Business Expert Systems--Gaining A Competitive Edge

Clyde W. Holsapple University of Kentucky College of Business and Economics Lexington, Kentucky ABSTRACT This paper identifies and examines strategic opportunities and challenges that a newly emerging technology presents to managers. With the recent advent of very powerful tools for implementing business-oriented expert systems, practical managerial applications of automated reasoning techniques are beginning to appear. Senior management should be aware of the strategic implications of this technology for gaining a competitive edge and avoiding competitivedisadvantage.

Andrew B. Whinston University of Texas at Austin Department of Management Science and Information Systems Austin, Texas sales quotas. The resultant increase in sales manager productivity, due to more efficient and effective quota determinations, translates into an enhanced competitive standing for the company.
2) Management of a chemical manufacturer decides on a competitive strategy that focuses on devising solutions to individual problems in order to sell chemicals. Deriving and explaining solutions to complex customer problems requires extensive expertise. The company implements its strategy by capturing such expertise in expert systems that are readily available to each member of its sale force.
3) A retail bank aims to improve its competitive positionby offering aunique investment banking service to its customers. It uses an expert system to recommend customized financing plans tailored to meet special individual needs of its retail customers.

Introduction Convincing arguments have been made that top management should consider the competitive opportunities afforded by information systems technology [l]. We contend that similar attention should be given to the opportunities offered by a comparatively new computer-based technology: expert systems. Information systems technology is concerned with the storage, maintenance, retrieval andtransmission of information. Airline reservation systems and various interorganizational purchasing and ordering systems are well documented examples of information systems that provide competitive advantages [2]. The information dealt with by the above systems is but one kind of knowledge, namely descriptive knowledge, about an organization and its environment. Another type of knowledge that is very important to an organization is its reasoning knowledge, its expertise about what actions or conclusions are valid when certain situations exist. Just as computerization of descriptive knowledge in the guise of information systems can lead to a competitive edge, so too can the computerization of reasoning knowledge in the business expert systems. Consider the following examples:
1) A large drug company provides each of its sales managers with an expert system that provides advice about establishing

The technology of expert systems is just beginning to make itself felt in the business world. Business expert systems offer an important new mechanism for creating sustainable competitive advantages acrossabroadrangeof industries. Identifying such opportunities,along with the challenges they present, is the central purpose of this article. We begin with a brief look at the nature of expert systems. Exvert Systems: An Overview Expert system technology is a branch of artificial intelligence that aims at making computers capable of emulating human reasoning behavior [3]. An expert system can be consulted in much the same spirit as advice is sought from a human expert. A user poses a specific problem to the expert system. Like its human counterpart, it might ask the user for further information tohelpclarify ormore fully describe the nature of the problem. Like the human expert, its objective is to offer some advice, recommendation,or solution tothe user. To meet this objective, the software portionof anexpert systemdraws onrelevant fragments of reasoning knowledge that exist in its repository of stored expertise.

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The stored fragments of expertise can

be thought of as rules. Each rule specifies that if certain conditions can be establish-

ed as true, then certain conclusions can be regarded as being valid. Exhibit I shows a few simple rules [ 4 ] . The expert system software that works with such rules when attempting to solve a problem is calledan inference engine. At various junctures in the process of identifying and applying rules that are relevant to a particular problem, the inference engine (like a human expert) may need yet more information from the user. In such cases, it simply requests the desired information. Before answering, the user may want to know why such a request is being made. On demand, the inference engine can explain why. Provided sufficient, pertinent rules of reasoning are available to it, the inference engine uses them to infer a solution for a specific problem. Once a solution is reported, the user may want to know what line of reasoning was constructed in the course of the inference. Like a human expert, an expert system is able to explain itself, stating why the inferred recommendation is justified in light of the specified problem and available expertise for reasoning about that problem. The diagram in Exhibit I1 illustrates the interplay between the three parts of an expert system and a user. Human experts are able to reason with and about uncertainties in such a way that a recommendation can be accompanied by some degree of certainty.

