Abstract

Configurator of commercial suggestions Offer Suite is an Integrated Development Environment for creating expert mini-systems with the purpose of defining a separate variants integration of generalized goods, cheking the Employees’ Level of Knowledge, sociological researches, user's answer based problem-solving.

As an example of generalized goods can be PCs, cars, furniture etc. During defining needed variant different criterions can be used, like consumer needs or price.

Working with Offer Suite

It consists of two areas:

• Expert system designing in the Integrated Development Environment - creating problem-solving algorithm and user interface for data input;
• Using designed system in a company work - facilitation of sales department job, creation of possibility for user to define on his own a list of needed goods/services from the base of his tasks and resourses.

Integrated Development Environment (Offer Designer) has a friendly interface and allows to design and debug expert systems, and generate Executables of these systems (called Offer Wizard).

Offer Designer is intended for expert pre-trained users. But Offer Wizard interface element were developed specially for the broad circle of users, amateurs in the area of IT, potential consumers.

Integration with other systems

Offer Suite is created for integrated work in a program complex of company management. Integration occurs at the two working phases:

• Enterprise Resource Planning system gives updated information about goods and services;
• The result of Offer Wizard work can be sent to the Enterprise Resource Planning system for further processing.

Close integration with Microsoft™ Office™, makes easier the further processing of output documents.

Success Story

The great example of successful Offer Suite integration is its integration in the Reichle & De-Massari Ukraine (R&M). This company is a leader at the Ukrainian market of passive communication equipment and structured cabling systems. Offer Suite in this company is being used for increasing level of customer support and presales. Using the automatically generated by the system wizards, customers can quickly and precisely get the information about products they need to equip structured cabling system or to create telephone cross. Offer Suite in this installation is tightly integrated with company’s CRM and ERP systems. Special robots perform automatic updates of wizards accessible through the company’s web-site, taking into account changes in configurations and prices.

Given examples of system application are not the only possible ones. The area where the expert systems can be used is very wide. And almost every company has the field where application of our product would be very useful and effective.

Screen shots

Screen shot 1 Expert system designing in Offer Designer.

Screen shot 2 Stages of Offer Wizard execution: answers for guestions and getting final specification.