Data processing: database and file management or data structures – Database design – Data structure types
Reexamination Certificate
1997-09-23
2003-06-03
Corrielus, Jean M. (Department: 2172)
Data processing: database and file management or data structures
Database design
Data structure types
C707S793000, C707S793000, C707S793000, C706S060000, C706S061000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06574621
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to data processing systems and more particularly relates to such systems that analyze survey data.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Many businesses have adopted the concept of Total Quality Management (TQM) to help improve profitability, ensure sustained customer loyalty, improve quality of products, etc. Originally developed by E. Deming and others, TQM is now widely accepted in many business circles throughout the world. A cornerstone of most total quality management (TQM) systems is the periodic measurement of identified parameters that relate to various aspects of the business. Through these measurements, managers can identify the areas within the organization that need improvement. Because the measurements are made on a “periodic” basis, managers can gauge the effects of various changes made within the organization over time. The goal of most TQM systems is to make continuous improvement within the organization.
Businesses often generate and manage an array of measurements for purposes of analyzing the performance of individual operations in relationship to productivity, resource utilization, profitability, etc. One of the most important measurements in many TQM systems is that of customer satisfaction. To measure customer satisfaction, periodic customer feedback is required, usually obtained through customer surveys.
In many surveys, customers are asked a number of survey questions that are related to various products and/or services provided by a business. For many questions, the customers can respond both with a satisfaction rating and an importance rating. By analyzing the answers to these questions, managers can obtain insights into many areas, including customer loyalty, overall satisfaction, potential weakness, etc.
It is not uncommon for businesses to conduct their own customer surveys. However, it is increasingly popular to outsource this function to outside vendors who specialize in conducting customer surveys. Today, there are a number of vendors who conduct customer surveys, and provide a survey database to the subscribing business. One such company is Prognostics Inc., located in Menlo Park, Calif. An advantage of using such a vendor is that customer survey data for other companies, including competing companies, can often be obtained. This enables a business to perform comparisons between itself and its competitors.
Some of the vendors of customer surveys provide the survey data in electronic form, and often provide a software program for accessing the survey database. The software programs facilitate the generation of reports or the like, which can then be used by management. Prognostics is one such vendor. Prognostics provides survey data in a proprietary electronic format, and provides a software program called the Research Analysis Program (RAP) which can access the survey data. RAP can read the survey database, perform data requests, and provide a number of reports.
A difficulty with many of the software programs provided by customer survey vendors is that only certain data requests can be performed on the survey database. The performance of alternative data requests, which may be more desirable for a particular user, often require the user to execute several of the data requests offered by the vendor's software program, and independently calculate the desired result using the data provided in the vendor's reports. This may be particularly problematic because there are typically only a few “experts” within a business organization that have the knowledge necessary to select the appropriate data requests offered by the vendor's software program, and perform the necessary calculations to produce the desired result. Thus, performing an analysis of a survey database provided by a survey vendor can require a significant amount of time of key personnel to arrive at the desired results.
This problem is magnified because the concept of Total Quality Management (TQM) requires that “continuous” measurement of selected parameters be performed. In practice, survey data is often taken once-per-week, once-per-month, once-per-year, etc., depending on the particular parameters to be measured. Customer satisfaction, for example, is often measured once-per-month or once-per-year, and requires a new customer satisfaction survey for each measurement. Every time a new customer satisfaction survey is performed, a significant amount of time of key personnel within an organization is often required to re-evaluate the survey database.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention overcomes many of the disadvantages of the prior art by providing a method and apparatus for analyzing a survey database, wherein a user can perform a wider variety of requests to the survey database without having to independently calculate a desired result. Moreover, additional request types identified by “experts” within an organization are relatively easy to add to the system, and the parameters used by many of the requests can be set by the user at run time adding additional flexibility to the system.
In accordance with the present invention, these and other advantages are accomplished by using a rules-based expert system for forming and executing requests to a survey database. In a rules-based expert system, a number of rules are provided wherein the rules contain much of the “knowledge” of the experts, and the insights of “decision makers”. This allows “non-expert” users to perform “expert” analysis of client satisfaction data in an accurate and repeatable fashion. This may make data analysis of a survey database faster, more reliable, and cheaper than in the prior art. Moreover, additional request types can be added to the system by simply adding additional rules, and linking the additional rules into the system.
Preferably, the rules-based expert system uses a number of predefined rules to process a request. Each rule is similar to a conditional statement in a conventional computer program (such as C++). However, the rules-based expert system is equipped with an inference engine, which is a special program for managing rules and applying them as appropriate. By contrast, a conventional program must indicate explicitly when a given conditional statement should be applied.
It is contemplated that the rules may have variables associated with them. By simply changing the values of the variables at run time, the analysis can be changed or optimized “on the fly”. The underlying code may remain unchanged, and thus may not require recompilation, extensive debugging and/or quality assurance testing. In addition, the rules themselves may be added or changed, rather than just a variable associated with a rule, thereby changing the function of the rules-based expert system. Because the inference engine applies the rules as appropriate rather than in a predetermined order as in conventional code, the basic “algorithm” need not be modified when rules are added or modified.
In one embodiment of the present invention, a system is provided that has an interface module for accepting a request from a user, and a knowledge module that communicates with the interface module and is capable of accessing the survey database. The knowledge module processes the request at least in part by executing selected ones of a number of predefined rules. An inference engine selects which of the number of predefined rules are actually applied for a particular request.
The knowledge module may receive a request from the interface module, and determine which of the data elements in the survey database are required to derive the desired response to the user request. This may be accomplished, at least in part, by executing a number of predefined rules in the rules-based expert system, resulting in a number of selected data elements. The selected data elements may then be read from the survey database, and the knowledge module may determine the desired response to the user request at least in part by executing a numbe
Austin Thomas K.
Lautzenheiser Ted G.
Peters Thomas R.
Corrielus Jean M.
Johnson Charles A.
Nawrocki, Rooney & Sivertson P.A.
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