Similarly, an expert system should be able to state its inferred result in such a way that its certainty about that result is clear. Like a human expert, an expert system should also be able to offer multiple solutions for a given problem and indicate how sure it is about each. In a business expert system the stored expertise is concerned with reasoning knowledge about some class of business problems such as setting sales quotas, evaluatingproductmixes, pricing, production scheduling, or financing. It is now possible for a business expert system to go beyond the conventional notions of an expert system, in that its inference engine is able to process much more than stored rules of reasoning. It is also able to process data bases, spreadsheets, procedural models, text, g.raphs, and so forth on an "as needed" basis in the midst of solving a problem. Like the manager that it emulates, a business expert system should be able to look up, calculate, present and otherwise manipulate the descriptive knowledge that is integral to the activity of inferring a solution [ 4 ] . It is this relatively new kind of system that we now examine from a competitive strategy viewpoint. Comwetitive Stratesies Traditionally, the reasoning knowledge embodied in an organization's employees has provided an important basis for achieving, improvingandmaintaining its competitive

RULE: R1 IF: SALES > 1.15*QUOTA THEN: BASE = QUOTA+(SALZS-l.l5*QUOTA) REASON: In cases where the sales for this product exceeded the quota by more than 15%, the base amount for the new quota is set to the past quota plus the excess sales amount. RULE: R7 IF: GROWTH > = .02 AND GROWTH < . 0 4 AND UNEMPLOYMENT < .055 THEN: ECONOMY = "good" REASON: The economic outlook is good because projected unemployment is less than 5.5% and the anticipated growth rate is between 2 % and 4 % .

RULE: R9 IF: GROWTH < - 0 2 OR UNEMPLOYMENT > = - 0 8 2 THEN: ECONOMY = ftpoor'l REASON: The economic outlook is poor because either the anticipated growth rate is very low or projected unemployment is high or both. RULE: R10 IF: ECONOMY = "good" AND LOCALADS > 2000 THEN: LAFACTOR = LOCALADS/lOOOOO REASON: When the economy is good and local advertising exceeds $2,000, the local advertising factor is 1% for every thousand dollar expenditure. Exhibit I. Sample Rules that Pertain to Recommending Sales Quotas

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poses problem

asks f o r and rcceives

User Interface

lnference Engine

Stored Expertise

-5-*

position. All else being equal, organizations without comparable expertise are at a disadvantage. With business expert systems, there is an opportunity to amplify the competitive advantage derived from superior know-how. To the extent that the expertise captured in an expert system is unique or not widely known, a sustained advantage results. Unlike information systems, interesting expert systems cannot be readily reproduced without access to the details of their stored expertise. Such an expert system can be used openly, but as long as it has sufficient security provisions to protect the details of its reasoning knowledge from disclosure, the competitiveadvantage it furnishes endures. I n a sense, it is an intellectual property right, similar to a patent without a predetermined expiration date. Like information systems, expert systems can be used to implement a competitive strategy. Michael Porter has observed that competitive strategies fall into three categories [ 51. One strategy is based on the i d e a o f p r o d u c i n g g o o d s o r s e r v i c e s a t a lower cost than competitors. Another strategy is based on brand differentiation, which involves offering a unique and attractive mix of product features. A third basic strategy is to concentrate in a special market nichewith aproductthathaslittle direct competition because of its remarkable features or cost advantages. These basic strategies suggest three ways in which business expert systems can contribute to an organization's competitiveness: enhancing internal productivity providing enhanced services providing new services On a larger scale, an organization could looktobusiness expert systems as part of a strategy aimed at spawning a completely new industry. An example of each type of contribution is explored in the sections that follow. Enhancins Internal Productivity The national sales force of a large drug company i s partitioned into geographic

