Six principles for redesigning executive information systems—findings of a survey and evaluation of a prototype

Abstract

Information Systems (IS) meant to help senior managers are known as Executive Information Systems (EIS). Despite a five-decade tradition of such IS, many executives still complain that they bear little relevance to managing a company and, even more, fail to accommodate their working style. The increasing acceptance of IS among today's executives and technological advances of the Internet era make the present moment favorable for redesigning EIS. Following the design science paradigm in IS research, this article provides six principles for such a redesign. To do so, we survey executives regarding their requirements and the IS they currently use. We then derive principles for a redesign to fill the gaps. They address diverse areas: a comprehensive information model, functions to better analyze and process information, easy-to-use IS handling, a more flexible IS architecture and data model, a proper information management, and fast prototype implementation. Finally a field test demonstrates and evaluates the utility of our proposal by means of a prototype.