Part A:
After watching the video in MyMISLab, make two or three comments (in a bulleted list) describing your opinion of the most salient information a manager should know in order to participate in the design and use of a decision support system; include a description of how a decision support system can help managers make better decisions.
If you have any questions, you can pose them here as well. Think about how you would engage in a discussion with less technical stakeholders or managers, and specifically how you would make the information more consumable so they could understand the value of the system and how you were trying to help them make better decisions.
Video Link: https://mediaplayer.pearsoncmg.com/assets/mymislab-2016-intro_MIS-imis_2016_topic_11
Part B:
Reply to of my peer's post below. In your responses to your peers, use your understanding of the subject to address at least one of the aspects they have identified or one of the questions they have posed.
Peer 1 Post: Business Intelligence tools that support data analytics are instrumental for helping management make structured, semi-structured, and unstructured decisions. As an example, I work for a company that consumes sales information into an data warehouse. The data includes product information such as SKUs, amounts charged, amounts collected, etc. Those details are then used to create meaningful reports and dashboard views that help our Marketing and Sales teams understand if sales promotions are effective. More specifically, the data is converted into information that provides both a historical and realtime view of the sales which further allow for trending and forecast analysis. Our management team can determine if a promotion is driving sales (increase in activity) or not driving sales (performance is flat).
Information that should be known by a manager during the design and use of a decision support system might include such things as:
- What kind of data is needed for creating information that can be used to make decisions?
- What is the frequency that information should be provided in order for timely decision-making?
- Who are the individuals needing to use the system for decision-making?
This information will drive further questions such as what level of access is needed, is there sensitive information that should be masked or restricted, and what reports should be pushed vs. pulled.
Peer 2 Post: Managers should know a significant amount of information regarding the organizations employees, operations, and goals to participate in the design and use of a decision support system. It may depend on the specific managers role as well.
- Who is the system supporting, and who will be working to make the decisions?
- Individual operational level employees, middle management, or top executives?
- Collaboration in groups?
- What type of data should be provided? What are we monitoring and what are our goals?
- Is GIS (Geographic Information Systems) needed?
- How do we want to view our data, and what level of detail is required?
- What type of reporting or data visualization tools?
- Drill down capabilities?
- PCs only or should mobile devices be included?
Decision Support Systems provide organizations with crucial information regarding trends, behaviors, forecasts (future predictions) and much more. This allows managers and employees the ability to view data quickly, monitor organizational performance, track activities of competitors, recognize changing market conditions, and identity problems and opportunities for growth.