regions. Foreachregion, a salesmanager oversees the goals and performance of sales representatives. Topmanagement perceives that a key to enhancing competitiveness lies with increasing the productivity of its sales managers. One element of this strategy revolves around an expert system that assists each sales manager in the determination of sales quotas. Each sales rep sells the company's fifteen product lines to clinics and hospitals in a prescribed territory. For each rep, a sales manager is required to set a sales quota for each product line for each month. Because a regionhas anywhere from ten to twelve reps, a sales manager must establish from 1800 to 2160 quotas at the beginning of eachnewyear. Ideally, each quota should take into account such factors as product line traits, seasonal trends, territorydemographics,priorrepperformance, local and national advertising plans, the expected economic conditions for the territory, and competitors' performance in the region. Top management believes that the scale of this task has historically detracted from sales results. Management is also concerned about the consistency and fairness of quotas assigned to reps both within and across regions. This is important not only for bonus calculations, but also for sales force morale and motivation. The expert system for giving quota advice addresses all of these concerns. The rules built into it are distilled from a top sales manager's approach to reasoning about quotas. The expert system for setting sales quotas enhances salesmanager productivity in two ways. First, it can increase efficiency by reducing the time and effort that a sales manager expends on this activity. The gain can be applied to other activities (e.g. , rep training) that positively impact saleswithin the region. As a result the company is more competitive because its sales managers have an efficiency advantage over their counterparts in competing companies. Second, the expert system can increase effectiveness by utilizing expertise that is otherwise unavailable

0073-1 129/90/~/0249$01.00 0 1990 lEEX

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to many sales managers. The best that the company can offer in this area is replicated in a consistent fashion throughout the organization. A competitor may have managers whose expertise rivals that of the sales manager emulated by the expert system. But so long as that expertise is not distributed within the competing organization,it operates at a relative disadvantage. It does not maximize the productivity of its sales managers. In contrast, the quota expert system is easily distributed to all sales managers in the pharmaceutical firm. It provides timely advice, is able to operate around the clock, does not get sick, does not take vacations, and does not resign. It is not tied up in meetings, away on business, or otherwise incommunicado. Its advice is consistent. It is thorough and methodical. It does not overlook important factors, skip steps, or forget. All else being equal, the quota expert system yields a competitive advantage due to more ef ficient and effective use of sales management resources. The sales quota case is but one example of how an organization can use expert system technology to implement a competitive strategythat aims at enhanced internal productivity. It can be applied at all levels of organizational decision making. Anthony has identified three levels in the continuum of decision processes: strategicplanning,management control and operational control [ 61 At one end of the decision making spectrum, strategic planning is concerned with decisions about objectives and policies. Management control is concerned with managing resources to meet objectives and conform to policies. At the other end of the spectrum operational control involves the exercise of precisely specified decision rules to decide what actions to undertake. At one extreme, operational control problems tend to be routine and highly structured. At the other extreme, s t r a t e g i c p l a n n i n g p r o b l e m s t e n d to be less routine and less structured (i.e., l'fuzzy") [ 7 ] .

simple rules that clerks use to determine how regular shipments are to be sent. But rush orders are not unusual and they require much greater expertise to handle effectively. The carrier selected for such a shipment depends on factors such as the time of day, day of the week, holiday proximity, destination, and shipment size. An expert system that can offer customized shipping advice forthe exceptional cases enhances the productivity of the clerks and their supervisor alike. At each level of decision making, there are problems amenable to expert system assistance. All of these should be considered as ways for creating competitive advantages through enhanced internal productivity. Some of these productivity increases may lead to cost advantages, as suggested by Porter. But lower cost is not the only possible manifestation of enhanced productivity. As in the case of the quota expert system, there is also more effective and efficient decision making. It can increase sales or market share not only through a direct increase in " g e r productivity, but also through the more responsible and motivated sales force that can result from fair and consistent quotas. Providins Enhanced Services A large division of a chemical company supplies a broad line of chemicals to industrial customers. Many ofthe chemicals have multiple uses and often there may be several chemicals that could, alternatively or in tandem, meet a particular customer need. In many cases a customer does not know what amounts of what chemicals will meet its needs. Management decides to implement a competitive strategy that enhances the services provided to customers. Instead of merely selling chemicals, the company will provide solutions. The company will help a customer to clarify the problem faced, offer expert advice about solving that problem, and justify the advice that is offered. Sufficient in-house expertise exists for handling the diverse, technical problems that customers face. But the catch to implementing the full solution strategy is the delivery of this expertise. Training technical sales reps to deliver the current pitch which describes traits and uses of the company's products is already a costly, lengthy and time-consuming endeavor. Even with extensive training, sales reps often find it difficult to match customer's perceived needs (typically described in very technical terms) with product offerings. Further training that enables a rep to help in clarifying a customer's actual problem, to offer and explain solutions, will not be practical. Such training cannot be expected to result in a satisfactory implementation of the competitive strategy.

