Knowledge Management Tools for Business Process Support and Reengineering

Abstract

Reengineering organizational processes is an imperative in today's business climate, and technology can play an important role in understanding, managing and reengineering business processes. In particular, what we call ‘knowledge management tools’ can be used to streamline process descriptions and deliver organizational knowledge in a timely and appropriate manner. These tools can also facilitate process reengineering by structuring previously informal work artifacts, enabling artifact reuse and promoting more effective organizational collaboration. This paper discusses two research and development collaborations that resulted in deployed knowledge management tools for a large business unit of AT&T, and discusses the importance of managing expectations, the need for existing process maturity, and the issue of knowledge maintenance in technology-driven business process reengineering. © 1996 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.