Skip to main content

Software Agents

Introduction

Software agents are an effective tool for virtual organisations because they provide mechanisms to automate several activities, such as gathering and filtering information, negotiating deals and synchronising business processes and workflows. Intelligent software agents can work on behalf of human knowledge workers, be it supplier or buyer or both. 

Software agents find applications in a variety of domains, including: B2B e- commerce, Internet-based information systems, robotics, smart systems, decision support systems, data mining and knowledge discovery.

Need of Software Agents 

1) Managing the Information Overload: The growth of the internet has led to an information overload. Today, a search for a term or keyword, on any of the search engines, results in thousands of websites. Agents are required to filter and sort-out this information, into manageable volumes.  
2) Decision Support: Agents can provide increased support to knowledge workers in the sphere of decision-making, by generating an enormous number of options, pruning them internally, and prioritising them, using various decision support methodologies.  
3) Repetitive Tasks: Agents can be used to automate several of the repetitive, time- consuming, and boring tasks. This would reduce costs and increase productivity, as for many actions user behaviour can be modelled based upon past actions.  
4) Knowledge Base: Agents can be modelled to act as experts in specific areas, where expertise is costly or rare, by building a knowledge base. Typically. the agents store three levels of knowledge. These are as follows:
 
i) First, common knowledge that assists in translating the user requirements into terms and specifications that can be understood by agents. 
ii) Second, domain knowledge of a conceptual data model, based on the information of a particular domain.  
iii) The final level comprises of knowledge about how to deal with different implementations of the same conceptual model. It may include information on data format transformation and protocol transformation.

Previous Next

 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Post

What is COVID-19 ?

COVID-19 is a disease caused due to the infection of novel coronavirus. The first case of COVID-19 disease was founded at Wuhan, China in December 2019. It also named as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). COVID-19 is the most widely spread disease ever in the world. In most cases it infects the respiratory system that causes fever, dry cough, and shortness of breath. Previous : What is the difference between coronavirus and COVID-19 ?
Post a Comment
Read more

EDI and Business

Organisation that Uses EDI     1) Wal-Mart : An EDI link between Wal-Mart and one of its suppliers, Seminole Manufacturing Co. cut the delivery time of Seminole slacks by 50%. This resulted in a 31% sales increase of these slacks in the first 9 months after the link was established.   2) General Motors : General Motors have integrated EDI Electronic funds transfer at 30% of its assembly plants. Shipping receipts are sent electronically from the GM plant to an Electronic Data System (EDS is subsidiary of GM) computer center where they are matched against electronic invoices and purchase orders.   Suppliers group the shipping receipts, and one payment is made. This single payment may represent dozens of different shipments to different plants. These payments are also performed electronically via Electronic Funds Transfers.   3) J C Penney : Sales of Stafford suits jumped 59% after JC Penney linked up with their supplier Lanier Clothes. EDI allowed Penney to quickl...
Post a Comment
Read more

EDI Maturity Model

The development of EDI within an organisation or a trade sector goes through a number of stages. Saxena and Wagenaar suggest a three stage EDI maturity model as a part of a three-way analysis of EDI development in organisations, trade sectors and nations.  Figure 2.20 shows the concept of EDI maturity with a six-stage maturity model, and links it to the opportunities for competitive advantage. The stages of EDI development as represented in the model are:  Stage 1:Discovery : The first stage in EDI development is the discovery stage. Discovery can be by an organisation choosing to adopt EDI to gain competitive advantage or to solve an administrative problem.  Stage 2: Introductory : This stage requires investment hardware and software but, atleast significant, will be the time commitment in establishing the parameters of the electronic trading relationship. This stage, on its own, does not result in any cost saving or efficiency gain. there are direct costs in computer ...
Post a Comment
Read more