Empiricom Technologies, a Manchester-based developer of knowledge management systems, has launched Knowledge Acquisition Technique (KAT), a suite of products and services that aims to capture expert knowledge.

According to the company, KAT can be used to support decision-making, customer services and training programs via a Web interface.

KAT consists of three elements: an interview process to extract knowledge of a particular area from an expert; KAT Build, a toolkit for building a database of computable code from the interview output; and KAT Consult, a user interface that can be hosted in-house or remotely, reaching users through a Windows interface, VPNs or the public Internet. Consult is also designed to integrate with legacy ERP and CRM systems. The launch follows KAT implementations for KPMG, Huntsman Petrochemicals and ICI. According to Empiricom, KAT is around 90% quicker than other methods of capturing expert knowledge. The Build and Consult modules reputedly require no specialist knowledge to build and deploy, being driven by simple graphical interfaces. Internally, KAT works by steering the user through a logical ‘tree’ structure, the route and outcome depending on their responses to questions.

Executive Chairman Peter Horne expects strongest interest to come from the financial services sector and software vendors: “Financial services are early adopters - they can see the benefits of offering advice online, but as we’ve seen with pensions, it’s important to make sure the best advice is given,” he said. Each case can be audited by an expert, by checking the path left by a user,” added chief scientific officer Peter Duke.

The company, which recently received £850,000 funding from Axiomlab, prices KAT implementations at between £30k and £300k. At present, the company markets KAT as a stand-alone product, but will look for channel partners, particularly for expansion overseas.