A decision support system or in short DSS is a computer based information system, which supports business as well as organizational decision-making activities. DSS's serve the management, planning and operations levels of an organization and help to make decisions that may be rapidly changing and not easily specified in advance. DSS includes knowledge-based systems and it is properly designed as interactive software based system intended to help decision makers compile useful information from a combination of raw data, personal knowledge, document and business models to identify and solve problems and make decisions. A DSS application should present and gather some information that will include:
Inventories of information assets that will include legacy and relational data sources, data warehouses, data marts as well as cubes
Comparative sales figures between one period and the next
Projected revenue figures that are based on product sales assumptions
Model data and make quality based decisions based upon it. In addition, this is made possible because in order to make the right decision you will need to have quality data as well as ability to sift through and analyze the data to find trends in which you can create solutions as well as strategies. The integration of DSS into day-to-day operating activities in businesses is becoming more popular and this is because they have a more definite structure in business but in reality the data collected and the decisions made are fluid and constantly changing.
It is important to note that although the computers and artificial intelligence are working with data, it is ultimately up to humans to execute these strategies or comprehend the data into a usable hypothesis. It is also important to note that the field of DSS does not have a universally accepted model, which will mean that there will be many theories vying for supremacy in this broad field and this is why DSS has many classifications. For example, one of the several DSS models available is with the relationship of the user in mind and it takes into consideration passive, active and cooperative DSS models. This will mean that there are three models of DSS namely:
Passive DSS - DSS systems that only collect data and organize it effectively. They do not suggest a specific decision but only reveal the data.
Active DSS - DSS systems that processes data as well as explicitly shows solutions based upon the data that has been collected.
Cooperative DSS - DSS systems that collect analyze data and then provides to a human component, which then helps the system revise or refine it. This will mean that both a human component and computer component work together to come up with the best solution.
This DSS model takes the relationship of the user in mind, another DSS model, which is popular, takes into consideration the mode of assistance as the underlying basis of the DSS model. In addition, this will include the Model driven DSS, Data driven DSS, Communications driven DSS, Knowledge driven DSS and Document driven DSS.
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This article touched the basics of the topic. I have 2 more resources related to the above. They are decision support system and decision support system . They are worth a read.
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