B2B market growth gets independent agents boost

The company's latest report entitled B2B Marketplace Developments states that intelligent agents (IA) - autonomously acting software - are ideal technology to automate procurement transactions such as invoices and other documents between the buyer and supplier.

The current versions of IA software can act independently making decisions based on users' earlier requests, according to the report authors.

Mary Hope, senior analyst at Ovum, said: "IA software is ideal because of its ability to automate procurement processes on behalf of its owner. The B2B marketplace is still in its infancy but IAs will enable the marketplace to develop to its next stage."

Professor Nick Jennings, the chief scientific officer at Lost Wax, a vendor specialising in IA technology, said IA technology has been perceived as too 'futuristic'. "IA technology suffers from an image problem," he said. "It is seen as too academic and something which will happen in ten years time. But the move to IA is gradual. Already sites are offering personalisation facilities which allow companies to maintain profiles of users which is a 'pre-historic' form of IA technology."

Richard Duvall, chief marketing officer at the internet bank Egg, said: "First we offer personalised services which allows users to control the information, we then move on to letting the software make suggestions on behalf of the user. The final stage is to introduce an independently acting agent which the user has granted full autonomy."