Different groups within organisations are relatively autonomous-they control how their resources are consumed, by whom, at what cost, and in what time frame. They also have their own information systems, with their own idiosyncratic representations, for managing their resources. Given these characteristics, it was decided that the most natural way to view the business process is as a collection of autonomous, problem solving agents which interact when they have interdependencies. Agents perform the majority of their problem solving tasks without the direct intervention of humans or other agents, and they have control over their own actions and their own internal state. Agents interact, when they deem appropriate, with other artificial agents and humans in order to complete their problem solving and to help others with their activities.
Agents perceive their environment and respond in a timely fashion to changes which occur in it.
Links below describes the work undertaken to conceptualise business process management as a collection of intelligent agents. The application to BT's customer quote business process. The ongoing work and open issues. Managing Business Processes using Intelligent Agents, in Proc.