Improving Information Flow in Small Scale Application : Selected Approaches and Concepts

Many problems regarding information supply within enterprises can be solved with either traditional Information Retrieval or Knowledge Management technologies or with an Information Logistic approach, where a demand-driven approach to information supply is pursued with the aim to take into account such aspects as time and location. However, to build the right kind of solutions based on any of these technologies, providing higher quality of information supply could be utilized if the information demand of the users of the applications is precisely known. In this report the results from an investigation done in American Small- and Medium sized Enterprises and different methods for analyzing and modeling of business processes and organizational hierarchies are presented. Partly based on this a definition of information demand is presented together with a metamodel depicting concepts and their interconnections