Extending Traditional EIS Use to Support Mobile Executives Online and Offline

In addition to using executive information systems (EIS) in a fixed location, executives increasingly want mobile access, even when they are offline. Based on a framework for EIS use situations and on findings from an expert focus group with participants from multiple industries, we have identified the most important EIS use situations for executives. We classify executives as either Consumer (those who primarily consume EIS information) or Analyst (those who primarily work more interactively with EIS information). To evaluate the relevance of our findings, we participated in a project at Continental AG, a large European automotive supplier. We worked with Continental as it rose to the challenge of selecting the right mobile devices and appropriate software components for its executives' online and offline mobile EIS use preferences. Based on our research, we provide five recommendations for EIS design that will help CIOs in other companies to embrace their executives' growing need to access EIS from mobile devices. Some of these recommendations are generally applicable and will ensure executive buy-in. For Consumer executive use, we recommend first focusing on reducing reliance on paper-based reports, and for Analyst executive use, we recommend first focusing on increasing mobile EIS navigation functionality.