Business environment scanner for senior managers: towards active executive support with intelligent agents

A good knowledge and understanding of the business environment is a basic premise for strategic management. A system that is able to help managers actively scan the environment will contribute to active executive support. This paper examines the relevance of the intelligent software agent approach in environmental scanning activities and exploits ways that an agent can help in accomplishing scanning tasks. It then describes a prototype system that is under development. The system is designed to make use of potential business environment information resources on the World Wide Web to extract useful information for managers. Using the pulp and paper industry as a case context, it is shown in this paper how the agent is constructed and how it provides up-to-date industry news and market information to managers