Following are links to organizations collaborating with Smartsettle, promotional articles about Smartsettle plus a wealth of other related information. We invite you to explore these links if you would like to compare Smartsettle to other Decision Support Systems (e.g., dss resources) or Negotiation Support Systems, read related articles or find your way into the general field of Alternative Dispute Resolution. Included with each link is a very brief summary of the related information at the link address. Please contact our webmaster with improvements, corrections or updates to these descriptions or suggestions of other links to include on this site. Inclusion of a link here does not necessarily imply our endorsement.
Smartsettle Infinity
Smartsettle Infinity, our flagship product, is a multiparty eNegotiation and Collaboration System that reduces time, cost, and stress for decision-makers in all types of cases. It clarifies tradeoffs and understands how negotiators become satisfied on both quantitative and qualitative issues. Smartsettle’s Internet network connects parties located anywhere in the world by means of a patented neutral server that manages private information and keeps it confidential and secure. Using powerful optimization algorithms, Smartsettle can quickly transform conflicting objectives into fair and efficient solutions.
Collaborating Commercial Organizations
Listed below, in no particular order, are other commercial organizations with which Smartsettle is collaborating now or has in the past.
  • Mediations ADR Ltd. (Gishurim): a firm providing mediation and consulting services in Israel.
  • The Mediation Room: an interactive ‘team collaboration’ application providing confidential communications areas for text-based negotiations/discussions with powers of access, of reading and of writing, controlled individually by class of user.
  • Our Family Wizard: Online tools to help divorced, separated or just busy parents share information and schedules in a safe and secure environment.
Other Negotiation Support Systems

Negotiation Support Systems are proliferating on the web. If you wish to compare Smartsettle with other systems, we have provided a few links below as places to start. The systems described in this category are loosely organized in the following order.
  • context support systems
  • group support systems
  • two-party multivariate process support
This type of categorization is no easy task since each particular system is unique and specialized in its own ways. We have therefore deliberately not identified the subcategories explicitly. This is not a comprehensive list. We take no responsibility for errors but welcome your feedback to help us improve this presentation.
  • Professor D.P. Loucks, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Cornell University is the author of a wealth of articles related to decision support and conflict resolution in the area of water resources.
  • Cornell University is also the alma mater of Ernest M. Thiessen, PEng, PhD, inventor and founder of Smartsettle.
  • The University of Massachusetts Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution exists to support and sustain the development of information technology applications, institutional resources, and theoretical and applied knowledge for better understanding and managing conflict.
  • ICONS (the International Communication and Negotiation Simulations) is an Internet based tool that offers educational simulations of international relations at both the university and high school level. Students at a participating institution represent the decision makers of an assigned country and negotiate solutions to global problems via the Internet with peers around the world.
  • The Carter Center is a nongovernmental, not-for-profit organization founded in 1982 by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn Carter. In 2002, President Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work “to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development” through The Carter Center.
  • Inspire was a research system in development by Gregory Kersten at Concordia University for at least three decades. It was designed for simple negotiations in which the structure was already provided. Preferences could be represented with satisfaction graphs. Optimization was used to generate suggestions after an agreement is reached. Parties then resumed negotiations about whether to accept one of the improvements.
  • INSS at Carleton’s InterNeg site was also under Kersten’s purview. It was a Web-based negotiation support system containing facilities for specification and assessment of preferences, a messaging system, a scoring function to aid in the construction of offers, graphical displays of the negotiation progress, and a facility for computing nondominated compromises.
  • Web_HIPRE is a web-version of the HIPRE 3+ software for decision analytic problem structuring and multicriteria evaluation and prioritization.
  • Ron Surratt’s “Mediator” was a two-party conflict resolution applet that looked at all possible ways of dividing any items or issues in contention, and identified the top ways to make that division, given the issue ratings of parties involved in a conflict situation.
  • Persuader is a computer program that operates in the domain of labor management disputes.
  • Negotiator Pro is a Windows software preparation tool with a small expert system to evaluate personality and skills and some 700 mini-tutorials in hypertext to use as background information in filling out a plan. You can create your own checklists. They also have some 30+ paper-based simulations games for groups school-professional level.
  • The Art of Negotiating software is an interactive negotiation preparation system based on the work of Gerard Nierenberg.
  • Cybersettle (similar in some ways to Smartsettle ONE) is one of several existing blind bidding eNegotiation systems for two-party single issue cases.
  • The Electronic Courthouse (formerly NovaForum (and now defunct?)) used arbitrators to provide an online forum for businesses as an alternative to expensive litigation. Designed to uphold the principles of fairness and justice, the service provided a fixed product, for a fixed price, within a fixed time.
  • Negoisst is an electronic business-to-business negotiation system in which players can use natural language to exchange semi-structured messages and jointly compose the terms of a complex contract.
  • Adjusted Winner is an algorithm for implementing bargaining solutions in multi-issue negotiations.
  • Family Winner is a negotiation support system (in theory related to Adjusted Winner) that accepts numerals representing the importance of an issue to the parties. Through a system of trade-off manipulation, Family Winner returns a list of issues allocated to the parties involved. Family Winner also helps suggest the sequence in which to resolve the conflict. As the system is not yet on-line, participants are required to submit issues and importance figures via email.
  • Joint Gains is a multiparty eNegotiation system based on the method of improving directions. Issues are represented with continuous decision variables, which may be related with linear constraints. Negotiators must first agree on a reference package. Joint Gains then elicits their preferences and presents packages that all parties should agree are better than the reference package. The method is repeated until the efficiency frontier is reached.
Following are various articles and places where you can learn more about the above systems as well as many others.
Other Articles 
Other Alternative Dispute Resolution Links
Smartsettle: eNegotiation system transforming conflicts into fair & efficient solutions; from ONE ( optimized for single-issue negotiations) to Infinity (a comprehensive multiparty system).
Last Updated on Friday, 01 August 2008 14:42