Download Managing Knowledge for the Digital Firm

Electronic Business & E-commerce technologies
Key applications for e-commerce & e-business:
• Email
• Groupware
• Voice mail
• Facsimile machine (fax)
• Digital information services
• Teleconferencing
• Dataconferencing
• Videoconferencing
• Electronic data interchange (EDI)
• Provides network-based capabilities for communication,
coordination and speeding the flow of purchase and sale
transactions
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Electronic Business & E-commerce technologies
Email &Groupware
• Eliminates long-distance telephone charges
• However use of email & internet has become an important
management issue – is monitoring employees using email/internet
ethical?
• Groupware provides additional capabilities for supporting enterprisewide communication and collaborative work
Voice mail & fax
• Voice mail system digitises the sender’s spoken message, transmits
it over a network and stores the message on disk for later retrieval
• Fax machines can transmit both text & graphics over a normal tel
line.
• A sending fax machine scans & digitises the document image. The
digitised document is transmitted over a n/w & reproduced in
hardcopy form by the receiving machine.
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Electronic Business & E-commerce technologies
Teleconferencing, Dataconferencing & Videoconferencing
• Teleconferencing allows a group of people to confer simultaneously
vie tel or vie email group communication s/w.
• Dataconferencing - Teleconferencing that includes the ability of 2 or
more people at distance locations to work on the same doc or data
simultanoeusly
• Videoconferencing – telconferencing in which participants see each
other over video screens
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Electronic Business & E-commerce technologies
Digital Information services, distance learning and e-learning
• Digital electronic services enable networked PC & workstation users to
obtain info from outside the firm without leaving their desks
• E.g: Stock prices, periodicals, competitor data, industrial supplies
catalogs, news articles etc
• Distance learning – education/training delivered over a distance to
individuals in one or more locations
• Distance learning experience is increasingly based on IT, including
video conferencing, satellite or cable television, or interactive
multimedia including the Web
• E-learning – instruction using purely digital technology such as CDROMs, internet or private networks
• Some distance learning programs use synchronous comm – teacher &
student are present at the same time during the instruction even if they
are at different locations
• Asynchronous comm – teacher & student don’t have person-to-person
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interaction at the same time or place
Electronic Business & E-commerce technologies
Electronic Data Interchange(EDI)
• Key tech for e-commerce as it allows the computer-to-computer
exchange between 2 organisations of std transaction docs such as
invoices or purchase orders.
• Lowers transaction costs as transactions can be automatically
transmitted from one info sys to another through a telecomm n/w,
eliminating the printing and handling of paper at one end and the
inputting of data at the other
• May provide strategic benefits by helping a firm lock in customers
• Can curb inventory costs by minimising the amount of time
components are in inventory
• EDI v/s email:
• EDU transmits an actual structured transaction(with distinct fields
such as transaction date, transaction amount, sender’s name)
• Email can transmit unstructured text message such as a letter
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Managing Knowledge for the Digital Firm
Management Challenges
• Designing knowledge systems that genuinely enhance
organizational performance
• Identifying and implementing appropriate organizational applications
for artificial intelligence
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Managing Knowledge for the Digital Firm
Office systems
• Manage and coordinate work of data and knowledge workers
• Connect work of local information workers with all levels and
functions of organization
• Connect organization to external world
• Example: Word processing, voice mail, and imaging
Document imaging systems
• Convert documents and images into digital form
• Can be stored and accessed by the computer
Knowledge repository
• Documented knowledge in a single location
Knowledge Work Systems (KWS)
• Aid knowledge workers in creation and integration of new
knowledge
• Specialized tools for specific types of knowledge work
• User-friendly interface
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Managing Knowledge for the Digital Firm
What is Artificial Intelligence?
• Effort to develop computer-based systems that behave as humans
• Includes:
– natural language
– Robotics – coordinated physical task
– perceptive systems – perceptual apparatus that informs physical
behavior & language
– expert systems – emulate human expertise & decision making
– intelligent machines –physical h/w that performs these tasks
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Managing Knowledge for the Digital Firm
Why Business is Interested in Artificial Intelligence?
Artificial Intelligence:
– Stores information in active form
– Creates mechanism not subjected to human feelings
– Eliminates routine and unsatisfying jobs
– Enhances organization’s knowledge base
– Generates solution to specific problems
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Managing Knowledge for the Digital Firm
Capturing Knowledge: Expert Systems
• Expert systems – are a common form of artificial intelligence.
• They are used to assist humans in the decision-making process, but they
don't replace humans.
• Expert systems ask questions, then give you advice and reasons why you
should take a certain course of action based on hard data, not on hunches.
Again, they don't make the final decision.
• Most of the problems an expert system helps resolve can in fact be solved
by a human. But since the computer is faster or safer, businesses choose to
use them instead.
• Capture the knowledge of skilled employees in the form of a set of rules.
Knowledge engineer
•
•
Specialist eliciting information and expertise from other professionals
Translates information into set of rules for an expert system
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Managing Knowledge for the Digital Firm
How expert systems work?
