Knowledge management for best practices

Abstract

Perhaps one of the most celebrated and significant recent developments in information systems in business has been business process reengineering (BPR; e.g., Hammer 1990 and Davenport 1993). Businesses now have entire departments of reengineering with vice presidents of reengineering or their equivalent reported in about half of Fortune 500 companies. Staffs in those departments have been reported to be as large as 150 people.1 Business process reengineering has ubstantial support for reengineering efforts has been incorporated into reengineering tools.2 Recently re-searchers have focused on using artificial intelligence (AI) in developing those tools.3 However, little research has been conducted on the extent to which those research developments have been captured in current reengineering tools. In addition, the research literature on the application of AI to reengineering is just being developed, and some aspects of reengineering are not addressed. For example, few knowledge-based systems focus on capturing the knowledge necessary to reengineer a specific process or even help decide whether a company is ready to launch a reengineering project. Given this context, in this article we • Define reengineering; • Investigate current usage of AI in reengineering tools, based on a survey of tool developers; • Review existing research literature on the use of AI to facilitate and support reengineering efforts; and • Discuss a particular “best practices” knowledge-based system designed to facilitate and support reengineering of procurement systems. This system is based on the acquisition and categorization of relevant procurement knowledge and demonstrates that knowledge-based systems can be an important part of knowledge management. As a result, this article will identify many of the important efforts designed to integrate AI with reengineering tools. The discussion will be of interest to those who have identified the need or desire to embed AI into reengineering tools. It will also help those who are interested in the benefits of embedding AI into reengineering tools. Finally, it provides a general introduction to reengineering business processes and the support of reengineering using computer-based tools.