component would be a rough reflection of the

provisions in the accounting system. In the accounting system the provisions were processed

manually. They were determined by doing a more refined analysis. For example, to

determine the transport provision, weight and country were considered to be the cost

drivers. A large part of the mission became to verify the correlation between the two

systems. Furthermore, a study of the user needs and functions in controlling component was

done and the required adjustments were made or escalated to the IT department.

Figure 3.1 The second phase of the mission was to do the final user oriented implementation ofthe SAP controlling component.

As an introduction to the phase, a meeting was held with the IT professionals that had

installed the component and were in charge of its maintenance. A short overview of the

SAPControllingFrance

Less detailed interface

SAP for Europe- Inventory management

- Ordering & invoicing

Controlling

France

Accounting

France

Do the final user orientedimplementation of the SAPcontrolling component:

- Comparing data betweenaccounting and SAP contr.- Introducing Provisions- Investigating user needs and

implementing/escalating

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controlling component and a general plan for the mission was made. It included stating the

mission and planning a relevant SAP education for me on the controlling component.

Documentation and user manuals were provided and it consisted of Renault Truck’s own

material or material provided by external consultants. To learn more about the accounting

system an experienced user in the FC was interrogated. By asking the person that had

written the interface between SAP and the accounting system, a documentation of the

information flows was obtained.

The controlling component is a component in SAP’s controlling module. It is used to

analyse the profitability and it had several possibilities to do detailed analysis. The data in the

component originate from SAP’s sales & distribution module, the module that was installed

to support the change in infrastructure where one central warehouse in France would do

the major parts of the deliveries, and the number of national smaller warehouses was to be

reduced (see introduction). In the controlling component, it is possible to analyse the

margins for specific product types, type of commands and geographical zones. The analyses

are made by creating a state. This state is fairly general and contains several attributes. An

income statement is generated, and by narrowing the selection criteria (the attributes), it is

possible to perform a very detailed analysis.

The accounting system, with which the comparison of data would be done, was an old

mainframe system (see picture 3.1 and 3.2 for a comparison between the graphical

interfaces). Previously, the data to the system was interfaced from the sales system in place

before SAP. After the implementation of SAP an interface was written between SAP and

the accounting system. The interface was less detailed than the previous one, and attributes

such as type of commands were no longer present to use in the analyses. The analysis in

2002 were done by taking some data from BW and some data, mainly the provisions, from

the accounting system and consolidate these in a large Excel list. With the controlling

component, the same kind of monthly analysis would be less complicated to perform, by not

requiring this copying and reshaping of data.

As I was about to find out, the controlling component and the SAP environment were quite

complicated to manage. Just like BW, it took time to learn and to understand what the

mission was about. Unfortunately, the IT professionals that knew SAP had little time to

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help me with SAP and the mission, and the progress was therefore quite slow. In the

beginning of the phase, I believed that an applied percentage also would apply to historical

transactions. Eventually, it was found out, that this was not the case, which meant that the

verification, that I had done between the income statement in the controlling component

and the accounting system, had been fairly useless. Furthermore, since the percentages were

applied in the sales and distribution module, and the statement was generated by the

controlling module, communication was done with one controlling module specialist and

one sales and distribution specialist. Small incidents with the system had to be reported to a

maintenance hotline, which meant that another IT professional would be involved. This

meant that there was a problem with co-ordination and that a large amount of time was used

for communication instead of action. An old demand from FC to raise the system

performance of the controlling component was also being processed. It took time to boost

the performance and some essential states of the controlling component could not be

generated during this time, which meant that valuable time was lost.

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Picture 3.1: The picture is a created state in the controlling component profitabilitycomponent. . With the controlling component, the income statement, in this case for Belgiumin April 2002, was possible to analyse in detail, for example by product type or by client.

Picture 3.2:The picture is a screen dump of the old mainframe accounting system With theaccounting system, the income statement for Belgium was just one generated screen with nopossibilities for further analysis.

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The analysis was done for each country. By starting to regard the income statement of the

chosen country in the accounting system, and by interrogating the FC employees, the

provisions that had to be in the controlling component were identified. By dividing the total

provision with the revenue and the product cost for the start of the year 2002, the

percentages that would be applied in the controlling component were established. The

provisions in the controlling component would, when generated by these historical

percentages, serve as a rough reflection of the ones in the accounting system.

