Information supply for business processes: coupling workflow with document analysis and information retrieval

Explicit modeling of business processes and their enactment in work ̄ow systems have proved to be valuable in increasing the ef®ciency of work in organizations. We argue that enacted business processes Ð i.e. work ̄ow management systems Ð form a solid basis for adequate information support in complex and knowledge-intensive business processes. To support this claim we demonstrate results from two different projects. The VirtualOf®ce approach employs work ̄ow-context information to support high-precision document analysis and understanding in standard of®ce settings; the combination of work ̄ow context and document analysis allows for the automatic handling of incoming paper mail with respect to the appropriate work ̄ows. The KnowMore approach focuses on the support of people who work on knowledge-intensive tasks by automatic delivery of relevant and goal-speci®c information. To this end, work ̄ow context, an extended process model, and a detailed modeling of information sources are combined. q 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.