PROCESS TO BUILD AN EFFICIENT DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM –IDENTIFYING IMPORTANT ASPECTS OF A DSS Master’s (one year) thesis in Informatics (15 credits) Ashwin Kumar Galipalli Haritha Jyothi Madyala Spring 2012: 2011MAG125 Title: Process to Build an Efficient Decision Support System Year: 2012 Author/s: Ashwin Kumar Galipalli Haritha Jyothi Madyala Supervisor: Prof. Bertil Lind Abstract Decision support systems will be an asset dealing with the complexity involved in many decision situations for companies, organizations and societies by integrating different aspects into a holistic pattern. That creates a close relationship to systems science since systems thinking promote holism as a profitable way to handle complexity. The ideal decision support system should not be used to make automatic decisions but to assist a human being in the decision process. That process is sometimes described as a model consisting of the phases, intelligence, design and choice. Intelligence is needed to understand the situation and find the information that is needed to continue the process. Design means designing different alternatives and in the last phase, choice, the alternatives are evaluated and the best alternative is chosen. A good decision support system should give the user assistance through the whole process. The main purpose of our research is identifying the process of building an efficient Decision Support System. The target groups are the people who are working with multinational companies that are specialized in constructing and delivering decision support systems to end users. The number of target companies involved in this study is only two and is limited Indian Multinational companies. The theoretical study helps in identifying the basic characteristics of a decision support system, exploring the types of decision support systems used in current organizations, resulting if there is any particular standard for constructing DSS today and signifying approach for constructing a user friendly decision support system by analyzing the existing literature related to DSS. At the same time, empirical study advances the research problem from a practical angle. The conclusion for this research is a comprehensive report in relation to the varieties of Decision Support Systems used in today’s organizations, qualities that a decision support system ought to possess and suggested process to be implemented for building an efficient decision support system. Keywords: Decision Support Systems, Decision making, Organizations, Business Intelligence, Expert Systems. [II] Acknowledgements We are heartily thankful to our supervisor, Prof. Bertil Lind, whose encouragement, guidance and support from the initial to the final level enabled me to develop an understanding of the subject. Also thanks to all our interviewees from Aalpha Information Systems (India) Pvt. Ltd. and Sunquest Information Systems (India) Pvt. Ltd. who provided the valuable information required for the thesis. We would also like to thank our friend Vinodh Harry, Project Manager in IBM for providing information on organizational procedures management. Finally, we owe our deepest gratitude to our loving parents, for lending their constant support and encouragement throughout our education. [III] Table of Contents 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY ..................................................................................................... 1 1.2 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM ............................................................................................................ 2 1.3 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY .............................................................................................................. 3 Secondary Objectives ................................................................................................................. 3 1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS ................................................................................................................ 4 1.5 TARGET GROUP ........................................................................................................................... 4 1.6 LIMITATIONS ............................................................................................................................... 4 1.7 EXPECTED OUTCOME .................................................................................................................. 4 1.8 THE AUTHORS’ OWN EXPERIENCE AND BACKGROUND ................................................................ 5 1.9 STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS ......................................................................................................... 5 2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ............................................................................................ 7 2.1 RESEARCH PERSPECTIVE............................................................................................................. 7 2.2 RESEARCH STRATEGY ................................................................................................................. 8 2.3 DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURES ................................................................................................ 9 2.3.1 Primary Data ................................................................................................................ 9 2.3.2 Secondary Data: ........................................................................................................... 9 2.4 SAMPLING SELECTION ............................................................................................................... 10 2.5 DATA ANALYSIS PROCEDURES .................................................................................................. 11 2.6 STRATEGIES FOR VALIDATING FINDINGS ................................................................................... 11 2.6.1 Credibility: ................................................................................................................. 11 2.6.2 Transferability: ........................................................................................................... 12 2.6.3 Dependability: ............................................................................................................ 12 2.6.4 Conformability: .......................................................................................................... 12 2.7 RESULT PRESENTATION METHOD .............................................................................................. 12 3 THEORETICAL STUDY ...................................................................................................... 13 3.1 KEY CONCEPTS ......................................................................................................................... 13 3.2 SUBJECT AREAS RELEVANT FOR THE RESEARCH ........................................................................ 13 3.3 PREVIOUS RESEARCH ON DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS ............................................................. 15 3.4 RELEVANT LITERATURE SOURCES ............................................................................................ 16 3.5 DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM ..................................................................................................... 16 3.5.1 Subsystems in DSS ..................................................................................................... 17 3.6 DECISION MAKING .................................................................................................................... 18 TABLE 1: CHARACTERISTICS OF DECISION-MAKING (BEHL, 2009). .................................................... 19 [IV] 3.6.1 The Decision Making Process: ................................................................................... 19 3.7 WHAT DOES A DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM LOOK LIKE? ........................................................... 21 3.7.1 Extensible design ........................................................................................................ 22 3.8 TYPES OF DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS USED IN TODAY’S ORGANIZATIONS .............................. 25 3.8.1 Communication driven DSS: ...................................................................................... 26 3.8.2 Data driven DSS: ........................................................................................................ 27 3.8.3 Document driven DSS: ............................................................................................... 27 3.8.4 Knowledge driven DSS: ............................................................................................. 27 3.8.5 Model driven DSS: ..................................................................................................... 28 3.9 CHARACTERISTICS TO BE POSSESSED BY AN EFFICIENT DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM: ............... 28 3.10 CONSTRUCTING AN EFFICIENT DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM: ................................................ 30 3.10.1 Requirements for the DSS: ......................................................................................... 30 3.10.2 Designing the DSS ..................................................................................................... 31 3.10.3 Prototyping the Decision Support System .................................................................. 32 3.10.4 Implementing the DSS ..............................................................................................