Gathering innovative end-user feedback for continuous development of information systems: a repeatable and transferable e-collaboration process

Receiving innovative end user feedback on an information system is essential for acquiring further development ideas. The feedback gathering method should encourage end users to freely bring out new ideas. The method should be repeatable and transferable to allow its use in various contexts. We employ the principles of collaboration engineering using so-callled thinkLets as building blocks to construct a feedback gathering process. We apply the principles for receiving new development ideas for a multi-university student information system in Finland. We reflect on the experiences and give insights on applying two alternative processes in a complex organizational context.

I. Feedback Processes and Methods

Customer orientation is considered one of the key success factors in today's ever more competitive business environment. The cost of acquiring new customers is much higher than the cost of keeping the old ones. To retain the customers and to know their changing tastes, organizations are expected to seek feedback for customer care, for improving current products, for improving the product development processes, and for acquiring information for new product development [10]. Companies can exploit both reactive and proactive ways of gathering customer feedback. Reactive ways of receiving feedback from customers include customer complaints as well as both codified (into a customer complaint system) and personalized feedback, for example, from the company's own sales personnel who receive customer feedback in meetings, by telephone, or by other means of communication [10]. Proactive ways of gathering feedback include, for example, customer satisfaction surveys.