Startex is a multi-national company, deals in business office automation products which aim at

enhancing the productivity of business offices. Started in 1965, it has become a market leader in

Europe with estimated sales of 80% in Europe. In 1991, the company had operating revenues of

$3000m while the profits exceed $250m. The company has 4 business units which are distinct in

their operations. All units have different sales force and autonomy in their activities. The

company went through mergers and acquisitions and has given much importance to Information

system as their products components are computers and related to IT.

John has a vast experience in IT and development of Information systems. He has spent about 15

years as (CIO) of major British trading groups. He reports directly to Bill and has given the

responsibility of obtain an Information system which can help them to sustain at the top level.

John has many ideas in mind and the solutions of the problem which the company is facing. He

has been hired from outside the company and given a total budget of $9m approximately for first

3 years. John has started to change the IS of Startex and identifying the problems and their

solution which will be discussed further in the case analysis.

The revenue growth of Startex was less than 10 percent annually while the expenses they are

bearing for their Information system is increasing at a rate of 15 percent which shows that they

are not getting the return they deserve or should get and hence this issue had started to disturb the

management and CEO.

Communications across business units, Facilitation of communications across there are local

networks within different European countries. Help to Started but no organization-wide serve the

European constituency network better Increasing overlap between the Proposed the next major

corporate products marketed by different wide projects, Integrate Project (the business units

expert system) Communication across country divisions is slow, error-prone, and hampered by

different work cultures (caused partly by rapid growth via acquisitions) Developing system more

slowly than demanded by the business. Average IS planning cycle is two to three years

Expert System is a good example of a critical technology which has not been looked into at

Started Lagging in utilizing and capitalizing on important new technology the network project

given a highway for communicating business information across different functional groups in

the business unit. Expert system helps to design intelligent means for packaging and distributing

knowledge on this highway communication. Expert system helps Sales Personnel to make the

right choice Due to large variety of products which can be configured and combined in many

ways sales people always find difficulties in selling the right configuration of products to

customers. Expert systems helps to generate valuable incremental sales By capturing knowledge

about the related product (manufactured by other business units) By linking the expert system of

sales and design by using the capabilities of the network project, design engineers tend to

become sensitive to customer needs and desires Knowledge pathways within Started Build not

just information networks, but knowledge pathways within Started Incompatibilities in the data

and management schemas across business units are not resolved on Network projects Complaints

from business managers over the Network Project. There is some resentment about the

disturbance in the projects which were delayed or shelved to pay for the Network Project

Problems on Network Projects not resolved. Major hurdles of resources and business
commitment fairly expensive to build the set of linked expert systems- $3m with practically no

quantifiable benefits. External partner needed to as inexperience of the Internal IS group at

STARTEX Reduce operational & recruitment cost Human Expert Systems (ES) are

computer programs that try to replicate knowledge and skills of human experts in some area,

and then solve problems in this area (the way human experts would). Human can do it as

well. Simplest & least expensive-non computer method. Training provided to staff Data

Based Management System (DBMS) This software might better fit the problem than an

expert system. DBMS letting you store an significant amount of information and excess it

conveniently. Because data are integrated into a single database, complex requests can be

handled much more rapidly then if the data were located in separate, non- integrated files.

The ability of the computer to reason may not be necessary. Conventional software solutions

A straightforward algorithmic solution might be better . The Knowledge Engineering

Bottleneck The enormous time and efforts required extracting the experts knowledge and

translating it into IF/THEN rules upon which an expert system is based. Transferring

expertise to the Expert System is sometimes difficult because experts cannot always explain

how they know what they know. Often experts are not aware of their complete reasoning

process. Experience has given them a feel for the problem, and they just "know“The

Programming Bottleneck Programming the system and maintaining the code is very difficult.

Even if the expert can explain the whole reasoning process, automating that process may be

impossible. The process may be too complex, requiring an excessive number of rules, or it

may be too vague or imprecise Maintenance an important part of expert system development

is ongoing maintenance, updating the system with new knowledge, removing knowledge that
is no longer applicable, and otherwise fine tuning the system to keep it fully current and

applicable to the problem