6. Intelligent agents
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Intelligent agent technology helps businesses and decision makers navigate through large amounts of data to locate and act on information that is considered important.
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Intelligent agents are software programs that work in the background without direct human intervention to carry out specific, repetitive, and predictable tasks for an individual user, business process, or software application.
• The agent uses a limited built-in or learned knowledge base to accomplish tasks or make decisions on the user’s behalf, such as deleting junk e-mail, scheduling appointments, or finding the cheapest airfare to California.
• There are many intelligent agent applications today in operating systems, application software, e-mail systems, mobile computing software, and network tools. Of special interest to business are intelligent agents that search for information on the Internet.
Figure 10-13
Intelligent Agents in P&G’s Supply-Chain Network
Intelligent agents are helping Procter & Gamble shorten the replenishment cycles for products, such as a box of Tide.
10.4 Systems for Managing Knowledge
Two Major Types of Knowledge Management Systems
1. Enterprise-wide knowledge management systems
1.1 Enterprise Content Management systems
1.2 Knowledge Networks Systems
1.3 Collaboration Tool and Learning Management Systems
- Web technologies such as blogs , wiki, social bookmarking , LMS
2. Knowledge work systems
-Requirements of Knowledge work systems
-Example of knowledge work systems
1. ENTERPRISE-WIDE KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
Firms must deal with at least three kinds of knowledge.
1. Structured knowledge / explicit knowledge
– Structured knowledge is explicit knowledge that exists in formal documents, as well as in formal rules that organizations derive by observing experts and their decisionmaking behaviors. Knowledge exists within the firm in the form of structured text documents (reports and presentations).
2. Semistructured knowledge
– Semistructured knowledge is Informal documents within e-mail, voice mail, chat room exchanges, videos, digital pictures, brochures, or bulletin board postings.
3. Unstructured /tacit knowledge
– There is no formal or digital information of any kind, and the knowledge resides in the heads of employees. Much of this knowledge is tacit knowledge and is rarely written down
80 percent of an organization’s business content is semistructured or unstructured—information
The meaning of Enterprise-wide knowledge management systems
• Enterprise-wide knowledge management systems deal with all three types of knowledge. Enterprise-wide knowledge management systems are general-purpose ,firm wide systems that collect, store, distribute, and apply digital content and knowledge. These systems include capabilities for searching for information, storing both structured and unstructured data, and locating employee expertise within the firm. They also include supporting technologies such as portals, search engines, collaboration tools (e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, blogs, social bookmarking, and groupware) and learning management systems.
1.1 Enterprise Content Management Systems
• 80 percent of an organization’s business content is semistructured or unstructured—information in folders ,messages, memos, proposals, e-mails, graphics, electronic slide presentations, and even videos created in different formats and stored in many locations.
Enterprise content management systems help organizations manage both
types of information. They have capabilities for knowledge capture, storage, retrieval, distribution, and preservation to help firms improve their business processes and decisions. Such systems include corporate repositories of documents, reports, presentations, and best practices, as well as capabilities for collecting and organizing semistructured knowledge such as e-mail (see Figure 1014). Major enterprise content management systems help users to access external sources of information, such as news feeds and research, and to communicate via e-mail, chat/instant messaging, discussion groups, and videoconferencing.
A key problem in managing knowledge
• A key problem in managing knowledge is the creation of an appropriate classification scheme to organize information into meaningful categories. Once the categories for classifying knowledge have been created, each knowledge object needs to be “tagged,” or classified, so that it can be easily retrieved. Enterprise content management systems have capabilities for tagging, interfacing with corporate databases where the documents are stored, and creating an enterprise portal environment for employees to use when searching for corporate knowledge.
• Digital asset management systems help them classify, store, and distribute these digital objects such as photographs, graphic images, video, and audio content.
Figure 10-14
An Enterprise Content Management System
1.2 Knowledge Network Systems
• Knowledge network systems, also known as expertise location and management systems , address the problem that arises when the appropriate knowledge is not in the form of a digital document but instead resides in the memory of expert individuals in the firm.
• Knowledge network systems provide an online directory of corporate experts in well-defined knowledge domains and use communication technologies to make it easy for employees to find the appropriate expert in a company.
Some knowledge network systems go further by systematizing the solutions developed by experts and then storing the solutions in a knowledge database as a best-practices or frequently asked questions (FAQs) repository
see Figure 10-15). Ask Me, Tacit ActiveNet, and Xpert SHARE provide tools for internal corporate use. Tacit offers another service called Illumio, which allows users to solicit expertise from friends, colleagues, and business experts over the open Internet.
Figure 10-15
An Enterprise Knowledge
Network System
A Knowledge network maintains a database of firm experts, as well as accepted solutions to known problem ,and then facilitates the communication between employees looking for knowledge and experts who have the knowledge. Solutions created in this communication are then added to a database of solutions in the form of frequently asked questions (FAQs), best practices, or other documents.
1.3 Collaboration Tools and Learning Management Systems
• Companies are starting to use consumer Web technologies such as blogs, wikis, and social bookmarking for internal use to foster collaboration and information exchange between individuals and teams. Blogs and wikis help capture, consolidate, and centralize this knowledge for the firm.
• Wikis are inexpensive and easy to implement. Wikis provide a central repository for all types of corporate data that can be displayed in a Web browser, including electronic pages of documents, spreadsheets, and electronic slides, and can embed e-mail and instant messages. Although users are able to modify wiki content contributed by others, wikis have capabilities for tracking these changes and tools for reverting to earlier versions.
• A wiki is most appropriate for information that is revised frequently but must remain available perpetually as it changes.
• The Interactive Session on Organizations describes some of these corporate uses of Web 2.0 tools. As you read this case, try to identify the problem these companies
were facing, what alternative solutions were available to management, and how well the chosen solution worked.
Social bookmarking & LMS
• Social bookmarking makes it easier to search for and share information by allowing users to save their bookmarks to Web pages on a public Web site and tag these bookmarks with keywords. These tags can be used to organize and search for the documents. Lists of tags can be shared with other people to help them find information of interest. The usercreated taxonomies created for shared bookmarks are called “folksonomies.”
• For International popular 0f social bookmarking sites are http://www.del.icio.us / http://www.designfloat.com • In Thailand http://www.madigg.com / http://www.zickr.com
Companies need ways to keep track of and manage employee learning and to integrate it more fully into their knowledge management and other corporate systems.
• A learning management system (LMS) provides tools for the management, delivery, tracking, and assessment of various types of employee learning and training.
Knowledge work systems require strong links to external knowledge bases in addition to specialized hardware and software.
Figure 10-16 Requirements of Knowledge Work Systems
2. KNOWLEDGE WORK SYSTEMS (KWS)
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Knowledge work systems (KWS) are specialized systems for engineers, scientists, and other knowledge workers that are designed to promote the creation of knowledge and to ensure that new knowledge and technical expertise are properly integrated into the business.
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Requirement of Knowledge Work Systems Knowledge work systems give knowledge workers the specialized tools they need, such as powerful graphics, analytical tools, and communications and document management.
• These systems require great computing power to handle the sophisticated graphics or complex calculations necessary for such knowledge workers as scientific researchers, product designers, and financial analysts. Because knowledge workers are so focused on knowledge in the external world, these systems also must give the worker quick and easy access to external databases.
Examples of Knowledge Work Systems
Major knowledge work applications include computer-aided design (CAD) syst