Event Summary
Intentia
International AB is a provider of enterprise resource planning software called
Movex for mid-sized companies (See TEC Technology Research Note: "Intentia:
Java Evolution From AS/400" October 1st, 1999). Intentia recently announced
Movex Intelligent Agent for the fourth quarter of 2000. Movex Intelligent Agent
will, according to the company, "find and negotiate deals instead of having
personnel do it." The product will be used to search out business-to-business
auctions, and will track and learn from user behavior; it will constantly scour
the Web or a closed marketplace to search for appropriate deals to recommend
to users.
Market
Impact
There
is an important statement behind this announcement, which is that Intentia believes
that traditional planning functions based on statistical and analytic methods
will become less important as companies find themselves forced to be instantaneously
responsive to changes in customer requirements. We agree. Will intelligent agents
be useful in this transformation? Probably. Will Movex Intelligent Agent provide
a significant advantage? That's a bit harder to tell, since there are few details
of this product available. In fact, given that this product has been announced
almost a full year before its planned delivery date, we doubt if even Intentia
knows the answer.
This
is not to say that there is no market impact to this announcement. ERP companies,
largely stuck in the doldrums, have been searching for ways to retain their
existing customers in the face of "best of breed" challengers who ride under
an E-commerce flag. Freeing up people from less-than-routine tasks would be
a significant addition to any product line. So, now that Intentia has planted
its spear in the ground, we believe that there will be other ERP vendors making
similar announcements, as well as some startups offering the same kind of services
through new products that will integrate with existing ERP systems.
User
Recommendations
Companies planning to purchase ERP systems in the near term should completely
ignore this announcement as a consideration. Even if the projected third quarter
release is on schedule, there will be many other higher priority ERP implementation
challenges. However, we do not dispute the potential value of agent technology,
and organizations should use this announcement as an opportunity to gather information
from other prospective vendors about their agent strategy, while keeping in
mind that most will be in the "vaporware" stage.