In the case of the drug company, setting sales quotas is an example of a management control problem. An expert system that offers sales quota advice can assist in the effective utilization of a sales manager's resources. Adifferent kind of problem that confronts the company from time to time is whether to take on a new product line or eliminate an existing product line. These are examples of strategic planning problems. They require considerable expertise to solve and could also benefit from expert systems. Many of the company's operational control problems are also appropriate for expert systems. For instance, the shipping department has a few

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There is also the prospect that highly trainedreps canbe lured awaybycompetitors, so that the company serves as a training ground for its competitors. Furthermore, there are limits to what a sales rep can absorb while still actively making sales calls. Even the problem solving ability of an in-house expert has limits. Individuals who are experts about everything are rare indeed. However, the collective know-how of these experts is formidable. A possible alternative to implementing the full solution strategy would be to make the in-house experts directly accessible to customers. Together they would form a technical sales support staff. When a rep encounters a problemthat he or she cannot handle, it is referred to an appropriate expert in the support staff. This expert then helps define and solve the problem and explains the solution. There are several difficulties with this approach. The experts typically are not especially skilled in sales techniques. Their expertise is important for post-sale customer support and for the research and development of new products. The experts are neither numerous nor inexpensive. As a result, customer referrals would need to be queued. Responses may not be timely and unhealthy contention for expert support may arise among sales reps.
If it were not for the scarcity and cost of experts, the ideal implementation strategy would be for each sales rep to have an agreeable technical support staff at his or her side as sales calls are made. The rep would be in control of the sales call as it unfolds and would be able to directly draw on the staff's expertise if and when it is needed for clarifying customer problems, offering recommendations, and justifying advice that is given. The company's top management has opted for this approach to implementing its competitive strategy, but with one exception. Rather than the impracticality of a technical support team physically accompanying each sales rep , the team's expertise is captured in one or more expert systems. With a portable microcomputer, each sales rep will be accompanied by an appreciable portion of the support team's expertise. Rather than attempting to train reps to an expert level, the in-house experts train (i.e., create) expert systems. The company therefore has a controllable asset that cannot be lured away by the competition.

this enhanced service may have created some entry barriers for competitors that consider following its lead. For instance, it may establish itself in customers' eyes as the leader in providing this service. This positive image can be difficult for competitors to overcome. As customers become accustomedtothe leader's expert systems, they may find it inconvenient or uninteresting to bother with others. Furthermore,the leader has a learning curve edge in applying the technology to achieve a competitive advantage. Followers are likely to be a step behind as the sales support expert systems continue to evolve. Providins New Services Related to the idea of enhanced services is the notion of new services. A s in the case of the chemical company an enhanced service is concerned with improved features, greater timeliness, greater thoroughness, and so on. A competitive strategy could also be aimed at furnishing a new service that draws customers to a company. For instance, top management of a retail bank has decided to introduce a new service that has not been offered by other banks of its type and size. In considering consumer loans, these banks presently use rigid scoring protocols that lead to either the acceptance or rejection of a loan request. The retail bank noted above intends to increase its customer base by offering an investment banker's services to its customers. In traditional investment banking, an expert works out a customized financing arrangement suitable to a client company's needs. Thus, the retail bank's competitive strategy is based on providing a new service in which loan instruments are tailored to individual consumer situations. In considering how to implement this strategy, it is clear that substantial expertisewould be required to effectively handle the creation of customized consumer loans. However, the bank would not be financially justifiedinhiring sufficient investment bankers to handle the relatively large number of relatively small (dollar-wise) applicants. But an expert system that embodies the sophisticated reasoning behavior that an investment banker would display for consumers could be financially attractive, especially if it were shared by a consortium of retail banks. As in the case of enhanced services,reproducability and entry barriers are important issues when considering new services implemented via expert systems. Swawninq New Industries Some businesses may choose to participate in new industries that are made possible by the advent of powerful and

The competitive advantage that results from enhanced service may or may not be reproducible. To the extent that a competitor has equivalent (or superior) in-houseexpertiseandcanharness i t i n a comparable way, the initial competitive edge may not be fully sustainable. Nevertheless, the first entrant into the marketplace with

