KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND E-BUSINESS

Augusto E. Bernuy

Facultad de Ingeniería Industrial y de Sistemas, Universidad Tecnológica del Perú, Lima, Perú

Facultad de Ingeniería y Arquitectura, Universidad de San Martin de Porres, La Molina, Lima, Perú

Keywords: Knowledge Management, Collaborative System, Collaborative process.

Abstract: The goal of the research is to design the concept and architecture for new collaborative e-business model in

order to join knowledge management and intellectual capital under the approach of engineering systems. A

collaborative system is designed as a part of new assets, called intellectual capital. We build a supply

design to understand the collaboration among people, processes and systems inside a holistic approach. To

do that the paper presents two models: the first model is the integration among intellectual capital,

collaborative systems and e-business; and then the second model is designed to understand the behaviour of

software agents. Processes are analyzed on their value, for example we need to know if the results of a

process may be important for someone in order to resolve a specific problem. This concept will be used in

one controlled environment and to do that we need some functions of the software agents to complete one

specific process and evaluate some alternatives for the best solution. As a result we get the new process of a

collaborative system, also we define the ability to collaborate and leverage the knowledge giving to

software agents some decisions that we take in a real problem. After the process has been completed we

have improve the design of collaborative e-business performance under the approach of intellectual capital

and knowledge management.

1 INTRODUCTION

“Collaboration is a term that is often misused as a

technology and marketing ‘buzz word’. And the

most of tools do not support either collaboration or

coordination but often only different types of

communication or only the ability to access specific

data” (Coleman and Ward 2000). Now we know

three aspects of collaboration: content, context and

process (Coleman and Antila, 2006).

Now we introduce a new definition (Bernuy and

Joyanes, 2008):

1) We have a problem that needs one or more

process to resolve;

2) Theses processes have activities as a context and

the content. The information which will be

transformed is the content.

The main processes are (figure 1):

1) We need to do something, so we have an input

but we are not sure about the results and at the end

when we are expecting the output (process level

one). While the main process is doing we need to

pass through some sub processes (processes level

two), from the first to the last one, this is our

context;

2) Then we have the ability to identify each different

process, but also to identify some alternative sub

process and then we do it. If we choose one or

another sub process the results will be different;

3) Now each sub process needs to analyze

something and it has its own rules and different steps

before to do any transformation.

Figure 1: Collaborations aspects. Source: Own.

For us collaboration is the main part of the

organization, if you do not have collaboration, any

process will fail.

If we think that in the business world the

collaborative processes are often highly negotiated,

337

E. Bernuy A..

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND E-BUSINESS.

DOI: 10.5220/0003647503370340

In Proceedings of the International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Sharing (KMIS-2011), pages 337-340

ISBN: 978-989-8425-81-2

 2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

geographically distributed, and highly sensitive, and

they are more vulnerable to error in execution, then

the results consume more time, effort and resources;

so we need to think in a new way of collaboration.

2 COLLABORATIVE SYSTEM

BASED IN KNOWLEDGE

STRATEGY

Some collaborative tools help us to solve a very

difficult problem, but now we need to create a value

into the virtual space team or across a transaction-

based business system ((Coleman and Antila, 2006).

Also “Effective collaboration represents the most

value, top-line gain for organizations today. It can

unlock the potential of the collective knowledge and

intellectual capital of a given organization, as well as

its value network” (Coleman and Ward 2000).

The new system has two agents (Bernuy and

Joyanes, 2008):

1) The main software agent is designed in order to

look at the environment and identifies when a task is

started, then the agent will resolve the critical factors

for success to deploy the best solution for each

process.

2) The second software agent is designed to

complete the process, its target is evaluates the best

alternative for each task based on the information

from the previous expertise and process rules

database.

2.1 Knowledge Management as a New

Approach

The relation between intellectual capital and

knowledge management is:

1) Human capital is the source of knowledge;

2) An action over transformation process gives the

performance and new knowledge towards all the

system;

3) The new knowledge is ready for be registered and

used.

The relationship is started with human activity,

in any place where one need has been created. Each

activity may be registered in previous step, and

process rules are designed in workflow system. We

need to build an important result in transformation

process among different parts of intellectual capital,

this transformation process produce new knowledge

(Richert, 2006).

Agents are defined to:

a) Identifying status of the process, look for starting

and ending processes points;

b) Analyze previous and similar processes;

c) Analyze problems in previous processes;

d) Analyze new problems with available

information;

e) Preparing recommendations and send to executor;

f) Registering the results of the process.

2.2 JADE Agent Platform

JADE (Java Agent DEvelopment Framework) is

fully implemented in Java language. It has the FIPA

specifications and through a set of tools that

supports the debugging and deployment phase.

