Advice: Expert systems: automating your brain

It’s not as scary as it sounds – by using an expert system to automate repetitive, but specialist tasks unique to your business, you can save time, offload tasks, or put your ‘brain’ online for profit. So, who’s first for an electronic cerebrectomy then?

Right off the bat, let’s tackle the most obvious question: what is an expert system?

An expert system is a fairly loose term, used to describe any software program, business system, or documentable procedure, whereby the specialist knowlege of one person is drawn out, to be made available to other people. The knowledge may take the form of a series of questions that arrive at an answer; it may resemble a software wizard that takes inputs and gives answers; or it may be an application that is custom-tailored to your specialist skillset.

Now, let me give you that immortal two-word phrase before we go any further: DON’T PANIC. Under no circumstances is an expert system designed to replace you, or to take your specialist knowledge and hand it over, lock, stock and barrel to someone else. Rather, the aim is always to compliment your unique combination of talents, and to take the low-level drudgery out of your working day.

Everyone who I’ve ever spoken to regarding this topic can always tell me the same story: they can vividly remember specific critical numbers or processes from jobs way back at the start of their careers – numbers and processes critical to that old job, but of no use to your or to me right here, right now. There’s something to be said for clearing your mind of all the things that, let’s face it, we’d rather let a computer do 24×7, and let us work on the bigger picture – using our intellect and our creativity to make the world a happier place.

It’s a little bit of the chicken or the egg syndrome – you will need to take time to both formalise what you do, and then articulate that into the expert system before you can begin to make good use of the system. The process is an iterative one, but overall, a rewarding one, as the following benefits show:

Save time

Simply to save yourself time and stress, and improve the efficiency of your own workflow, automating procedures and making a ‘wizard’ for an everyday complex calculation can be the best starting points. Each expert system might be separate from each other, but maybe one day you’ll be able to join some together to make the automations the automatic.

Offload tasks

If you’re working with junior staff or contractors, you can offload what might be seemingly complex and intricate routines by formalising them, and making one big, red button to determine an answer, or a price, or a
Sometimes an expert system is as simple as a flowchart printed out to a poster size – outlining what decisions to take given certain inputs at different times.

Put your brain online

OK, here’s where is starts to get fun: rather than just automating complex parts of your brain for yourself, or for those around you, how about putting it all ‘out there’, for a fee, so as to allow the general internet population to make use of your specialist knowledge. It’d have to be locked up tight, and promoted to the right market, but can you forsee a way to allow your talents to be captured, and, well, on-sold while you sleep? Online wills, anyone?

How to get started

The hardest part is identifying what you *really* do, and articulating/documenting it. It’s actually very hard to spot patterns in your own workflow. Begin to look at what you do in a more general sense, from 20,000 feet, as it were. Write it all down, or…

What tools should I use for the automation?

Begin tinkering with a spreadsheet like Excel – perfect if you need to crunch a lot of numbers. The next step is to progress to a database – an easy one to begin playing with is Filemaker – something scalable for later on, but very flexible for tinkering around with. Remember, it’s an iterative process – the more you learn about the way you work, the more you can automate it.

*And if the phrase ‘electronic cerebrectomy’ has been ringing in your head the last few minutes, but you couldn’t quite place it, think Muppets, think Mel Brooks, and think mad German professor…

**Oh, all right, here’s the scene, word for word.

AB out.