Most configuration solutions are built with specialized software that requires significant investments of time and money to implement. The large effort required upfront is mirrored by a large ongoing effort to update and maintain the system. And often the hardware requirements are costly as well, making it difficult to deploy the application beyond the home office.

Apprentice Systems uses a proprietary modeling paradigm that makes the capture of basic problem-solving knowledge relatively straightforward and simple. The knowledge authoring interface is visual, with knowledge captured by drawing pictures rather than writing code. Rules are entered via a forms-based, wizard-like interface.  New knowledge is learned through the click of a mouse, and immediately available in a deployed application for implementation. There are a variety of end user interfaces, including 2D diagrams, 3D visualization and dialog boxes.

In the process arena, the competitive solutions tend to be template-based, which require manual intervention to eliminate tasks and adjust work levels and durations.  Apprentice Systems' approach, which uses values in context variables to dynamically select and modify tasks in a process, is unique in the industry.

Our proprietary knowledge-modeling paradigm and the technologies we have developed to execute it make us fast and affordable.  Applications are remarkably economical - especially compared to competing solutions.