EMPIRICALLY TESTING ES SUCCESS FACTORS IN BUSINESS PROCESS REENGINEERING

Previously proposed success factors for Expert Systems implementation are field tested in the context of business process reengineering (BPR ) projects. Due to its nature mimicking human expert behavior, ES tech nology applications in BPR provide a unique opportunity to study major organization changes within a relatively short time. Using Pearson co rrelations and multivariate regression analysis, eight ES implementati on success factors proposed in the literature were empirically tested in this study in terms of their importance to the BPR benefits derived from the application. Sixty-two ES applications within E.I. Dupont de Nemours and Company dealing with business process changes significant enough to be called BPR were used. Despite the relatively small sampl e size, six of the eight success factors were corroborated: user satis faction with the ES, the importance and difficulty of the business pro blem addressed, user attitudes toward ES technology and the particular ES project, the degree of user involvement in the ES implementation p rocess, and the ES developer(s) skills.