Enterprise Models as Interface for Information Searching

Enterprise knowledge modelling in general offers methods, tools and approaches for capturing knowledge about processes and products in formalized models in order to support organizational challenges. From the perspective of information systems development, the use of enterprise models traditionally is very strong in the earlier development phases, whereas approaches for applying enterprise models in later development phases exist, but are not as intensely researched and elaborated. We argue that enterprise models should be considered as carrier of enterprise knowledge, which can be used to a larger extent in creating actable solutions for enterprise problems. With competence supply as an example, the focus of the paper is on using enterprise models as interface for information searching. The main contributions of the paper are (1) to show that it is feasible and produces pertinent results to use enterprise models for expressing information demand, (2) architecture and implementation of an IT solution for this purpose and (3) lessons learned from validating this approach.