An Explorative Study into the Influence of Business Goals on the Practical Use of Enterprise Modelling Methods and Tools

Abstract

An explorative study was carried out to investigate the intentions behind the use of Enterprise Modelling (EM) in organisations and to assess the implications of those intentions for EM tool support and participative EM. Some important conclusions are: 1) Participative EM should only be applied in consensus oriented organisational cultures and if properly applied it is a very strong way of committing stakeholders to business decisions, 2) The preparation of EM activities is critical and complex, meaning that it is not a task for novices, 3) Modelling experts prefer flexible and tools that give them methodological freedom, graphical power and reporting facilities, and 4) Future EM tools will need to cater for integration of methods.