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8.3. STAGE 3: AUTOMATED AND SUPPORT ES APPLICATIONSStage 3 is completed through use of ES applications in the sections described above. Coupled with electronic audit trails, many routine decisions and tasks are automated within the organization, and many others are supported by ES. In marketing and sales, ES help the organization establish better relationships and partnerships with their customers, better match products to customer needs, and to increase profit margins through improved pricing. Outside the organization, customers have direct access to powerful ES tools provided by the organization to help them understand and purchase products, as well as maintain and repair products. Many products also have embedded ES for improved performance and service. 8.4. STAGE 4: IPSS AND KNOWLEDGE DISCOVERYIn Stage 4, Centers of Expertise (COE) are formed that are responsible for the collecting, learning, organizing, and distributing of knowledge for core competencies and other domain specialities of importance to the organization. COE educate and certify workers in their specialities, provide qualified workers and consulting services both online and in person to clients, and set and enforce standards for their specialities. COE also create, maintain, and enhance knowledge repositories and IPSS through internal and external research, as well as employee and organizational feedback. Other artificial intelligence disciplines are also applied to solve business problems. In particular, machine learning techniques are applied for dynamic optimization of resource allocation and workload scheduling applications, resulting in dramatic gains in performance. Machine learning is also used for knowledge discovery and data mining (Fayyad et. al., 1996), as well as to detect trends in data, such as MIS data. Intelligent Assistants, combined with natural language understanding and text generation, are used to search for, select, and summarize news stories on certain topics. The most dramatic performance gains will come from the deployment of Integrated Performance Support Systems (IPSS) that provide employees with coordinated services for task information, advice, training, job aids, reference, and administrative and personal resources to meet organizational and individual needs. These services might include sophisticated automation of and/or support for task processing and structuring; tutoring; problem-solving; decision-making; and information analysis through knowledge discovery and data mining techniques. Creating the knowledge organization could be the next great challenge for the application of ES in business. If, as some authors on strategic management have claimed, knowledge is the only real source of competitive advantage, then knowledge organizations may be the primary competitive weapon of the future. And if this is so, then knowledge engineers and business applications of ES have a very bright future indeed. REFERENCES
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