Supporting complex decision making processes with collaborative applications - A Case study

There has been much research on the design of Groupware, its potential benefits and the methods used to develop systems to support groups. However, in many real life cases, identifying tangible benefits and demonstrating improvements in the quality of decision making after introducing such systems has proven difficult. In this paper, we present the case study of a newspaper firm in order to analyse the impact of a recently introduced collaborative computer system, implemented to support the information search, storage, organisation and dissemination activities of organisational actors. We found that the implementation of the new groupware systems has revolutionised the process of creation of the newspapers and given more time and greater control to the Editorial team. We conclude that when collaborative systems are designed that are closely matched to the needs of the group they serve, tangible benefits should be clearly observable. However, the development of these systems may take much time as the idiosyncratic manner in which specialised groups operate can be very difficult to properly and completely analyse.