The architecture offers flexible and efficient

messaging, where JADE creates and manages a

queue of incoming ACL messages, private to each

agent; agents can access their queue via a

combination of several modes: blocking, polling,

timeout and pattern matching based.

The full FIPA communication model has been

implemented and its components have been clearly

distincted and fully integrated: interaction protocols,

envelope, ACL, content languages, encoding

schemes, ontologies and, finally, transport protocols.

The transport mechanism, in particular, is like a

chameleon because it adapts to each situation, by

transparently choosing the best available protocol

(Laclavík, 2005).

3 IMPROVING

COLLABORATION IN

E-BUSINESS

The base line is the hide relationship among human

capital, structural capital and social capital. They are

working together and doing the transformation of the

resources in the organization.

It is happening in the day-by-day routine. This

transformation obtains good results when we have

collaboration, in otherwise the results normally fail.

3.1 Collaborative Process and

Performance

The new process based in intellectual capital is

defined as a collaborative system (figure 2). The

activities of the agents are:

1) The agent is searching for a new task, when it is

founded the agents obtains the specific context

and the information about the request and the

KMIS 2011 - International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Sharing

338

Figure 2: Collaborative process framework. Source: Own.

process level 1 is related with;

2) The agent finds information about the main

objectives of business related to rules of the process

and obtains the sequence of the process from the

workflow;

3) The agent looks for new information about

expertise or changes in previous rules;

4) The agent prepares a message and transfers the

control to process level 2.

These activities are an example for one process

that needs review information and evaluates

previous experience before take a decision. As not

always the results are goods, we need evaluate the

results and design a way to learn.

In process level 2 the second agent is designed to

evaluate and delivery the best solution:

1) The agent receives the control and information

from the process level 1, immediately the agent

analyzes the data and looks for common and

complex problems from the knowledge data base

2) The agent evaluates the best option and prepares

the recommended solution in order to follow politics

about the critical success factors;

3) The agent evaluates if exists new problems or

need more information and resolve the process;

4) The agent prepares action set to delivery and

generates results for learning.

The design has a better performance with non-

structured and complex decisions, where is not easy

to know the result, and the previous experience are

not enough. That is the reason to build a learning

process inside the system.

When the results are good, and the agent had to

choose among several options, also we have better

options to get good results again in future similar

situations. When a new element is registered in the

workflow rules we need to know which the impact

of the decision and the results is.

4 EXPECTING RESULTS

In the most of cases we are expecting results as

building source code and data processes by the new

systems, but now we have another kind of results.

This model to allow gives collaboration under

the approach of intellectual capital and software

agents.

If you remember the figure 1, we had defined to

levels of processes: process level 1 and processes

level 2. Then we defined the logical structure among

intellectual capital, the collaboration systems and e-

business process in figure 2.

These new processes give high efficiency and

additional competitive advantage in:

1) Real time process and synchronous work between

actors of the value chain;

2) Create a learning curve for rapid productivity;

3) A holistic approach to challenges of

collaboration, among people, processes and systems.

This is the moment to create intelligence in

collaborative e-business.

We propose to translate some human behaviour

to systems; we have better results across the

organization. It is possible when we are able to

produce rich information for decision-making and

capture best practices for future situations like the

Collaborative Project Portfolio Management (Smith,

1998), but now these functions will have the ability

for start to work in automatics ways.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND E-BUSINESS

339

As we showed (figure 2) we can to identify the

intellectual capital based on transformation

processes from human resources to structural capital

and relational capital. This is the challenge for the

next research will be find the transformation about

resources.

5 CONCLUSIONS

A new solution needs a new approach to understand

and run the knowledge management (figure 3).

Figure 3: Collaborative concepts for e-business. Source:

Own.

We can see the collaboration through the

organization. We can to share information, also

understand intellectual capital approach.

Each organization needs a specific database to

obtain its workflow structure. We need both,

common and complex problems and the expertise

that exists in the environment.

We want to improve the processes and some

problems like spending an inordinate amount of time

looking for information, or documents, or contents

or people expertise.

Knowledge management is present in each

activity of people, organizations, and its value is in

to obtain itself, to register itself, to analyze itself and

finally to give to others users.

People need to share knowledge, but in the most

of the cases they are not prepared to do that, because

they feel that their knowledge is the source to keep

their job and their reason to live.

We need a cultural change as new conditions for

the success, like ethic, transcendental motivation,

which ones will be joined and interchanged with e-

business processes. The system identifies

collaboration needs, and creates new ways for give

collaboration based on both, software agents and

information systems.

The system creates value while people put their

experiences and knowledge about different problems

and solutions, without fears, always having the main

goal on the organization.

The new concepts will be development into one

controlled environment in order to improve the

competitive advantage in the organization.

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