ITM e-Catalog

 

ITM e-Catalog

ITM e-Catalog - what is it used for?

• You require a showcase for your products on the web
• You need to create entire sales environments: varied, cross-selling, seasonal, multilingual, modifiable on demand, etc.
• You wish to increase your Internet sales by offering cross-selling and suggestive selling
• You have a very comprehensive catalogue or reference material and associated information
• You wish to link your products and services with your specialist information, to develop assistance for selection, etc.
• You want a high-performance solution for searching and navigation your catalogue
• Because your domain is constantly evolving, you require a solution to easily enrich the types of product managed and their relationships, to integrate new catalogues and to extend the services

Introduction

• Management of heterogeneous product catalogues thanks to extended modelling and extension capacities
• Multilingual management of several catalogues in parallel
• Capacity to manage any type of relationship between items such as services and information in order to implement the principles of cross-selling, promoting sales as the presentation of products in their context of use
• Integration of documentation and knowledge management functions to inform and assist the customer in these choices
• Extensive metadata management with publication adapted to the Web environment

These strengths are implemented in particular in e-tourism solutions for the territories:

• A highly uniform offer including multiple products (accommodation, dining, activities, events, crafts, etc.)
• Contextual relationships to promote offers in order to make a “customised purchase”: associating an activity with a service, accommodation, a visit or an event, etc.
• Associating offers with an information and knowledge base describing heritage, culture, places, activities, historical characters, etc.
• High quality customer services to offer efficient selection of products, such as suggestive selling and additional offers

Back office functionalities

• Modelling of the various catalogues and sales environments
• Management of catalogues, items, services and their relationships, etc. in multilingual mode
• Management of lexicons and reference tables associated with catalogues
• Management of taxonomies describing the different types of products in the catalogue
• Management of exploration and search taxonomies within the catalogues
• Management of documentation notices, concepts and knowledge subjects for attaching to items and services
• Management of internal and external links
• Assisted creation interface with conformity check for item description
• Import and export from the catalogue in XML format
• Publication of the catalogue in RDF
• Compatibility with catalogue management standards: EAN, PLIB, eClass, etc.

Web portal functionalities

• Web publication of the catalogue including the navigation tools within the sales environments, the dynamic filtering tools (faceted searching), the relationships and links between items/information,
• Advanced search services: full text, multicriteria, facets, suggestions, etc.
• Shopping basket management application for catalogues with different selection modes
• Connectors for integrating additional services: stock management, reservation management, information map

The ITM e-Catalog solution has API and Web Services to facilitate its integration into the information system and to connect to the company's information system.

Reasoning and inference for management of suggestions and response to complex questions

Semantic Portal - Semantic Widgets

 

Semantic Portal - Semantic Widgets

To be able to use the knowledge bases and make the most of their content, Mondeca offers an innovative solution: a semantic portal. In concrete terms, a semantic portal is an Internet site that offers a single point of access to a broad range of resources and services centred on a knowledge base.

Users can thus develop, search and navigate within their information space, using both the semantics of their knowledge bases and a range of high-end services.

Mondeca's semantic portal solution is based on a widget library: display elements, to be added in a portal, which offer advanced functionalities.

For presentation purposes, we shall group them in broad categories based on functionality:

• Entering a request in natural language: entry areas to help the user submit his/her request to the search service.
• Display and navigation within results: different approaches to access the search results (e.g. a textual list or image grid) and to navigate within them.
• Faceted navigation: Viewing the number of results in facets (constituting as many viewpoints on the results) where each facet value allows the search to be refined. This solution enables users to be guided through their searches.
• Results map: widgets capable of displaying results in time, on maps, or according to their semantics
• Mapping of relationships between subjects in the database

These different widgets can be assembled to create a semantic portal offering a rich search and navigation experience within a knowledge base.

Some examples of widgets

View the results

Filter the search with facets

View and modify the request

Map the results in time

Map the results in space

Semantic map of results

Integration

The semantic portal supports two types of integration: high or low level.

High level integration

The parameter setting level is limited to predefined parameters for each widget. However, this level of integration enables a semantic portal to be set up very quickly and easily.

Low level integration

It is then possible to assemble and set parameters for the existing widgets in order to be able to use them to create new ones.

Integration with the various search engines

The widgets are independent of the search engine used; only the API for dialogue with the search engine is specially adapted

ITM e-Knowledge - Knowledge management software

 

 

ITM e-Knowledge - Knowledge management software

ITM e-Knowledge - what is it used for?

