B2B Integration : A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce

Software Agents 399
Agents can also act as intermediaries in B2B e-marketplaces by
evaluating the quality of products, comparing prices and providing
recommendations.
13.9.6. Maintaining customer relationships
Intelligent agents can automate the task of tracking customer behavior,
linking business goals and customer interests, learning from previous
experience, drawing conclusions from that and giving recommendations
for actions to be taken due to changes in customer behavior. With the
above information, suppliers can provide personalized service, such as
sales suggestions, prices, bulk discounts and content to customers.
13.9.7. Effective e-procurement
Most of the activities involved in corporate procurement are defined,
routine and repetitive in nature. But there is still a substantial human
element involved in the procurement cycle, which slows the whole
process down. Software agents automate the enterprise procurement
process by finding and negotiating deals, instead of having personnel do
it. According to a recent report from Deloitte Research, by 2002
companies will routinely use intelligent agents to e-shop.
Agents can assist buyers by finding all the products and their
suppliers, based on a defined price, preferred highest acceptable, delivery
date, delivery location and other defined specifications. Moreover, the
decision-making capability of these buyer and seller agents is dynamic
and reacts to user needs and the current environment. Agents like the
ones used by commerceone.com (which hosts several vertical exchanges)
assist in information sharing and aggregation between buyers and sellers
across vertical and horizontal exchanges.
Suppliers usually adopt a push strategy to announce their products
and survey customer demand. Human sales representatives, who visit
buyers on behalf of the supplier, traditionally carry out this task. Mobile
software agents can automate this process quickly and with low cost by
visiting many buyer sites, obviating much human involvement in the
procurement process.