Page 400 - Using MIS

368 Chapter 9 Business Intelligence Systems

Many expert systems were created in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but only a few have enjoyed
success. They suffer from three major disadvantages. First, they are difficult and expensive to de-
velop. They require many labor hours from both experts in the domain under study and designers
of expert systems. This expense is compounded by the high opportunity cost of tying up domain
experts. Such experts are normally some of the most sought-after employees in an organization.
Second, expert systems are difficult to maintain. Because of the nature of rule-based sys-
tems, the introduction of a new rule in the middle of hundreds of others can have unexpected
consequences. A small change can cause very different outcomes. Unfortunately, such side
effects cannot be predicted or eliminated. They are the nature of complex rule-based systems.
Finally, expert systems were unable to live up to the high expectations set by their name.
Initially, proponents of expert systems hoped to be able to duplicate the performance of highly
trained experts, like doctors. It turned out, however, that no expert system has the same diag-
nostic ability as knowledgeable, skilled, and experienced doctors. Even when expert systems
were developed that came close in ability, changes in medical technology required constant
changing of the expert system, and the problems caused by unexpected consequences made
such changes very expensive.
The few expert systems that have been successful have addressed more restricted prob-
lems than duplicating a doctor’s diagnostic ability. They address problems such as checking for
harmful prescription drug interactions and configuring products to meet customer specifica-
tions. These systems require many fewer rules and are therefore more manageable to maintain.
However, unless expert systems technology gets a boost from massively parallel computing
(think MapReduce and Hadoop), their problems will cause them to fade from use.

What Are Content Management Systems?

Another form of knowledge management concerns knowledge that is encoded in documents.
Content management systems (CMS) are information systems that support the management and
delivery of documents including reports, Web pages, and other expressions of employee knowledge.
Typical users of content management systems are companies that sell complicated products
and want to share their knowledge of those products with employees and customers. Someone at
Toyota, for example, knows how to change the timing belt on the four-cylinder 2013 Toyota Camry.
Toyota wants to share that knowledge with car owners, mechanics, and Toyota employees.

What Are the Challenges of Content Management?

Content management systems face serious challenges. First, most content databases are huge;
some have thousands of individual documents, pages, and graphics. Second, CMS content is
dynamic. Imagine the frequency of Web page changes at Apple or Google or Amazon.com that
must occur each day!
Another complication for content management systems is that documents do not exist in isola-
tion from each other. Documents refer to one another, and when one changes, others must change
as well. To manage these connections, content management systems must maintain linkages among
documents so that content dependencies are known and used to maintain document consistency.
A fourth complication is that document contents are perishable. Documents become
obsolete and need to be altered, removed, or replaced. Consider, for example, what happens
when a new product is announced. Figure 9-26 shows the main page for Microsoft.com less
than 2 hours after its announcement of Surface. We can only wonder how many other pages on
Microsoft.com needed to be changed within those 2 hours.
Finally, content is provided in many languages. 3M has tens of thousands of products, some
of which are harmful when used improperly. 3M must publish product safety data for all such
products in all the languages shown. Every document, in whatever language it was authored,
must be translated into all languages before it can be published on 3M’s site. And when one of
them changes, all of the translated versions must change as well.