The next step in the analysis was to generate the controlling component income statement

that corresponded to the one in the accounting system. This was not always so easy since the

organisational units in the accounting system did not perfectly correspond to the

organisational units in the controlling component (the same as in SAP). This was caused by

the interface between SAP and the accounting system, where a determining attribute for

the organisation was something called ’distribution mode’. This criterion was not present

when launching the controlling component states, which meant that the organisational

units could not be constituted in the same way. The verification was made by observing if

the provisions were present in the controlling component. Furthermore, the application

criteria for the percentages that would give the provisions, had to be verified. The

application criteria consisted of a determination if the percentage was applied to the revenue,

the product cost or some other value that originated from SAP’s sales and distribution

module. The application criteria also stated for which attributes the percentage would be

applied. Such an attribute was for example a specific country or product type. The

percentages applied were for each country and adjustments to make the controlling

component fully usable was communicated to the IT department. These adjustments

included for example introducing new lines in the income statement or correction of data

irregularities.

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3.2 Results

Not all data irregularities were identified during my project. However, several countries had

been verified and their percentages in the controlling component had been applied. Changes

required in the controlling component, to fulfil user needs and to facilitate a correct

function, had either been done by me or escalated to the IT department. For example, I had

updated lists, that were necessary to retrieve correct data. Many of the adjustments, that I

wanted the IT department to do, had not been done. The final weeks of the mission

consisted therefore of clearly documenting what I had done and requested. This way, even if

the adjustment had not been done when I left, the evolution of the controlling component

could be controlled by the FC. My mission did not, however, require immediate result. The

controlling component was not to be fully used until 2003. Hopefully, after the finish of the

project, there was only fine-tuning left to do.

Just like the first phase, there was no specific method that was employed. Instead of

verifying for each country, one could of course have done the verification for each type of

provision. This would probably have taken more time, since the COPA states used for

verification were country-specific and not provision-specific.

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4. Phase 3 : Small study on future issues

4.1 Mission and methods

This final, third, phase of the project was a bit separate from the other parts. The goal was to

see how the relation between the controlling component and the accounting system that

was about to be replaced, would be in the future. It was also intended that the roll-out of the

controlling component to other countries would start. However, there was not enough time

to fully pursue this second objective. The phase was done parallel to the second phase during

the last weeks

Just like the two previous phases, the method was to study the problem by reading

documentation and asking IT professionals and other employees. At this time I had started

to become more of an expert of the systems that were being used. I therefore more quickly

grasped the problem, which basically was that the accounting system would use other

organisational units than the controlling system.

4.2 Results

The study resulted in a request to introduce a possibility to analyse the same organisational

units in the controlling component and the accounting. A detailed description of how to

constitute the organisational units were given to the IT department. I tried to do some

documentation so that the next project student, that would pick up where I left, would more

easily understand the problem.

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5. Observations and analysis

5.1 Observations

During the project, the world of enterprise systems became a bit clearer to me. Instead of

just being a researcher, coming from the outside to observe, I was involved in a real world

project. I did not have prior experience of enterprise systems which meant that I had to

learn the systems from scratch. On the other hand, my engineering major in software

design was probably an advantage for understanding the systems more easily.

Significant to my project, was that the actual implementation had already been done. The

focus of my project was to configure the controlling component and adapt it to user needs. It

seemed like an implementation of an enterprise system never finishes. Renault Trucks

probably had more people doing smaller and larger maintenance, than people doing new

implementations.

The enterprise system is very inter-connected with the real world. The processes in the real

world should function in accordance with the processes in the system. One of the classical

questions of Enterprise Systems is in fact: is the system adaptable to the organisation or is the

organisation adapting itself to the system (Guffond et. al). This question is too advanced to

be included in this thesis. I observed however, that as a newcomer, I neither understood how

the organisation worked nor the enterprise system. It struck me, that the enterprise system

was a complex system that was hard to understand and to put in a relation with the real-

world organisation. The enterprise system felt like a database client, that had been design

with small concerns on usability. If the graphical interface were to be better designed, I

believe that it would be easier to 1) understand how the organisation functions with the help

of the system, and 2) understand the actual system itself. This issue is further analysed in

2.5.3.

