E-commerce agents break up distributor chains

"Sweden wants to develop entrepreneurship. To do this, the manner in which the distribution of goods is being carried out, must be opened up. More companies need to be able to enter the Swedish market, and Swedish companies must be able to buy cheaper quality goods from other countries". This is what Anne Håkansson has to say, associate professor of computer and systems sciences and lecturer at the School of Information and Communication Technology at KTH.

We therefore need to stir things up considerably in the distributor pot; to ensure that companies become more competitive, that Swedish companies as well as foreign companies get their products out onto the international market. What causes problems today is the time it takes to look for new products. And then there is the enormous language barrier, since many websites and e-commerce sites are only available in each company's native language. This applies to companies in many different countries, such as China, South Korea, Spain and France.

To remedy this, Anne Håkansson along with some other KTH researchers have been working with e-commerce agents on the internet who will be able to negotiate a price in any language. But they also take into account delivery times, amounts and quality. Anne Håkansson calls them "Negotiation agents".

"It's about businesses being able to find the right product, the right amount with the best quality and price at the right time. The idea is that e-commerce agents will be able to negotiate in any language on the Internet," says Anne Håkansson.

She adds that, it is very time consuming to find information about products. And the benefits of having negotiating e-commerce agents is becoming clear.

"The little company in Korea, for example, may suddenly be able to sell to Sweden and to Swedish companies. Small as well as large Swedish companies suddenly have just as many opportunities to purchase cheaper quality goods, from a range of new suppliers worldwide," says Anne Håkansson.

She enlightens us about another common problem today. Many companies use the business system SAP, which is a static system when it comes to dealing with distributors.

"When employees have added the distributors in SAP, they rarely seek new suppliers," says Anne Håkansson.

Which does not make things any better as regards many companies' ingrained distribution patterns with already established suppliers.

She and her KTH colleagues have been studying e-commerce agents for nearly four years. For example, they have identified the ontologies, i.e., conceptual worlds such as object, name, processes and concepts, that exist between businesses. There are many weaknesses here, says Anne Håkansson. Researchers have also started to design a system, and the architecture is in place for this even if nothing is built yet.

"We will now build prototypes to see how e-commerce agents work in real life."

E-commerce agents is both a national and international collaboration with Jönköping International Business School, Franklin University in Ohio and Yeungnam University in Gyeongsan, South Korea. The Foundation for International Research and Higher Education, STINT, has contributed to the research by providing travel expenses.

For more information, contact Anne Håkansson at 08-790 40 41 / 070-65234 66 or annehak@kth.se.

Peter Larsson