• You wish to implement, either for internal purposes or for your customers and partners, a service providing access to specialist knowledge, and you want to promote an emphasis on internal knowledge.
• Your domain is comprehensive, the subjects numerous and interlinked, and the domain evolving.
• You wish to organise information units so they are easy to update
• You want to enable a knowledge base to be constructed for users, but also to offer added-value information access services
• You wish to manage a documentation resource centre based on a description of your specialism or an area of activity

ITM e-Knowledge: examples of use

• plublisher: legal database giving access to laws, statutes and case law and their relationships
• regulation organization: automated service for the creation of statutory instruments using a knowledge base of products and regulations
• governmental organisation: resource centre describing all the resources managed, projects, actions, players, associated content
• research centre: publication of scientific studies in a knowledge portal - access by researcher, domain, actions, etc.
• industry: portal for capitalisation of knowledge on change process actions
• media: portal giving access to press articles centred on a knowledge base of economic players and their relationships

Introduction

ITM e-Knowledge is a knowledge representation management application based on Semantic Web technology (Web 3.0) and ontologies. With a complete modelling capability according to the area of activity, the solution enables all types of subjects to be described and organised into classes, and all types of relationships between subjects to be managed, ensuring rapid deployment of an operational solution that is perfectly suited to the specialist domain.

Designed for the web and for SOA (service-oriented architecture), the solution enables advanced information access and processing services to be offered to users, and also the construction of automated services using web services.

Collaborative capitalisation and sharing of the knowledge base revolves around user authentication mechanisms, collaborative updates within the work spaces, alerts according to events, etc.

ITM e-Knowledge: Functionalities

• Management of all types of subject classes with all their descriptive attributes (products, offers, people, organisations, projects, events, etc.)
• Management of all types of relationships between subjects (is part of, is located in, works for, is a subsidiary of, interacts with, is a partner of, participates in the project, is a supplier of..., places a mechanical constraint on...)
• Management of specialist reference material and lexicons
• Multilingual management including Arabic, Chinese, Korean, etc.
• Indexing internal or external multimedia content
• Web interfaces for collaborative updating and management of data
• Traceability of database modifications, management of validation workflow
• Alert mechanism with parameter settings covering all events modifying the database objects: modifying a characteristic, deleting, changing a relationship, etc.
• Automatic check on the validity of information in the database according to the constraint rules
• Checking the value of attributes using lexicons, reference material, thesauri, taxonomies (see ITM T3)
• Automated reasoning: ITM e-Knowledge has an optional automated reasoning module using the data in the database and a reasoning and inference rules editor
• Normalised, open environment: XML, RDF, SKOS, OWL, Java, API, Web Services
• Web solution for searching and navigation in the knowledge base via a semantic portal (see Semantic Portal)

Modular architecture

Knowledge management solutions based on ITM e-Knowledge have a modular architecture to allow autonomous modification of components

Modules dedicated to end users

• Module allowing users to access the knowledge base via a semantic portal (see Semantic Portal)
• Module for reporting on the content of the knowledge base
• Knowledge acquisition module enabling knowledge files to be created and updated, and multimedia content to be attached to them

Knowledge base back office management modules

• Knowledge base modelling
• Knowledge base administration and auditing
• Management of work spaces and user authorisations
• Modules enabling dialogue with other applications and services
• Importing and exporting of data from the knowledge base in open and reusable formats
• Services for access to the knowledge base by other applications: API and Web Services
• Services for communicating with specialist external services: text mining, map, translation, etc.

This modular architecture allows, among other things, a high level of demand to be retained regarding formalism in the organisation of knowledge, while constructing intuitive and ergonomic user interfaces.

ITM T3: Terminology, Thesaurus, Taxonomy, Metadata dictionary

ITM T3: Terminology, Thesaurus, Taxonomy, Metadata dictionary

ITM T3 includes a range of functions for managing enterprise shareable multilingual domain-specific taxonomies, thesaurus, terminologies. It can be used as a domain-specific vocabulary server for employees, customers, authors, and translators, but also as a service to enhance enterprise search engines, authoring tools, user guides, content indexation engines and text mining software.

ITM T3 is a piece of software for managing company reference material. It enables terminology, thesauri, taxonomies and a metadata dictionary to be managed in a unified way.

ITM T3 is a web solution which is simple to deploy in an intranet, and which enables collaborative work within the company. ITM T3 is completely multilingual. ITM T3 has been designed as an open, normalised solution, which is simple to integrate in an information system thanks to Web Services and API, and which uses XML, SKOS and RDF standards.

