Title: Identifying the characteristics of successful expert systems: an empirical evaluation

Authors: Kostas Metaxiotis, Dimitris Th. Askounis, Konstantinos Nikolopoulos

Addresses: National Technical University of Athens, Institute of Communications and Computer Systems, 9, Iroon Polytechniou str., Zografou 15773, Athens, Greece. ' National Technical University of Athens, Institute of Communications and Computer Systems, 9, Iroon Polytechniou str., Zografou 15773, Athens, Greece. ' National Technical University of Athens, Institute of Communications and Computer Systems, 9, Iroon Polytechniou str., Zografou 15773, Athens, Greece

Abstract: The effective use of Information Technology (IT) to help modern companies improve service quality, financial performance, customer satisfaction and productivity is a very crucial issue nowadays. Intelligent solutions, based on Expert Systems (ES), to solve complicated practical problems in various sectors are becoming more and more widespread. However, the real success of applied expert systems in the improvement of companies| performance is being investigated by the research community. In this framework, the primary objective of this paper is to present what is important for a successful ES application in terms of quality and what kind of mistakes can be made. Our analysis is based on an empirical evaluation of three ES applications that have successfully been in industrial use for a long time and in the development of which we have been personally involved. The key findings are expressed as 14 hypotheses for a successful ES. The support of each application to the hypotheses is discussed.

Keywords: expert systems; knowledge-based systems; information technology; artificial intelligence; success factors; quality; KBS; AI; organisational performance; performance improvement.

DOI: 10.1504/IJITM.2006.008711

International Journal of Information Technology and Management, 2006 Vol.5 No.1, pp.21 - 36

Published online: 18 Jan 2006 *

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