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Running Head: DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS

Table of Contents 1.0 Introduction 3 1.1 Background of the decision support system to be adopted by Al Nahdee 4 1.2 Intelligence phase 5 1.3 Design phase 7 1.4 Choice phase 7 2.0 Work breakdown structure 9 3.0 Conclusion 10 References 11

1.0 Introduction

The aim of each and every organization is to maximize their returns. The amount of revenue earned and the net profit retained greatly depends on various decision strategies put in place by the organization’s management. Customers are always the reason organizations are in business, they also dictate whether the business organization will continue with business or not. It is, therefore important to treat prospective customers well, creating customer trust and loyalty is one of the most important techniques which can be used by Al Nahdee pharmacy one of the leading pharmacies in Saudi Arabia to expand and sustain their customer base. This project seeks to determine the best course of action which can be taken in order to integrate customer loyalty program and the pharmacy’s transaction system without creating an adverse effect on the pharmacy’s daily operations.

Pharmacies have various groups of stakeholders such as the customers, suppliers, management, employees and the government among many others. The decisions made by the pharmacy’s management should not affect any of the stakeholders adversely. For instance, the customers right to privacy should not be abused in the process in case the pharmacy decides to run a customer trust and loyalty program which is integrated with the organization’s transaction system. The pharmacy’s management should make good use of the decision support systems which will enable them make right decisions with minimum negative effects but maximizing effectiveness and efficiency within the organization. This project will provide the pharmacy’s management with the best alternative, the most appropriate model of decision making and the best decision support system which should be used.

1.1 Background of the decision support system to be adopted by Al Nahdee

Several technologists and management information systems researchers have developed and investigated decision support systems over a very long period of time. The development decision support systems begun in the mid 20th century, model-based decision support systems were are among the first model to be developed. The development of design support systems has gone through various phases leading to the current knowledge-based decision systems and the web-driven decision systems. Knowledge-based decision support systems have been used by various managers and staff members both in the medical and business field to recommend the best course of actions that the organizations should take. The technique and expertise needed when using this model of decision support system include the knowledge with regards to a particular domain, understanding the set of problems and opportunities within the same domain and the skills necessary to solve the problem at hand.

In 1966, a research team based in Stanford University conducted a detailed research which led to the development of the DENDRAL expert system, this system was based on rules and reasoning programs which could help physicians and clinicians diagnose their patients based on a set of signs and symptoms. In 1980, Whinston, Holsapple, and Bonszek came up with a book which created interest in technologies, especially technology related to decision support systems. Dustin established EXSYS, a company which developed a personal computer application which made it possible to develop and use various decision support systems. Artificial intelligence and various business intelligence models have been developed to assist in the process of decision making. These models have made it possible and easy to record customer profiles, financial transactions, detect fraudulent activities and record medical diagnosis among others (Siami-Irdemoosa, et al., 2015).

The global internet and the world-wide-web provided decision support systems with the technological platform necessary to develop and expand its capabilities in 1995. The creation of HTML 2.0 acted as a turning point to the creation of web-based decision support systems with the introduction of the tables and form tags leading to a wide adoption of decision support systems globally. In 1999, various developers and vendors created new computer applications based on the web which could assist in the when analyzing various available alternatives during the process of decision making. The application service providers have begun to host application software and infrastructure which were necessary when developing decision support systems and using them.

The developers of decision support systems have come from varied backgrounds and a have faced different sets of challenges; however, they came up with appropriate models of decision support systems which have been used as decision-making tools in various organizations in business and the medical industry.

1.2 Intelligence phase

General Description:

Creating a customer trust and loyalty program within Al Nahdee pharmacy leaves the pharmacy’s management with a very critical task of making decisions relating to the process of enrolling this program. The management is supposed to make decisions which answer the following questions; how the program should be conducted, when to begin the program, the personnel needed to run the program, and the cost of running the program. The decision-making process becomes more complicated due to the proposed integration of the program with the pharmacy’s transactional system.

The pharmacy’s management is supposed to decide whether it is prudent to include the customer profiles in their system. In the event that the management decides that customer profiles should be added to the organization systems, the organization risks abusing customer privacy rights in case third parties access their information. In case the management decides that the customer profiles should not be recorded in the pharmacy’s system then it becomes a hard task to record data and runs the customer loyalty program. The management is, therefore, left with the task of deciding whether to record their customer profiles in their systems or not.

Type of Decision:

This type of decision is strategic since it affects the daily operations of Al Nahdee pharmacy; it affects the goals and the objectives of this organization. This type of decisions should be handled tactically and with technique, since it is directly linked to the organization’s customer base and the market segment and can lead to various long-term effects on the organization. The pharmacy’s management should asses all the possible consequences of each and every alternative in a decision situation in order to come up with the most appropriate decisions which will help the organization to achieve their goals in the long-run. These types of decisions affect the organization in the long-term and thus should be made with strategy and tactic.

Decision support systems are simple and easy to use compared to all the other computer systems which can be used in the process of decision making. This type of systems can be used by non-technical personnel within the organization, it is, therefore, less costly to operate DSS. This type of system is also a very adaptive decision generator which can be used to design the necessary data and support prototypes which suit different decision-making situations. Decision support systems can also support human features adequately and can also provide access to operational data easily. Decision support systems can also allow formatting and manipulation of data displayed, this makes it easy to assess different decision situations.

DSS provides support to those involved in making decisions when faced with decision situations which are not structured. DSS can also support various stages during the process of making decisions since it can work under the ad hoc form to meet some specific needs of the user which is an added advantage compared to the other scheduled systems. DSS is not limited to some predetermined pattern and thus can offer flexibility. DSS also allows decision making involving more than one party, teams and groups can easily make decisions with ease. Using DSS enables the managers within the organization to understand their business better by creating and working with appropriate models (Power et al., 2015).

