LINDA VOLONINO and HUGH J. WATSON
LINDA VOLONINO is Assistant Professor of MIS at Canisius College. She served as Transactions Editor forDSS-90. Her primary research interests involve expert systems and executive information systems.
HUGH J. WATSON holds the C. Herman and Mary Virginia Terry Chair of Business Administration and is director of MIS programs at the University of Georgia. He is the author of 15 books and over 60 scholarly journal articles. His current research focuses on executive information systems.
ABSTRACT: Many organizations are moving forward with the development of an executive infonnation system (Eis). Based on the experiences of other organizations, there are guidelines that can be followed when creating an EIS. The strategic business objectives methodology corresponds with these guidelines and involves a six-step process: (1) the organization's strategic business objectives are identified; (2) the business processes that are critical to the strategic business objectives are identified; (3) priorities are assigned to the strategic business objectives, and as a consequence, to Uie critical business processes; (4) information needed to support the critical business processes is defined; (5) infonnation linkages among business processes are identified; and (6) a plan for a modular ms development, implementation, and evolution is developed. Fisher-Price used a similar methodology when developing its EIS, and this has helped Fisher-Price become more market oriented.
KEY WORDS AND PHRASES: executive information systems (EIS), development meth- odologies, systems analysis and design.