Improving business process efficiency with an artificial assistance system

This master’s thesis contributes to two communities: those concerned with the business process and the knowledge management community. Drucker (1999) has mentioned that, for today’s organisations, the performance of knowledge workers is especially important. However, a gap in the literature has been identified regarding the support of knowledge-intensive business processes through artificial assistance systems (AAS). The gaps identified mainly relate to friction points or economic effects with artificial chatbots. Based on this gap, the main research question was formulated: How can an artificial assistance system provide knowledge workers with procedural knowledge and business logic when executing business processes in order to improve efficiency? The research strategy of this thesis is design research. In order to answer the research question, the design science research model from Vaishnavi et al. (2004, p. 8) was applied and adapted. The proposal business process was derived as an application scenario with the help of a focus group; based on that process, an architecture for an artificial assistance system within the given context was developed. Eight example dialogs illustrate – as conversational design – how an artificial assistance system could support knowledge workers while executing the proposal process of the application scenario. A prototype of the system exemplifies how the system could be set up....