Abstract
Beside industrial product and solution business industrial services become increasingly important. The solution business for industrial plants poses challenges, which require the use of appropriate service information systems (SIS). In order to support the user actively during service execution the SIS developer needs to know these challenges to determine and prioritize the SIS requirements. If a gap remains between these challenges and the implemented requirements, tool-based support for industrial services can be increased significantly. This article introduces a concept to structure challenges and describes a meta-model which associates them to key concepts. By mapping key concepts to the implementation, SIS can be evaluated regarding the support they offer to cope with challenges. Results of this evaluation help tool suppliers to identify requirements of future versions and potential for innovation. It also gives support to service providers on deciding which SIS they should use to address their specific industrial service business.