Project 2: Designing AI Workflows to Enhance HR Processes

Human Resource departments play a central role in organizations, managing processes such as recruitment, onboarding, employee administration, and internal communication. Despite the increasing availability of digital technologies, many HR processes remain only partially digitalized or still rely on manual activities. This often leads to inefficiencies, redundant data handling, and limited transparency in administrative workflows.

In many organizations, HR departments are aware of the potential benefits of automation and digital transformation but face difficulties in identifying where to start and how to design suitable solutions. In particular, small and medium sized organizations frequently lack concrete prototypes or demonstrators that illustrate how digital technologies can be applied to HR processes in practice.

Within the Process Innovation and Automation Lab, an experimental infrastructure has been established that enables the simulation and automation of digital business processes. The lab operates an instance of the open source ERP system ERPNext, which supports various HR related functionalities and provides extensive APIs for system interaction. In addition, automation platforms such as n8n are available for designing and orchestrating automated workflows.

This project aims to explore how typical HR processes can be automated by combining ERP systems and workflow automation tools. The goal is to develop a demonstrator prototype that illustrates how selected HR processes can be digitalized and automated. The resulting prototype should serve as a practical reference that can be presented to companies to demonstrate the potential of HR process automation. The project may be conducted in collaboration with an industry partner to ensure that the selected HR processes and automation concepts reflect real organizational requirements.

The goal of this project is to design and implement a prototype for the automation of selected HR processes using ERPNext and workflow automation tools.

Key objectives include:

1. Analyze typical HR processes in organizations and identify relevant use cases that are frequently manual or insufficiently digitalized (for example onboarding, leave management, employee data management, or internal requests).
2. Select one or more suitable HR processes and design a concept for their digitalization and automation within the ERPNext environment.
3. Design automated workflows that connect ERPNext with automation tools such as n8n to orchestrate process steps and system interactions.
4. Implement a prototype demonstrating how the selected HR processes can be automated within the lab infrastructure.
5. Evaluate the prototype and prepare a demonstration that can be used to illustrate HR automation opportunities to companies and practitioners. 

The final outcome should provide both a technical prototype and a conceptual understanding of how HR process automation can be implemented in practice.

References

• Stone, Dianna L.; Deadrick, Diana L.; Lukaszewski, Kimberly M.; Johnson, Richard (2015): The influence of technology on the future of human resource management. In: Human Resource Management Review 25 (2), S. 216–231. DOI: 10.1016/j.hrmr.2015.01.002.
• Strohmeier, Emma Parry and Professor Stefan (2014): HRM in the digital age – digital changes and challenges of the HR profession. In: Employee Relations 36 (4). DOI: 10.1108/ER-03-2014-0032
• Anthropic (Hg.) (2024): Building Effective AI Agents \ Anthropic. www.anthropic.com/engineering/building-effective-agents,
• ERPNext n8n Integration: Complete Actions and API Guide 2025 (2025). In: Hack'celeration, 04.12.2025. Online verfügbar unter https://hackceleration.com/erpnext-n8n/,
• Fettke, Peter; Di Francescomarino, Chiara (2025): Business Process Management and Artificial Intelligence. In: Künstl Intell 39 (2), S. 67–79. DOI: 10.1007/s13218-025-00891-y

Project Requirements

• Development of a project plan and distribution of tasks among group members
• Analysis and documentation of selected HR processes and their digitalization potential
• Design of automated workflows connecting ERPNext and automation tools (for example n8n)
• Development of a working prototype within the lab infrastructure
• Documentation of the technical architecture and implemented workflows
• Presentation of intermediate and final results

Prerequisites

• Students of Information Systems, Computer Science, or Software Engineering at bachelor or master level
• Interest in digital transformation, HR technologies, and process automation
• Basic programming skills or willingness to work with workflow automation tools
• Motivation to experiment with open-source platforms and system integrations

If you are interested in this porject, follow the steps below to submit your application.

1. Form a project group
Projects are typically carried out in groups of 3–5 students. We recommend forming a group with fellow students before applying.

2. Prepare your application
Send a short application including:

• your transcript of records
• a short motivation letter (about one page) explaining why your group is interested in the project.

3. Submit your application
Send your application via email to:jannis.nacke (at) icb.uni-due.de