The strategic significance of expert systems

Expert or knowledge-based systems are being deployed in virtually every industry because of their power to bring strategic competitive advantage to the firms who successfully employ them. The strategic significance of expert systems lies in their ability to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the decision-making process and, in the long run, improved decision-making leads to growth and increased profitability. This is especially true of organizations, such as brokerage firms, whose `life´s blood´ is fruitful, consistent, and reliable advice. Expert system technology is advancing at a great pace as new methods for improved reasoning and automated learning are emerging from research to reality. If firms in the business of offering advice do not continually upgrade their expert systems with the latest conceptual tools, they will find it difficult to grow, even survive, in the `knowledge age´