Intelligent Agents Supercharge Information Businesses

Let’s consider what’s being reported about the amount of information available to you ? there are over a trillion pages of content on the internet . . . and individual Web pages are growing by several billion pages per day. It’s safe to assume that as information posted to the internet continues to grow, the expectations of information consumers to discern and share the most relevant information quickly will continue to rise. This means that the businesses charged with collecting, normalizing, and distributing real-time information must also rise as the proverbial “bar” of expectations continues to heighten. Companies that have transformed a portion, if not all, of their business online are in a better position to capitalize on timely information aggregation and dissemination.

If your information business has or is in the process of building an online component, there are a number of ways that intelligent software agents can supercharge your efforts. Companies that have deployed agents to complement their work processes and workforce have dramatically reduced the number of staff needed to monitor and collect data; increased productivity by shifting responsibilities of existing staff to more important tasks; and created new product offerings that address the ever-increasing demands of their clients. As discussed in past issues, Intelligent Software Agents are a non-technical approach for deploying an efficient and cost-effective virtual workforce.

Automation of Time-Consuming Tasks
Keeping your data up-to-date can be a time-consuming task. Consider that information can change at any time, making the task of monitoring data sources cumbersome, time-consuming and extremely labor-intensive. Imagine that every worker on your team needs to cycle through a hundred sources each day seeking changes so that they can update your internal data repositories, systems, and client-facing services. One of your staff checks the SEC site for the latest company and product filings affecting your industry at 8:00 a.m. and they see no new posts that morning. However, there are new posts to the SEC site at 9:01 a.m. that directly impact your market but your staff member won’t circle back to the SEC site until the following morning at 8:00 a.m. Did you get that information to your clients fast enough? Was it material to your clients? Could having that information sooner have triggered a business process that could have resulted in more revenue for your business or your client’s business? Intelligent software agents can automate information monitoring and collection. They can run on any schedule – checking sources every few seconds, every few minutes, hours, weeks, or whatever timeframe you desire. And they can deliver either all the data or only the changed data; it’s completely up to you.

Shifting Staff Responsibilities
Your knowledge worker staff is spending a good portion of their time searching for information, executing on data entry tasks, publishing information, and formatting and creating content. As a matter of fact, a recent report shows that these tasks may consume almost half of their work week . What if you could deploy agents to take on some of these tasks so that your human capital can be used for the more important work, like analyzing the information, strengthening relationships with your clients through better customer support, or creating better products and services based on your increased confidence to deliver timely information? Your virtual workforce awaits…

Bruce Molloy is the chief executive officer of Connotate Technologies, a Web consultancy. Visit www.connotate.com for more information or call us at 732-296-8844.