DESIGNING EXPERT SYSTEMS IN A BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT

Abstract

The integration of an ES into a business environment presents a different set of problems to the designer. First, it can be difficult to isolate and draw boundaries around the domain of the business problem. Second, there is often a need to generate a large number of expert decisions in a short period of time. That is, there can be many transactions requiring some expertise to process, such as applications for life insurance. Finally, there may exist a number of computerized transactions processing systems which interact with very large databases and there may be a need to integrate the ES with these existing systems. This paper discusses these general issues involved in developing expert systems for business applications, with particular examples drawn from the domain of insurance underwriting.