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A case study of an award-winning support system demonstrates the vital characteristics and primary design goals for generating peak performance.•he typical business operation has to address a variety of issues, not the least of which are rapidly changing business environments, training employees, satisfying and retaining customers. One of the responses to these challenges is the development of a relatively new type of software called Electronic Performance Support Systems, a term that is widely used but has no generally agreed-upon definition. One can characterize alp EPSS by its purpose, its design, and its development methodology.Expressions such as "just-in-time knowledge" or "delivering the right knowledge at the right time" are Iten used to describe EPSS. The immediate purpose of an EPSS is to support and enhance users' perforanee by providing them with the knowledge required by the task they are performing at the time they actually performing the task. This knowledge can be explicit, as in the case of information retrieved from a database and delivered to the user. It can also be implicit, such as the knowledge that goes into designing a graphical user interface data entry screen that guides the users efficiently through the task they are performing. Just-in-time knowledge delivery has strategic implications from a business Kevin Cole, Olivier Fischer, and Phyllis Saltzman viewpoint, two of which are training and adaptability to change. If the users of a system are adequately guided by the system itself toward the knowledge they need to accomplish their job, then the training requirements are drastically reduced. The training on the system itself is minimized by the intuitive design of the user COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM Juiy i 997/Vol. 40. No. 7

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