Apparently, it was difficult to promote change in a large organisation like Renault Trucks.

The organisation of the IT department was not efficient in handling the requests of the FC.

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This meant that time was lost. If this time is added to the additional time of the extended

first phase, it is understandable why there was never much time for the third phase.

I cannot claim that it helped to be a foreigner either. I did not speak a fully fluent French

and did not fully blend in to Renault Trucks’ and the French culture. In the end of the

project however, my French had become much better and I had a much more varied and

fluent language. I never really got used to French culture though, where conflicts were just

as natural in everyday life as drinking coffee. I felt that there was a lot of talking behind

people’s backs and I did not really enjoy the working environment. I think that this had a

negative effect on my performance.

As a final observation, it was obvious that BW and SAP were creating frustration among

users. Instead of being the masters of the system, they were rather mastered by the system

and had to adapt to it. The users had to follow the development of the system and the

rigidity of the enterprise system made it difficult to change, even to understand. The

employees in the FC were no IT professionals or even expert users. Their traditional

professional role was to analyse the profitability, not to design queries. The question that

arose was: is it possible to simplify the enterprise systems and make them more

understandable? Or is the professional role of the employees changing, to become much

more oriented on the usage and management of information systems?

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5.2 Sociological and organisational aspects of enterprise systems

As observed, it seems like an implementation of an enterprise never finishes. Davenport

(2000, p.132) supports this when he claims that the enterprise systems should be seen as a

way of life. This means, that after the actual implementation, most firms will continuously

have to make changes to the system, to make it fit organisational changes and to bring new

business units into the use of the Enterprise Systems. Davenport also writes about the need

for prototyping and piloting when installing enterprise systems. Just as important as getting

the system installed and having accessible data is to assure the daily use of the system. A part

of my project could have been avoided if there had been more prototyping. On the other

hand, as Davenport points out, prototyping takes time and consumes resources. He also

reflects on information needs. When organisations put in ES they rarely reflect on which

information they want to extract from the system. They often use the same information as

they did with their old mainframe/legacy systems. In this sense, there is little value adding

caused by better decisions made with new and more proactive knowledge from the

enterprise system. The business logic for implementing SAP was however that of a project

of integration. It was never intended that SAP’s capabilities as an advanced decision support

system would add value. Renault Trucks seems to have been fairly successful in their

implementation of SAP. They have not experienced a failure like that of MG Rover

described in the subject introduction.

It is obvious that enterprise systems take a very important role in many businesses, especially

the spare parts business. Take the case of MG Rover once more; the failure of an SAP

implementation was the major reason for the destroyed profitability. Suzi et al. who

suggested that the biological theory of stigmergy could explain ’artefact-mediated

collaborative activity’, seemed to have a point (see introduction to subject). The co-

ordination paradox was apparent, i.e. the connection between the individual and the societal

level: looking at the behaviour of a group of social insects, they seem to be co-operating in an

organised, co-ordinated way, but looking at each individual, they seem to be working as they

were alone and not involved in any collective behaviour. The normal user was sitting in

front of a computer screen and had no idea where the data came from. The enterprise

system on the other hand was at the very heart of the company, and appeared to be the hub,

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around which everything evolved. The framework of distributed cognition also seemed to

be applicable to the first phase. It appeared to be a cognitive system in the organisation that

consisted of people and computer systems. The representation of knowledge was definitely

not just inside the heads of individuals; the knowledge was rather a collective representation

that was created with the help of the enterprise system. This relates to the vision of

knowledge management by Davenport (see introduction to subject). Davenport meant that

in the future, the interaction between systems and humans become more collaborative and

the system acts as an extension of the human ability to store and process knowledge. It is

basically about letting the systems do the complex analysis and leave the decision-making to

the humans.

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5.3 Human-computer interaction aspects of enterprise systems

Because of the importance of the enterprise systems, users are frustrated when they do not

understand the systems. This became very obvious during the project. The systems were

complicated and the question is: is it possible to simplify the systems and make them more

understandable by improving the graphical interface. This will be the first point of analysis.

The second will be to ask how applicable the theory of Norman are to enterprise systems.

