Transcript Document

Decision Support
Chapter 10
Overview
Databases are really
information technology
Decision Support is a
business application that
actually uses databases
Data to Decisions
Levels of Management Decision
Making
Strategic – group of executives develop overall
organizational goals, strategies, policies, and objectives
as part of a strategic planning process
Tactical – managers and business professionals in selfdirected teams develop short- and medium-range plans,
schedules and budgets and specify the policies,
procedures and business objectives for their subunits
Operational – managers or members of self-directed
teams develop short-range plans such as weekly
production schedules
Decision Structure
Structured – situations where the procedures to follow
when a decision is needed can be specified in advance
Unstructured – decision situations where it is not
possible to specify in advance most of the decision
procedures to follow
Semi structured - decision procedures that can be
prespecified, but not enough to lead to a definite
recommended decision
Business Intelligence
Business Intelligence (BI)
Text: gathering the right information in a timely
manner and usable form.
Analyzing information so that it can have a
positive impact on business strategy, tactics, or
operations.
Which markets to enter, customers to target,
products to promote ?
More about BI later in this course.
It’s a “dog eat dog” world!
Competition is intensifying
Globalization
Internet – anywhere, anytime
Competition is a click away!
Speed of change is increasing
Therefore, we need to:
Make better decisions
Make faster decisions
Outsmart the competition
We do this by:
Empower employees to research their own
decisions (not just CEO).
Provide easy access to data and tools to analyze
the data
Data warehouse – Demand reports!
Encourage sharing across
Departments – collective intelligence
The entire enterprise
BI techniques
Data mining – patterns and trends in data
OLAP – online analytical processing
Multidimensional analysis
Region by salesperson by product by time
Decision Support
Drill down /drill up for correct level of detail
Recap: Data Mining
Discovery of patterns in data
Trends
Relationships and behaviors
Using statistics, AI
Generates & tests hypotheses
Data mining vs. OLAP
Data mining
Looking for patterns in data
Online analytical processing (OLAP)
Multidimensional analysis
OLAP
Top-down, query driven
Must know data well – interaction
Relationships between data:
Geography (Region)
Sales person
Product
Multidimensional Database
Table 5.6
BI applications:
Market Segmentation
Common characteristics of customers who buy
the same products from your company.
Customer churn
Predicts which customers are likely to leave your
company and go to a competitor.
Fraud detection
Identifies which transactions are likely to be
fraudulent.
Direct marketing
Identifies which prospects should be included in
a mailing list to obtain the highest response rate.
Market basket analysis
Identifies what products or services are
commonly purchased together.
Peanut butter & jelly
Cereal and milk
Trend analysis
Reveals the difference between a typical
customer this month versus last month.
Department needs
SALES
Which products are selling to
Which demographics
Which markets
Which sales channel ?
Other needs:
Manage Customer relationships
Need a 360 degree view of the customer
Improve product planning
production planning
contract negotiations with suppliers
Improve marketing and advertising programs
Reduce costs and find new opportunities !
Example
Auto maker Fiat found that it was paying 10
cents more for a lug nut for one vehicle than
another.
Renegotiated contract saving $100,000 per year.
Do this for 100 parts…
Decision Support Systems (DSS)
Definition:
Computer-based information systems that provide
interactive information support to managers and
business professionals during the decision-making
process using the following to make semi structured
business decisions
Analytical models
Specialized databases
A decision maker’s own insights and judgments
An interactive, computer-based modeling process
DSS Components