Exploring expert system success factors for business process reengineering

Abstract

Business process reengineering (BPR) has become the buzzword representing dramatic changes to the business processes of organizations trying to quickly preempt or react to market opportunities and competition. Much of the changes are enabled by computer-based technology such as expert systems (ES) providing a unique opportunity to study significant implementations of the technology within a relatively short time. Eight ES implementation success factors proposed in the literature were empirically tested in this study in terms of their direct and indirect importance to the benefits from using ES in BPR. Sixty-two ES applications within E.I. Dupont de Nemours dealing with business process changes significant enough to be called BPR were used. Despite the relatively small sample size, four of the eight success factors were corroborated: user satisfaction with the ES, the difficulty of the business problem addressed, the degree of user involvement in the ES implementation process, and characteristics of the ES shells.