Proposal

AIS SIGPAM: Special Interest Group on Process Automation

Edward A. Stohr, Stevens Institute of Technology
and
J. Leon Zhao, University of Arizona, Tucson

Background

The increasing speed and complexity of business requires that management pay more attention to intra-organizational and inter-organizational processes. This need is most acute in electronic commerce, where the integration of services and fast response times are crucial to attracting and maintaining customers. In the last few years, process automation and management has become a central theme in many businesses. Research areas addressing problems in this domain include: electronic commerce, business process reengineering, enterprise application integration, knowledge process management, groupware, workflow automation, electronic markets, and computer supported collaborative work (CSCW). These areas have unique research approaches, but have a common interest in using automation to support intra-organizational and inter-organizational work.

We believe that a special interest group on Process Automation and Management will be very beneficial to the AIS members who share a common interest in planning, designing, and managing business processes. We have chosen the name “process automation and management” to emphasize that the SIG has a broad scope that includes all of the research areas listed above.

SIGPAM will promote a range of research issues:

• Theories of conceptual, logical, and physical process modeling.

• Methodologies and tools of process automation and management

• Integration of business processes in both intra- and inter-enterprises

• Workflow automation and management for virtual enterprises

• Managing business processes on the Web

• Business process facilitation in synchronous and asynchronous environments

• Process modeling and management in electronic markets

• Workflow-centric component-based software engineering

• Change management in highly automated business processes

• Process flexibility, interoperability, and scaleability

• Process-driven knowledge delivery

Positioning

As far as we know, there are no similar SIGs in other associations, except for certain SIGs that overlap slightly with SIGPAM. For instance, ACM SIGGROUP in interested in “in topics related to computer-based systems that have a team or group impact in workplace settings”. However, it does not place a strong emphasis on “processes” like our proposed SIG will do. Through an extensive search on the Internet using one of the most powerful search engine, www.google.com, we only found a very small SIG called SuperEC SIG Workflow that include about 10 members, representing a number of industries in Australia. We will work with other non-for-profit organizations that have partial focus on process theories and applications such as the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC), the Workflow And Reengineering International Association (WARIA) and the CSCW Conference.

Our objective is to encourage broad international membership in the SIG. In fact, this will be essential, as so much valuable research in process automation and management is conducted outside of the United States. In particular, workflow automation is a much more popular research area in Europe than it is in the United States. A number of colleagues in Asia and Europe will help us develop this international dimension of the SIG.

Proposed Services

SIGPAM will provide the following services to its members:

1. A mailing list that focuses on distributing useful information on process-oriented research activities.
2. A quarterly bulletin, which will publish and archive important events, people, books, and conferences on process-oriented topics. To cut cost, the bulletin will be published digitally via email.
3. An annual workshop that will promote exchange and dissemination of research results on process automation and management. This workshop will be held in conjunction with a major informations systems conference (possibly AMCIS.)
4. A Web site that will house information archives, the quarterly bulletin, workshop papers, online discussion groups, an online bibliography, and other related resources.

To attract as many members as possible while still maintain financial solvency, we plan to have two classes of members, guest members and voting members. Guest members will be included in the mailing list, thus receiving information on important events and gaining access to e-mail-based discussions of issues in the field of process automation. Web services offered to guest members will include access to up-to-date references in the area of process-oriented topics and the ability to participate in online chat rooms. Voting members will be included in the mailing list and will also receive the SIGPAM bulletin, full access to Web resources, and participation in SIGPAM governance.

Membership Fees

We hope to self sustain the SIG’s activities through the collection of membership dues. Specifically, we will plan charge AIS members $10.00 per year as a nominal membership fee.

Conclusion

Establishing AIS SIGPAM will facilitate the integration of ideas and tools currently existing in the fragmented research areas mentioned above. By highlighting the core issues of understanding and harnessing business processes, new discoveries can be accelerated, and the transfer of knowledge can be expedited. SIGPAM will provide a new platform for the large research community that is focusing its energy in this increasingly important and rapidly evolving research area.