Nowadays, the term "automation" is gaining extensive interest in both industrial and business fields. There is also a trend of achieving deeper automation in the business processes, which is a part of Business Process Automation (BPA). Among various BPA technologies, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has attracted increasing research attention. RPA is an emerging form of business process automation technology. The practice of performing RPA results in the deployment of attended or unattended software agents to an organization's environment. ChatBots, as the outcome of the development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, has been regarded as a potential and powerful tool to achieve such cognitive automation in service-oriented business processes. However, limited knowledge on the design road-map and approaches of ChatBot implementation in the Business process hinders the ChatBots further deployment into company practical operation. Herein, the research is focused on the question: How should ChatBots be implemented in service-oriented processes? Chapter Introduction contains the introduction of this study, including the background, problem statement, research question, and thesis structure.
Chapter Literature Review describes the background of business process management (BPM), ChatBot technology, and the current state of ChatBot-implementation in business processes. BPM holds great potential for significant cost saving and productivity improvement, and the lifecycle of BPM serves as one of the guidelines for ChatBot-implementation methodology designed in the next chapter. Chapter Methodology Design introduces the requirements, design strategy, description approach, and validation and evaluation of designing a ChatBot implementation methodology. The requirements of methodology design are described according to the limitation of the current ChatBot-implementation methodology. Then the methodology design strategy is proposed. The methodology can be developed based on the BPM lifecycle, which ensures the business processes covered by the BPM lead to consistently positive outcomes and delivers maximum value to the organization, together with the Quark ChatBot implementation methodology. Following is the approach to describe a methodology. It is crucial to depict the methodology with clear logic. The analytical framework of Sol can be regarded as a suitable approach to describe the ChatBot implementation methodology. The framework consists of three parts namely way of thinking, working, and modeling. Methodology validation and evaluation are described at last. To check the validity and evaluate the methodology, it is necessary to use a case study to execute the methodology. By employing the method of case study, the methodology can be practically performed to automate a process by implement ChatBots. Accordingly, the validity of methodology can be examined, and the limitation of the methodology can also be explored, laying the foundation for the further improvement of the methodology. Chapter ChatBot-implementation Methodology designs the ChatBot-implementation methodology according to the design strategy and description approach in Chapter Methodology Design. It follows the analytical framework of Sol (1982). Chapter Methodology Evaluation evaluates the ChatBot-implementation methodology. The Call Management process of Philips IT Global Services was chosen as an example case to apply the ChatBot-implementation methodology to obtain an automated process.
In Chapter Conclusion, conclusions are drawn. Research findings answer the previously mentioned research questions. The major contribution of this research is establishing a theoretical ChatBot-implementation methodology for service-oriented process automation. Although, there still are some limitations of the work. For further research on ChatBot-implemented process automation, efforts can be focused on the executable process model, the business process model towards the ChatBot model, the extension of methodology application, the multi-process ChatBot implementation methodology, and ChatBot-based business process management.