Organizations often devote tremendous resources to implement workflow systems that allow users to request, obtain and process information. Organizations typically use internal web sites with FAQs, printed documentation, and administrative support help desks to help employees keep information update and accomplish various workflow tasks. Users may update databases through workflow (for structured or semi-structured information), document editing (for unstructured information), or through direct manipulation (for complex objects).
Consider an employee who wants to modify the automatic deposits that are made to her pension plan. Because she makes this type of modification rarely, she most likely does not know the appropriate procedure or where to find the appropriate form. In an organization, the employee can take one of several actions: (i) search the intranet web site for a FAQ that describes the procedure and provides the URL of the form; (ii) call the human resources department for help; (iii) delegate the task to an assistant, if she has one; or (iv) ask another employee if he knows how to solve this task. Regardless of the action taken, considerable “hunt time” (time to find the correct form) will be spent by the employee or other personnel. To reduce effort on this kind of task, organizations often devote substantial resources to prepare print and web documentation and maintain support staff.
Next, consider a manager who issues a request to a webmaster support staff member to: “Add a new employee, John Doe, to the website.” In the best case, the webmaster understands the request and has all the information needed to complete the task and notifies the manager of the result. More often, confusion, ambiguity, missing information, and mistakes abound that result in an e-mail “ping pong” involving clarification requests. For example, if every person on the website must be associated with a project, then the webmaster must seek additional information to address the manager's request. This results in additional employee time and corporate resources being spent to resolve the request.
In the foregoing scenarios, it can be seen that the hunt time of the employee to locate a resource to complete a task, as well as the human resources devoted to the execution of the task, are substantial. In addition, when a support person is involved in a request, the total time to complete a task increases, because support personnel typically are not readily available at all times to address requests.
In certain contexts, many companies monitor their internal work practices, looking for opportunities to transition problematic work—work practices that are still being developed—into procedural activities that can benefit from the productivity gains of automation. However, in doing so, companies often turn workers into “translator” service agents who convert their co-workers natural expressions of intent into the language and structures required by underlying information systems. Such translators may spend significant time performing mundane, repetitive, procedural tasks, typically in response to e-mail requests or other communications. Examples of procedural tasks include, without limitation, updates to web sites, new equipment purchases, reporting vacation days, registration of computers on networks, conference room reservations, new hires, and many others.
The problem of translation occurs mainly for tasks with the following three properties: (i) the requester has an intent that aligns with a procedural task, (ii) the requester knows who the service agent is that can process this request, and (iii) the requester performs the task infrequently. For example, consider the task of transferring a student from the waitlist at a university to a course roster. In this example, suppose the requester is a professor who has a clear intent that matches a procedural task. The professor knows that the service agent who can process this request is the department coordinator. The professor can express his intent via an e-mail to the service agent with the relevant information such as the student's name and the course identification number. While the professor may perform this task twice a year, it is infrequent enough that she has not inquired about learning how to make the update herself.
Companies may address the handling of this class of procedural tasks by assigning a service agent, such as the department coordinator mentioned above, to specialize in processing certain types of requests. Examples of service agents include, without limitation, administrative assistants, secretaries, webmasters, network administrators, purchasers, and other like personnel. While the update request is often infrequent for requesters, the work generally has high frequency for the service agents who by design of the company infrastructure support many other workers. In most cases service agents have many duties to perform, and these mundane, update tasks reduce time that can be devoted to tasks that require more creative thinking and problem solving.
Often when companies have procedural tasks that can be automated, solutions can be developed such as designing an invoicing system or a web site that allows users to register new computers on the network, for example. While this approach can be effective at improving productivity by eliminating the service agent, it may not be appropriate in all situations. A procedural task may have a low enough frequency that it would not be worth the expense to engineer a solution. In addition, workplace practices are generally dynamic. As a consequence of changes in the market, the law, customer needs, internal company policy, and in underlying information infrastructure, work practices evolve and engineered solutions often have a difficult time keeping pace with the changes. Examples of this breakdown are ubiquitous in the business world as evidenced by the number of printed forms augmented by workers with annotations and adhesive notes, for example, that address the mismatch between the current procedure and the form instrument.
In view of these issues and problems, what are needed are more effective and efficient processes and systems for facilitating and processing user requests to modify or update information.