Is it possible to improve to make the systems more understandable by improving the

graphical interface? I believe that a system becomes more understandable if it follows

established design guidelines. Such established guidelines are Schneidermann’s eight golden

rules. To me, it seems natural, to deduct, that basic things such as striving for consistency

and other rules will simplify the system usage and make them easier to use. The following

paragraphs will describe how well SAP R/3 follows each of Schneidermann’s eight rules.

o Strive for consistency

The SAP R/3 graphical interface is fairly consistent. There is the feel of having a

static interface, which you can use to connect to the central database in several ways.

o Enable frequent users to use shortcuts

There are shortcuts in SAP, so called transactions. By knowing a certain code, for

example SM37 you can directly access a certain mode, without doing the usual four

or five commands in the menu. It is however a bit hard to remember these shortcuts.

o Offer informative feedback

The feedback was fairly poor. This could be due to a certain level of customisation of

SAP, and that this issue was not handled when the specific implementation was done.

o Design dialogs to yield closure

It is not always very clear that there is any processing going on as a result of user

commands. This area can therefore be improved.

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o Offer error prevention and simple error handling

I believe that there are some basic error handling in SAP but did not work so much

with these issues.

o Permit easy reversal of actions

Actions seemed to be fairly reversable for the user. However, previous states were

not always saved, which meant that the reversal of time-consuming processes was

slow.

o Support internal locus of control

To support internal locus of control means that the experienced operators sense that

they are in charge of the system and that it responds to their actions. After working

with SAP for 6 months I cannot say that this was the case. It is a complex system,

and to really master it, one probably has to learn more about it. On the other hand,

it was difficult to learn or to figure out the required sequence of actions to perform a

task. I therefore believe that this point could be improved.

o Reduce short-term memory load

As stated, the user often had to execute a sequence of five actions in the menu bar to

accomplish a desired state. This means that the user has to keep track of where she is

during this sequence, which is not always easy.

As examplified above, there are many possible improvements for SAP R/3 in order to be

consistent with Schneidermann’s eight design rules. Howie et al. provided guidelines that

were more applicable to software that tried to show real-world systems. The results of their

testing of these guidelines were perhaps not a big surprise. Certainly, a well-designed

interface improves learning and understanding. The interesting thing is that with the help

of the interface, it is possible for people to make a more accurate mental model of the

underlying system that you’re trying to manipulate and analyse with the help of the

program. I believe, that this applies to enterprise systems. The graphical interface should be

designed to help people develop a more accurate mental model of the underlying real-world

system. Each point of the framework applied to SAP R/3 is described below. As shown,

there are numerous points that can be improved.

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o Wherever possible, take advantage of people’s natural tendencies (e.g. reading from left

to right and from top to bottom)

As stated, SAP is fairly consistent and there are perhaps not so many points to

improve in this area.

o Present information in a graphical, rather than just a text-based, fashion to exploit

people’s powerful pattern-recognition capabilities.

SAP R/3 is not so supported by graphics. It would probably be easier to understand

the system if the information was presented in a graphical way, for example to

described how the organisation functioned. One essential process in most companies,

the invoicing process, could for example be described by the graphical interface

o Show, not just data, but also relationships between data so that people can develop a

more accurate mental model of the simulation.

This would be desirable in a decision support system, like the controlling component

that I helped to configure. In the actual system it was fairly vague where the data

came from, and how it had been accumulated. It was possible to list the invoice

numbers that constituted the total sums. It was however difficult to understand how

to do this.

After having analysed SAP R/3 with Schneidermann’s and Howie’s rules, I conclude that

there are several improvements that can be made with the goal make the systems more user-

friendly. It is of course hard to prove that the systems will be more simplified and

understandable if the design guidelines by Schneidermann and Howie were followed, but it

seems natural to assume that.

The second point of analysis is how applicable Norman’s model is to enterprise systems.

Norman recognised in his model that the system image is more than the graphical interface

and the uses’s manipulation. Education and documentation also set the system image.