1.3 Design phase

There are various alternatives that can affect the decisions made by Al Nahdee, however, each and every alternative have varied consequence depending on how they will be implemented. Some of the possible alternatives include;

a) Integrating the program with the pharmacy’s transaction system.

b) Launching the program without integrating it with the pharmacy’s transaction system.

c) Avoiding the launch of the program completely

1.4 Choice phase

The aim of Al Nahdee is maintaining and expanding their customer base in order to increase their revenues, therefore, maximizing their returns. The organization, therefore, needs to ensure that they get in touch with their customers in order to improve the sales volume. Launching the customer trust and loyalty program helps the pharmacy to deliver quality services to their customers, good service delivery yields customer loyalty, therefore, maintaining the organization’s customer base in the long-run. Integrating this program with the pharmacy’s transaction system ensures that all the customer data and records is maintained by the pharmacy making assessment and decision making much easier compared to a situation where there are no customer records or data maintained. Putting in place this program ensures that customer grievances are addressed leading to a mutual benefit between the organization and its customers.

The Model used:

Normative model: this model maximizes on optimization. It is a model of leadership that gives managers the capacity to decide the extent of degree to which their members should get involved in the process of decision making for the organization. In the first step, the manager individually makes the decision, then consults individual team members after which he/she consults the entire group.

Advantages

i. Common goal; the team members have a strong commitment to the cause and will support it

ii. Great extent of involvement by the team members

iii. Commitment that is based on loyalty

iv. Self preservation in that the model is built on a circle that will perpetuate its value system

Disadvantages

i. The process extends the period of decision making

ii. They involve perspectives and therefore consensus on a given decision may be difficult to obtain

iii. They may be narrow in their application

The normative model could be applied with human capital management. This module is concerned with measuring the performance of employees so as to improve the value that they provide. The module is also concerned with monitoring and managing talent, recording such results and providing a path for decision making on the latter. HCM 5 is more concerned with the different employee groups that exist while HCM 10 is concerned with their qualifications.

Advantages according to Putnam (2017) are

i. It helps with recruiting, by finding the most qualified talent through tracking and evaluating the best candidates

ii. It helps the organization focus more on the human resource instead of paperwork, by reducing paperwork and improving results

iii. They give a business clear solutions such as defined eligibility and business plan overviews

iv. They can guarantee an accurate payroll.

A business that does not use a HCM module on the other hand will experience the following challenges

i. Mismanagement of time and labor: employee scheduling and accrual tracking cannot be effectively performed for instance

ii. Poor decision making due to poor reporting on employee matters

iii. Reduced security due to paper work that is highly vulnerable

iv. High cost with service delivery on services that could have been easily implemented by a HCM solution.

Business Intellegence Tools:

There are various business intelligence tools readily available in the market, they include; Sisense, Actuate reporting and business intelligence tools, icCube, Domo, Board toolkit, clear analytics, Ducen, Goddata, IBM Cognos intelligence, Oracle BI and looker among others, Oracle BI can be used to solve the problem in this case. Oracle BI allows a comprehensive collection of intelligence needed for functionality since this system provides the organization with the appropriate dashboard, alerts, proactive intelligence and a complete ad hoc (Peng, et al., 2017).

2.0 Work breakdown structure

The work breakdown structure will help the group members when defining the tasks which should be completed in the project in order to produce the required deliverable or product. Work breakdown structure is normally presented as a complete hierarchical division of the project in the task areas beginning with general tasks and ending with the lowest task package or even a specific activity which must be done in order to produce the project deliverables.

The work breakdown structure will enable the group members to define the general scope and nature of the project, and assign specific tasks to various responsible members who will be tasked with completing the specific work requirements. The work breakdown structure will also help the group members to establish a control and management baseline, it also provides the group members with a means of measuring achievements when the necessary work has been completed. It also enables the group members to collect information and report the progress of the project as a whole. The work breakdown structure also demarcates the relationship between tasks, responsibility and the cost incurred to complete the whole project.

Decision support system project

3.0 Conclusion

Every single minute we spend living and running organizations require that we make certain decisions with regards to every situation we are faced with. Some decisions are based on structured models while others are not, it is, therefore, important to follow the right decision models since every single decision made affects the organization in the long-run. Technology has led to the development of various decision support systems which help decision makers in their daily endeavors, especially when used appropriately with various business intelligence tools. Organizations should use the best decision support systems and follow all the four stages of decision-making when determining the best alternative when making decisions, this will ensure that they end up with return-maximizing decisions.

References

Levin, J., & Nolan, J. F. (2014). Principles of classroom management: A professional decision-

making model. Pearson. One Lake Street, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458. Peng, M. Y. P., Tuan, S. H., & Liu, F. C. (2017, July). Establishment of Business Intelligence

and Big Data Analysis for Higher Education. In Proceedings of the International

Conference on Business and Information Management (pp. 121-125). ACM.

Power, D. J., Sharda, R., & Burstein, F. (2015). Decision support systems. John Wiley & Sons,

Ltd.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Warehouse Management. (2018). Erpgreat.com. Retrieved 27 February 2018, from http://www.erpgreat.com/warehouse/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-warehouse-management.htm

Putnam, C. (2017). Ten Business Advantages of a Human Capital Management Solution. Blog.benpor.com. Retrieved 27 February 2018, from http://blog.benpor.com/impressions/ten-business-advantages-of-a-human-capital-management-solution

DSS PROJECT

Member A

Planning

Member A

Analysis plan

work plan

staffing plan

project charter

risk assessment

Analysis

Member B

Analysis plan

information search

Design

Member C

Implementation

Member D

process model

Data model

Design plan

Arrhitecture desig

Test plan

Converrsion plan

Training plan