• Expert systems rely on a knowledge base built by humans based
on their experiences and knowledge. The base requires rules and
knowledge frames in which it can process data. When you think
about it, humans work the same way. You look out the window to
see if it's raining. If it is, then you grab your umbrella. If it's not
raining, then you don't. There you have it: a rule base.
• Knowledge frames "represent knowledge by organizing information
into chunks of interrelated characteristics." Your knowledge frame
would be comprised of the fact that when it rains, you get wet;
therefore you need to prevent that from happening.
• Yes, we used a very simplified example. Most expert systems
require thousands of rules and frames in which to operate. The
knowledge must be specific. In the example above, you wouldn't
take any action if the only information you had was "It rains 350
days a year in the Amazon rain forest." Neither would an expert
system.
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Managing Knowledge for the Digital Firm
How expert systems work? (cont’n)
• The AI shell (the programming environment of an expert system)
uses rules, frames, and an inference engine to accomplish its
tasks. The inference engine uses forward chaining or backward
chaining to move through the rules and the frames
• In our example, using a forward chaining inference engine, you
would start with the idea that it's raining. You'd move through a
series of decisions until you reached a conclusion and acted on it.
You would determine that it's raining, then you'd decide how much,
then you'd decide how wet you don't want to be, then you'd decide
to take an umbrella. As long as the answer continues to be yes, you
keep moving forward
• In a backward chaining inference engine, you'd start with a
hypothesis and work backward until your hypothesis is proved or
disproved. You got wet because it was raining; using an umbrella
would
have
prevented
that
from
happening
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Managing Knowledge for the Digital Firm
Rules in an AI Program
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Managing Knowledge for the Digital Firm
Forward chaining –
• Beginning on the left if user enters a client with income> $10000, the
engine will fire all rules in the sequence from left to right
• Processing continues until no more rules can be fired
Backward chaining – Should we add this person to the prospect db?
• Begin on the right of the diagram & work towards the left.
• You can see that the person should be added to the db if a sales
representative is sent, term Is granted, or financial advisor visits the client
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Managing Knowledge for the Digital Firm
Expert Systems
Egs of successful expert systems(Pg330)
• Galeria Kaufhof
• Countrywide Funding Corp.
You measure the success of an expert system by:
• Reduced errors
• Reduced cost, reduced training time
• Improved decisions
• Improved quality and services
• Happy users and happy customers
• Most problems solved by expert systems are mundane situations. "If
it's raining then take an umbrella." But what happens if it's cloudy
and only looks like it will rain? That's the exception to the rule about
which the human being should make the final decision. The expert
system might advise taking the umbrella along or leaving it home
based on the input. The human makes the final decision to take or
leave the umbrella.
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Managing Knowledge for the Digital Firm
Expert Systems
Problems with Expert Systems
• If you understand that expert systems can only do so much, you'll be
just fine. If you understand that they aren't people with the powers of
reasoning and intuition and therefore they can't make every
decision, you'll know when to override the system and when to go
with its output. Remember that everything in an Expert System is
based on IF this, THEN that. But we know not everything is black
and
white,
and
there
are
many
gray
areas.
• Expert systems should not replace managers. They can aid
managers in the decision-making process, but managers have to
make the final call. For instance, you suggest to your boss that you
should receive a pay raise. You have many subjective reasons why
you should receive the raise; you arrive early and stay late, your
work is always (well almost always) turned in on time, you filled in
for Sam while he was on vacation. What happens if your boss feeds
that into an expert system that uses only facts? You may or may not
get the raise. Your boss still needs to use intuition, reasoning, and
gut
reaction
to
make
the
final
decision.
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Managing Knowledge for the Digital Firm
Organizational Intelligence: Case-Based Reasoning (CBR)
• Captures and stores collective knowledge
• Represents knowledge as database of cases and solutions
• So far, we've concentrated on capturing the individual knowledge in
an expert system. Through practical experience, you've realized that
"two heads are better than one." Very seldom will only one individual
work on a project.
• What if you could tap into each person's experience and knowledge
on a collective basis? Take the best of the best from each one and
apply it to your needs. Then you give your knowledge to someone
else who will combine it with knowledge from others and continuing
building on "the best of the best." That's what a case-based
reasoning
(CBR)
system
does
best.
•
The Help files you find in most desktop software applications are built on a
case-based reasoning model. The technical support staff combines
thousands of customer queries into a single database of problems and
solutions and refines that information into a series of IF this is the problem,
THEN try this. Access the Help files in your desktop software and try it.
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Managing Knowledge for the Digital Firm
How CBR works
CBR represents knowledge as a db of past cases and their solutions. The system uses
a six-step process to generate solutions to new problems encountered by the user
1.
User describes the
problem
2.
System searches
database for similar
cases
3.
4.
5.
Case
database
System asks user
additional questions to
narrow the search
System finds closest
fit and retrieves
solution
System modifies the
solution to better fit
the problem
6.
System stores
problem and
successful solution
in the database
Successful?
Successful?
NO
YES
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Managing Knowledge for the Digital Firm
Businesses are interested in Artificial Intelligence to preserve the experience
and knowledge of their employees and use it to their competitive advantage.
Expert Systems emulate humans in the decision-making process but cannot
replicate
the intuition and reasoning that still require the human touch.
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