During my project, I realised that the enterprise system, the organisation and its actors

interplay. Norman’s model does not currently consider the organisation as a variable. I

therefore believe that Norman’s model has to be adapted for enterprise system, by

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recognising the importance of the environment that surrounds them (see figure 5.1). When

I came to Renault Trucks for example, I did not know the systems or the organisation. One

way for me to learn more rapidly was to learn about the organisation through the system

and vice versa. Of course, there has to be some resemblance between the system and the

organisation. If the organisation is very different from the system, the user can perhaps be

mislead by how the organisation functions. The organisation becomes in a way therefore a

part of the system image. If the system and the organisation function in different ways, it

may very well lead to inefficient usage.

The reasoning above relates to the question wether the system adapts to the organisation, or

the organisation adapts to the system. So far in the history of enterprise systems, it appears

as if it is more common that the organisation has been ’re-engineered’to fit the systems

(Davenport 2001). However, enterprise systems can be configured to a certain level to fit

each organisation (Guffond et al. 2002). It may seem difficult to adapt the graphical interface

to each configuration of the system. One easier way could be to adapt the documentation

and the education to the organisation. This was more the case for Renault Trucks. The

company had specific documentation for their implementation.

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Figure 5.1 The organisation should be introduced in Norman’s model when it is applied toenterprise systems. If the system and the organisation function in different ways, it may leadto inefficient usage.

Organisation

System Image• Documentation• Education• Graphical

Interface• Manipulation

Possible differencesbetween conceptual

models

User• Former experiences

Mental Image(User’s

ConceptualModel)

Designer• Communicates system

functioning throughsystem image

Real System(Designer’sConceptual

Model)

Possible differences between organisation and conceptual models

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6. Conclusions and recommendations

6.1 Conclusions

Enterprise systems seems to be a way of life, which means that they continuously have to be

configured and modified. They take a very important role in the organisation and they may

create frustration for the users who do not master them. The human-computer interaction

could be largely improved for enterprise systems, for example by applying Schneidermanns

and Howies recommendation for how to design the graphical interface. Normans model

could be applicable to enterprise systems, if it recognises the importance of the organisation

as a major influence when the user is forming her conceptual model of the system.

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6.2 Recommendations

Based on the conclusion, one recommendation to SAP is of course to improve the weak

issues in the graphical user interface. I must mention that I did not work with the very latest

interface. It is possible that SAP has begun to take the human-computer interactiom more

seriously.

It is of course important to recognise that the graphical interface is not the only way to

communicate the system image. System designers should not just follow established interface

design guidelines, but realise that documentation and training can help the user to get a

more correct conceptual model. Moreover, the organisation must be taken into

consideration when designing the systems and the system images. If there is a big difference

between the organisation and the system, it may lead to inefficient usage.

Finally, for Renault Trucks, I felt that there was a need for more documentation. A

substantial amount of knowledge was just inside peoples’ heads. This made it sometimes hard

to know, who to ask.

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7. References

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Davenport T. (2000) Mission Critical: Realizing the promise of Enterprise Systems, Boston, Harvard BusinessSchool Press

Dix A., Finlay J., Abowd G. & Beale R. (1999) Human-Computer Interaction, 2nd edition, London,Prentice-Hall

Doane M. (2001) The SAP blue book: a concise business guide to the world of SAP, London, Prentice-Hall

Guffond J.-L., Leconte G., Segrestin D. (2002) L’implantation d’un ERP ’Travaille’- L’Organisation (FR),Les actes du colloque Concevoir et organiser la performance industrielle, 193-202 English translation:Implementation of an ERP Work - Organisation

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Norman D. (1998), The design of Everyday Things, London, MIT Publishing

Rubython T. (2002), Rover on the edge with caterpillar, Eurobusiness September 2002

Schneiderman B. (1998) Designing the user interface, New Jersey, Prentice-Hall

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Lane D. (2001) Rerum cognoscere causas: Part I - How do the ideas of system dynamics relate to traditionalsocial theories and the voluntarism/determinism debate? System Dynamics Review vol. 17, 97-118

Margerin J., (1992) Comptabilité Analytique (FR), Paris, Rigert, English tramslation: ManagementAccounting

Scott B. (2001) Cybernetics and the Social Sciences. Systems Research and Behavioral Science vol. 18, 411-420

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Thuderoz T. (1997) Sociologie des entreprises (FR), Paris, GUP, English translation: Enterprise Sociology

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