Information Chains in Personalised Business Processes

Personalised services and business processes are adapted to customer’s personal data and attributes to address them among others according to their interests and to offer them individual discounts. This chapter investigates information chains regarding customer’s personal data and on the two types of scenarios with personalised services according to the communication relationship of customers with service providers. If personalised services are combined in a business process, some service providers act on behalf of customers. In this case, a customer does not use directly each service in a business process but uses it in a 1:n:m communication relationship via another service provider which is called his proxy. For this purpose, a customer delegates some personal data or attributes to his proxy so that this proxy is able to use subordinate services according to customer’s interests. Automation of business processes is realised by coupling autonomous services, e.g. web services, to establish an information system for the purpose of a business process.

Section 3.1 introduces personalised services by their goals and support of information systems. Section 3.2 classifies business processes by their communication relationships of customers who either directly or indirectly interact with service providers. Concerning personal data, a direct communication relationship focus on disclosing personal data where an indirect communication relationship focus on the use of disclosed personal data. Section 3.3 shows that privacy violations are a hurdle for service providers to offer personalise services. Section 3.4 presents a case study as an example for personalised services with direct and indirect communication relationships: loyalty programs. Section 3.5 presents a case study where autonomous software programs, intelligent software agents, act on behalf of a customer in order to arrange a travel. Section 3.6 concludes this chapter.

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