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flexible tools for expert systemdevelopment. This participation can produce a diversification that helps the company competemore effectively. Anexample is a new industry concerned with the publication and use of expertise. There are two traditional ways of delivering advice. One is by means of books, articles and lectures. This often requires considerable effort to ferret out the pertinent recommendation. Sometimes the advice is not explicit, but must be inferred by using reasoning expertise that is presented in books, articles and lectures. The second major delivery method involves consulting firms and professional services offered by lawyers, accountants, and physicians. Here the generation of advice is more specialized to individual client needs. It requires less effort by the client than reading books or attending lectures. However, the availability ofthis delivery method is relatively limited andcostly. Expert system technology offers a striking alternative, supplement, and complement to traditional ways of delivering advice. It would not be surprising to see the emergence of a new industry concerned with the publication of computerized expertise. For instance, there will likely be new businesses concerned with producing and distributing chunks of reasoning knowledge, each addressing one of a wide variety of problem areas f r o m v e h i c l e m a i n t e n a n c e t o financial management. Each chunk will be capable of being q9plugged in" to a standard, generalized inference engine. We may even see "expert-of-the-month" offerings akin to the idea of book-of-the-month selections. There will be subscription services for providing new and updated expertise. The net effect will be widespread distribution of expertise which, when plugged in to an inference engine, results in responsive consultations at relatively low prices. As another example, there is a need to distribute expertise on the uses and applications of the masses of knowledge that will soon be commonplace on optical compact disks (e.g., 500,000,000characters on a single small compact disk). Many kinds of knowledge could reside on a compact disk (CD). Effective usage of such knowledge storehouses will be a paramount issue. The availability of expert systems that can help users dig out and apply the immediately relevant subset of knowledge is akin to having the assistance of a combination librarian/teacher. We expect that an entire industry can develop around the automated, intelligent delivery and application of all types of knowledge. Interestingly, this industry could have a significant impact on third world countries, by greatly expediting the transfer of knowledge to them in a cost-effective manner. The resultant

computer-based "peace corpst1 could be a valuable complement to its human counterpart.

A third example of a new industry made possible by advances in expert system technology is concernedwithconstructing artificially intelligent application systems for record-keeping and decision support. Some may prefer to characterize this as a redefinition of an existing industry. In any case, the implications are far reaching. Rather than their traditional passive nature, themanagement information systems and decision support systems built by this new industry will display an active, inquisitive, insightful behavior. Artificially intelligent application systems are a natural result of the integral treatment of expert system and familiar business computing capabilities and are a key to the future realization of knowledge-based organizations [81*

Challenses Using expert systems to implement competitive strategies presents top management with challenges as well as opportunities. These challenges are technical, economic, and managerial in nature. A conventional view of recent years has been that expert systems are expensive, take a long time (e.g., years) to develop, and cannot be built by persons without advanced degrees in artificial intelligence [9]. Such characteristics, of course, limit the practical applicability of expert system technology to business problems. The quota expert system would be impractical if each sales manager needed a $50,000 LISP machine to run it on, rather than an inexpensive multipurpose microcomputer. The appeal of an investment banker expert system to a retail bank would be much more dubious if it cost $150,000 rather than $15,000. until very recently, the conventionalviewhasbeenagenerallycorrectview.

The reason for this is rooted in the tools that were available for expert system development. One type of tool is a programming language such as LISP or PROLOG. A more advanced kind of tool, called an expert system shell, appeared and greatly facilitated expert system development efforts. A shell provides a generalized inference engine that is able to reason with many different sets of rules. With a shell, the activity of developing an expert system becomes one of specifying a set of rules that its inference engine can process. While shells typically allow more facile expert system development than a programminglanguage,they are still difficult to work with for many potential business applications. Because of the stand-alone nature of a shell, its inference

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engine is incapable of carrying out common business computing activities such as spreadsheet analysis and data base management. This is a cripplinglimitationthat makes many potential business expert systems technically or economically infeasible. m t it has been overcome recently by a new kind of development tool: an AI environment for business computing [ 4 , lo].
An environment has all the capabilities of a shell. However, its inference engine is much more potent because of its innate ability to carry out all of the usual business computingtasks including spreadsheetanalysis,graphics generation,data base management, remote communications,text processing, and so on. This blending of AI and business computing techniques into a single piece of software means that the quota expert system is able to do spreadsheet analysis (e.g., with respect to advertisingbudgets),databasemanagement (e.g. , with respect to a rep's past performance) , and economic modeling (e.g. , for local growth projections) in the midst of its inference for a quota problem.

