Performance support in internet time the state of the practice

ecember 27, 1999, marked a reunion of sorts for a group of professional colleagues who have paved the way for, defined, and are actively engaged in the performance support practice. Gloria Gery, Stan Malcolm, Janet Cichelli, Hal Christensen, Barry Raybould, and Marc Rosenberg spoke via teleconference about the state of performance support (PS). My goal was to uncover the latest trends—associated with the latest organizational performance pain—borne of the e-revolution, the monster enterprise systems (SAP, Siebel, Peoplesoft, etc), and the emerging awareness that usability means business (pun intended). Application integration practices have emerged to address the engineering challenges around enterprise systems that need to talk to one another. A potential bonus in these activities is the burden it removes from users as a single interface is enabled for complex, diverse systems. I asked the panel to what extent the PS practice benefits from such integration activities.