Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
3 Semantic Service Search and Composition (S
3
C)
In the Semantic Service Search & Composition (S
3
C) project, we are exploring
the challenges of introducing services in the ERP domain. We are focusing on SMEs
developing ERP systems by following the Microsoft Sure Step methodology.
The goal is to develop possible solutions to overcome identified problems and to
apply these solutions in practice. We want our research to supports consultants in
identifying requirements and relevant services to inform Fit-Gap Analysis within ERP
projects. We used action research [7] to conducting this work and aimed at meeting
the following research objectives:
RO 1: Identify the needs of consultants regarding requirements elicitation in ERP
projects based on Sure Step.
RO 2: Adapt and extend relevant service discovery approaches to support ERP
projects based on Sure Step.
RO 3: Evaluate the benefits and limitations of the developed tool-supported
approach.
The first research objective focuses on identifying the consultants' needs in order
to overcome limitations of the existing approach. The second research objective in-
vestigates how to extend Sure Step. This task includes the identification of relevant
research whose results could inform a possible tool-supported solution for require-
ments elicitation in ERP projects based on Sure Step. The third research objective
focuses on investigating the usability and utility of the tool-supported approach. Our
aim is to investigate if the envisioned tool-supported approach does support the daily
work of consultants in ERP projects based on Sure Step.
3.1 Identifying the Needs of Business Consultants
In a first step we identified and analyzed the needs of consultants. We therefore inter-
viewed 4 employees at Terna
1
, an Austrian ERP partner following Sure Step. We
discussed the identified limitations of Sure Step and asked them about their needs
regarding a novel tool-supported approach which would overcome existing limita-
tions. The following paragraphs describe the consultants' key requirements.
Integrated description of business processes and requirements.
Sure Step uses
Word templates to specify business processes and requirements. This results in the
creation of several different documents and the distribution of information across
several documents. Handling documents is therefore time consuming and often results
in inconsistencies. The new tool-based approach should therefore provide an inte-
grated solution which allows the structured and integrated specification of business
process information and requirements.
Linking requirements and use cases.
As discussed, Sure Step provides Word tem-
plates for documenting business processes and requirements. This means that there is
no support for linking a requirement to a particular use case - a feature that should be
supported by the new approach.
1
Terna is an Austrian ERP company owned by Allgeier Holding AG. They are Microsoft
Dynamics AX partner, Lawson M3 distributor and maintain AMS4U based on AS400.