ITM T3 has been adopted by a number of large international groups: Lafarge, Thomson Scientific, Wolters Kluwer Belgium, Lexis Nexis France, among others, to manage reference material.

ITM T3: Thesaurus management

• thesaurus administration web interfaces enabling distributed, collaborative work
• management of an unlimited number of multilingual thesauri with recognition of Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese alphabets, among others
• complete, enrichable description of descriptors (multiple designations, scope notes, associated image, level in the hierarchy, etc.)
• management of synonymy, generic term/specific term, associated term relationships
• management of specific domain relationships (...is the cause of..., ...is a component of...)
• management of poly-hierarchies
• management of equivalence relationships (mapping) between thesauri for transcodification operations or bringing items of heterogeneous content closer together
• descriptor merge operations
• copying, moving hierarchical structures from the thesaurus
• creating alphabetical and hierarchical lists
• search, navigation, consultation functions
• graphical representation of hierarchies and associated term relationships
• import and export of thesauri (XML, RDF, SKOS)
• terminology server accessible by all applications via web services or API

ITM T3: Taxonomy management

In this context, taxonomy is taken to mean any hierarchical organisation of headings or concepts used for classifying content (classification taxonomies) or for navigation within a portal (publication taxonomy used in faceted searches).

• taxonomies editing
• moving parts of the taxonomy
• creating requests for content to be used by search engines in faceted searches
• importing/exporting taxonomies in XML/SKOS format
• taxonomies accessible via API and Web Services

ITM T3: Management of Terminology, Lexicons, Glossaries

• administration web interface enabling collaborative work between terminologists for translating and enriching definitions
• complete management of a term's definition with the facility to expand as required (definition, source, example of usage, translation, etc.)
• terminology management by domain within the company
• search and consultation interfaces for end-users within the intranet or company websites : clicking on a term in an intranet or website gives direct access to its definition
• XML and SKOS import and export
• terminology server accessible by all applications via web services

ITM T3: Metadata dictionary

ITM T3 is by its nature a metadata reference enabling any type of organisation of this reference material: lists, thesauri, classification taxonomies.

ITM T3 is used as reference material in content indexing processes. It may be called upon by any external application to check the validity of a metadata value or to obtain the metadata to be used.

ITM T3 enables equivalence tables to be managed between metadata dictionaries to allow re-indexing of content or translation of requests for indexed content in a heterogeneous way.

Based on URI, RDF and SKOS standards, ITM enables the metadata dictionary to be exchanged and published in open formats

ITM T3: Reference material shared by all the linguistic tools

Applications based on linguistics are increasingly common within organisations: search engine, text mining and data mining tools, authoring help tools, spellcheckers, translation tools, comprehension help function.

The ITM application enables multilingual domain vocabulary to be managed in a unified and normalised way in order to provide the various linguistic applications with up-to-date specialist vocabulary.

Enrichment of existing tool functionalities

• search engine: automatic extension of searches to cover synonyms, acronyms, more specific terms, translations.
• search portal: use of publication taxonomies for faceted searches
• text mining: use of up-to-date specialist vocabulary to manage the extraction of named entities
• translation: use of up-to-date specialist multilingual vocabulary for processing assisted translation
• spellchecker: enrichment of the standard dictionary with the company's specialist dictionary comprehension help: clicking on an expression gives direct access to its definition in the specialist reference material

ITM T3: Some examples of thesauri imported in ITM for client's projects

• Eurovoc of the European Commission
• Gemet: European thesaurus specialising in sustainable development and ecology
• Mesh, Snomed int, CIM10, CCAM, CISMeF, CISP2, DRC, Medline+, CIF... medical thesauri
• Tourism thesaurus of the World Tourism Organisation
• Official Geographic Code of Insee published in RDF by Mondeca
• Unesco Thesaurus
• Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus

All these thesauri are published by ITM in SKOS, and are available in this format

Mondeca

Mondeca helps enterprises create value-added products and services from their accumulated knowledge and content by simplifying their organization, access and reuse.

Model, organize and leverage content and knowledge. Manage reference schemas, taxonomies, thesaurus and ontology. Classify content. Power vertical search portals

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ITM T3 : Manage Thesaurus, Taxonomies, Terminologies

ITM e-Catalog : Manage e-catalog - Link products and knowledge base

ITM e-Knowledge : Capitalize, publish, distribute content and knowledge

Semantic portal : Semantic widget to select, browse, navigate content and knowledge

ITM an open software - API, Web Services - based on Semantic Web standards - XML, RDF, SKOS, OWL, URI