Monday, September 9, 2002		Book Review

ORDERING underwear over the Internet, that is just a souped-up version of telephones, is neither especially new nor particularly interesting. Just because business is on the Net doesn’t mean that it will survive. And the Internet doesn’t stand at the heart of all prosperous e-businesses.

It is not essential that to flourish in the new economy, businesses will have to expand their operations into cyberspace. The Net will be merely a tool and only those who will have a new kind of intellectual software would be able to grow and transact business.

This is what Larry Smith, the author of the book, wants to say. The author reels off the names of various companies that perished because of faulty business practices despite having viable portals and B2B platforms. These companies went by the hyped up frenzy rather than pragmatic commercial sense to meet their nemesis.

The book labels such intellectual software as expert systems. Such expert systems would be sets of computer applications for business. Tailor-made software now in development that will impose order on information chaos, force us to make correct decisions, reduce waste and decrease costs.

The author says that competition would keep growing stronger because there is no obstacle in its path. The principle economic effect of the Internet is to intensify every form of competition. Companies must use the Internet to sell, market and source; otherwise their competitors would do so gaining the advantage.

The book says that the Internet is "no more than a stage upon which the drama is presented." For a commercial project to succeed relevant computer-related profit tools are a must. From the down most level to the upper most one there have to be fewer mistakes and faster responses.

However, while developing relevant software a lot needs to be kept in mind. Users and clients do not look for solutions systematically. They rely on old approaches because "society and business community" are conservative at heart. No wonder that the user does not know how computing applies to his business or a task. It is here that the expert system comes into focus.

The writer is of the view that within expert system there are bound to be failures as there are without expert systems. Failures are a part of expert systems. For an expert system, and in turn business, to succeed what matters is the content of information flowing on the Internet and the means to interpret that content. This is impossible without expert system.

Without effective search engines, the promise of the Internet and the age of information cannot be achieved. To seek answer to specific question expert search engines using expert databases would be needed.

The writer says that search engines do not give significantly improved results until the focus of attention is on the user and the user needs. And expert developers who develop expert systems need to observe the users rather than they telling them what they are doing because of communication gaps that might crop up. All this is needed to develop relevant hypotheses. After developing a hypotheses expert developers test them.

There are a large number of complex problems that appear suited to expert systems. These can be found in most businesses and non-profit organisations like hospitals and schools. Software used should be capable of expressing the data within its instruction set. There is a full possibility of a new breed of software developers to emerge that would develop the most elite of the expert systems.

Expert systems would be indispensable to modern management because managers and executives would be able to sift through and evaluate a mass of continually changing data.

The most important benefit of the expert system would be the ability to give time to think to managers. Since routine work would fade under the pressure of expert systems, the need to reorient workers would become a matter of highest social and economic priority.

With tailor-made software available general software developers might find themselves at receiving end.