intuition, or decision making abilities. Far too many, although interested, are unsure about just what it is (if anything) that these systems can actually do in a business setting. This gap in education will eventually be closed as coursework in business expert systems is increasingly introduced into business school curricula. An entire course may be devoted to the topic or it may be presented in connection with such subjects as decision support systems or knowledgemanagement. Bywayofhandson, case study instruction, it will be seen that expert systems are not so mysterious after all. In the near term, corporate training groups and information centers can help close the gap. Experiences gained from experimental expert system projects can also be helpful , provided they are "successful.'I However, if these first experiences are '1failures'8 there is a danger of poisoning thewell. Themaincauses of unsuccessful projects seem to be identification of a problem that is too large in scale, lack of expert cooperation,developerdeficiencies, and selection of an inadequate development tool. Care should be taken to start out small and let the expert system evolve into alargerscale. Acooperativeexpert from whom necessary reasoning knowledge can be acquired must be available. A chosen developer should be acquainted with the expert system development cycle, competent at interpersonal dealings, and sufficiently adept at using the chosen tool. Once the educational hurdle is cleared and a commitment is made to exploiting expert system technology, there remains the challenge of gaining acceptance of business expert systems within the organization. The organization's culture and the identity of the prime mover in promoting this technology (e.g., departmentalmanagement, MIS department, information center, top management) will determine how acceptance can be engendered. In any case, it must be made clear that such systems do not threaten either human experts or those seeking advice. An expert system can reduce demands on a human expert's the, insulating himorher frommanykinds of consultation requests. This allowsthehumanexpert to focus on the most challenging problems, ad hoc problems, and new creative activities. Conversely, those seeking advice do not encounter the usual bottleneck of competing and waiting for the human expert's attention. It must also be understood that, like its human counterpart, an expert system's advice is dependent on the extent and quality of its expertise. If the expert being emulated often gives poor advice the expert system will do the same. If the expert system developer does not accurately

Because they support familiar business computing approaches to knowledge representation,AI environments are more flexible and natural to use than stand-alone shells. This translates into significantly faster and less expensive expert system development. By the end of a single semester course, business students with no prior AI exposure are able to use an AI environmentto build interesting business expert systems that would be difficult (if even possible) for AI specialists equipped with lesser development tools. The important point is that the conventional view of expensive, lengthy and elitest development is no longer appropriate when considering business expert systems. The technical and economic challenges posed by pursuing a business expert system route are by no means insurmountable,provided care is taken in the selection of a development tool. The managerial challenge is in large part one of not missing opportunities such as those discussed in this article. Management that pays attention to the strategic implications of expert systems and is alert to their possibilities can find itself with a competitive edge, rather than being out on a competitive ledge. Today's greatest obstacle to meeting the managerial challenge is perhaps a lack of clarity about what expert systems are. Management needs to understand what can and cannot be done with this emerging technology. It is our sense that management generally has expectations that are too low rather than too fanciful. Few managers have the unrealistic conviction that expert systems canexhibit creative imagination,

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and fully capture an expert's knowledge in the system, then the emulation suffers correspondingly. Ultimately, it is up to the one receiving advice to put it into proper perspective and to properly factor it into decisions that are made. Introducing expert systemtechnology into an organization is not a one-shot endeavor. Multiple expert system applications tend to be identified. Many continue to evolve to keep pace with evolving reasoning knowledge. There is also a tendency to undertake increasingly ambitious applications. ~n important aspect of managing this growth is tool selection. In the interest

of developer productivity, frequent switching among tools is undesirable. However, a pitfall to be avoided is standardizingon a tool that is just Ifgood enoughg1for present applications. Not only does this lack of a growth path stunt the evolution of expert systems, it has a tendency to blind developers to what would be possible with a more versatile and powerful tool. In summary, achieving strategic advantages with expert systems depends on successfully addressing the technical, economic, andmanagerialchallenges identifiedhere. The rewards of meetingthese challenges can be significant.

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