Combing language technolgy and web technology to streamline an automotive hotline support service

COMBINING LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY AND WEB TECHNOLOGY TO STREAMLINE AN AUTOMOTIVE HOTLINE SUPPORT SERVICE Jörg Schütz IAI Martin-Luther-Str. 14 D-66111 Saarbrücken Germany email: joerg@iai.uni-sb.de Abstract With the progress of information-oriented trade and commerce many companies have recog- nized that the trade on and with the existing and emerging communication technologies is an essential element for the maintenance of the advantage of competition. Significant business reengineering efforts are underway to taming the complexity of both business processes and computer information systems. The information systems that are needed for tomorrows busi- ness must be far more robust, intelligent and user-centered than the data processing systems of today. Businesses that will thrive in the next millennium will also have to overcome the existing language and cultural barriers, particularly in applications operating in an international busi- ness environment. This paper summarizes our approach to overcome the language barriers of an online multilingual technical information system of the automotive industry. The employed methodology is based on a combination of language technology and Web technology. 1 Introduction With the progress of information-oriented trade and commerce many companies are aware of the fact that the trade on and with the existing and emerging communication technologies is an essential element for the maintenance of the advantage of competition. Strategies for widening the horizons of information transmission, exchange and reuse from trade to trade through the inclusion of customers and trade partners in a digitized communication infrastructure are the most fundamental aspects nowadays. With the appropriate presentation Web technologies such as Intranets and the Internet, especially its multimedial extension the World Wide Web (WWW or Web) can provide efficient instruments for the determination of new national and international markets as well as new proportions. Today, most industrial companies tend to use well established solutions for the transmission of information and for the offering of services; therefore they focus more on the complex infrastructure and the strategies of trade communication than on the development of a market-oriented approach for network-based services and trade in a digitized environment. The transition of an enterprise from 180 email or standard electronic data processing to the complete implementation of digitized services and trade requires an entire rethinking and a revision or a total replacement of the existing trading processes and the workflows to achieve reliable, effective and efficient processing of new service and trading capabilities; this with acceptable costs and with a time reduction of the production cycles. As the deployment of Web technologies imposes a replacement of the traditional industrial workflows, it particularly imposes a more global way of thinking on the use of language technology in applications operating in an international business environment (LANs, MANs and WANs) because written and spoken language is the primary medium of human communication and interaction. Currently, we are exactly in this state of industrial and societal transformation. In this paper we summarize one potential solution for overcoming the language barriers of an online multilingual technical information service of the automotive industry. The basic methodology is to combine …

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