Page 173 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

154 5 Innovative EC Systems: From E-Government to E-Learning, Knowledge Management, E-Health, and C2C Commerce

A Q&A system differs from frequently asked questions • Assist employees with advice on career development.
(FAQ) in that the content of an FAQ is fairly structured and • Provide support for teamwork and groups in social
limited in its size, concentrating on “frequently asked ques- networks.
tions.” In addition, an FAQ posts questions to choose from
while in a Q&A forum, users ask unstructured questions in a Software for such systems is made by companies such as
natural language. IBM and RightNow Technologies (an Oracle company). For
To begin, the computer needs to understand the questions benefits, features, and demonstrations, see Hivemine AskMe
(e.g., by using natural language understanding software); then, (hivemine.com/products.php#whyaskme) and AskMe’s
the computer can search for matching answers. There are sev- Product Data Sheet (hivemine.com/download/Hivemine
eral methods for computers to find the answers to such ques- %20AskMe%20Datasheet.pdf). Most expert location sys-
tions. One method is based on the use of Artificial Intelligence tems work in a similar manner, exploring knowledge bases
(AI) by using intelligent agents such as knowledge- based sys- for either an answer to the problem (if it exists there) or for
tems. Trying to reason automatically from historical cases is locating qualified experts. The general process is shown in
another popular approach. Figure 5.6.
The four steps of the process are:
Example: IBM PureSystems
IBM PureSystems are an Expert Integrated System family of 1. An employee submits a question to the ELS.
intelligent computer systems designed to help companies 2. The software searches its database to see if an answer to
solve IT challenges. They are based on Cloud Computing. the question already exists. If it exists, the information
For details, see ibm.com/ibm/puresystems/us/en/index. (research reports, spreadsheets, etc.) is returned to the
html. employee. If not, the software searches documents and
archived communications for an expert in the domain
Live Chat with Experts area.
3. Once an expert candidate is located, the system asks if he
Live chats with experts are becoming popular. For example, or she is able to answer the question. If so, the expert
you can chat with physicians practicing different specialties. submits a response. If the expert is unable to respond, he
You can do the same with many other professionals. Many or she can elect to reroute the question to the next appro-
companies provide live chat (similar to Yahoo Messenger or priate expert until one responds.
Facebook’s messenger). The waiting time for replies is usu- 4. After an answer to the question is found, it is reviewed for
ally short. accuracy by a corporate advisor and sent to the person
who made the query. At the same time, the question and
Chat with Avatars its response are added to the knowledge repository to be
used in future similar situations.
You can chat with avatars that use a collection of prepro-
grammed Q&A. Such a service is very inexpensive (but may Seeking Expertise in Social Networks
be not too accurate). The quality of the answers is increasing
as the knowledge base increases and as the ability of the Seeking expertise (and experts) is becoming a very popular
computer to understand natural language improves. For social activity. People post their queries on bulletin boards,
example, see Ted, the Virtual Investment Consultant at TD forums, and blogs and wait for responses. One of the features
Ameritrade (tdameritrade.com/virtualclient/about.html). of LinkedIn is the free “Help Forum,” where users can post
questions to get help from forum members or start a
Expert Location Systems discussion.

Expert/expertise location systems (ELS) are interactive
computerized systems that help employees locate experts Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Systems
within their organization in order to get help in solving spe-
cific, critical business or technical problems, in a short time. There is an increasing trend to make e-commerce “smarter.”
Expertise location systems are designed to: As seen in Chapter 2, Web 3.0 presumes to enable systems to
exhibit more intelligence. This means more automation in
• Identify experts in specific domain areas inside organi- various e-commerce activities. For example, the area of
zations. machine translation of languages is already helping people
• Link people to information about such experts and enable to buy online products that are advertised in languages they
contacts with them. do not speak. Similarly, machine translation can help people