Context-sensitive Business Process Support Based On Emails

Thomas Burkhart; Dirk Werth; Peter Loos(2012)
In: International Workshop Messaging and Web of Data: Private meets Public (and vice-versa), World Wide Web Conference (WWW 2012),Lyon, France., DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2187980.2188212

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Abstract:

In many companies, a majority of business processes take place via email communication. Large enterprises have the possibility to operate enterprise systems for a successful business process management. However, these systems are not appropriate for SMEs, which are the most common enterprise type in Europe. Thus, the European research project Commius addresses the special needs of SMEs and characteristics of email communication, namely highly flexibility and unstructuredness. Commius turns the existing email-system into a structured process management framework. Each incoming email is autonomously matched to the corresponding business process and enhanced by proactive annotations. These context-sensitive annotations include recommendations for the most suitable following process steps. An underlying, self-adjusting recommendation model ensures most appropriate recommendations by observing the actual user behavior. This implies that the proposed process course is in no way obligatory. To provide a high degree of flexibility, any deviation from the given process structure is allowed.