Managing Information Systems

Enhancing Management Decision Making

Part 2

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 Objectives
• To understand the characteristics of group
decision-support systems
• To understand the characteristics of
executive-support systems

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Group Decision-support Systems
• What is a group decision-support system
(GDSS)?
• How does a GDSS differ from a DSS?

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Group Decision-support Systems
• An interactive system to facilitate solutions
to unstructured problems by a set of
decision makers

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Group Decision-support Systems
• How do we support people making
decisions in groups?

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 Too Many Meetings…
• Improved pre-planning
– Plan to make meetings effective and efficient
• Electronic questionnaires
• Office automation systems
• Increased participation
– Make sure all attendees contribute fully
– Reduce occurrences of non-contribution
• Networked systems for simultaneous participation
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 Too Many Meetings…
• Open, collaborative atmosphere
– Contribution from all levels
– No intimidation or judgement from ‘the boss’
– No domination by ‘the boss’
• Networked systems provide anonymity
• Idea generation free of criticism
– No personal criticism
• Networked systems provide anonymity
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 Too Many Meetings…
• Evaluation objectivity
– Ideas evaluated on merits rather than source
• Networked systems provide anonymity
• Idea organisation and evaluation
– Organising ideas generated
– Time constraints
– Are the ideas relevant?
• Structured tools for submitting ideas
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 Too Many Meetings…
• Setting priorities and decision making
– Priorities of discussion
– Encompass all ideas of attendees
• Networked systems provide anonymity
• Documentation of meetings
– Sufficient for continuation: minutes, actions
– How was the decision made?
• Office automation systems, e-mail
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 Too Many Meetings…
• Access to external information (factual)
– Provides timely information
– Settles factual disagreement
• External networking, but does this distract?
• Preservation of organisational memory
– Non-attendees need to understand the outcomes
– Only parts of meeting relevant
• Office automation systems, e-mail
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 GDSS Components
• Hardware
– Conference facilities: support decision-making
– Technology: computers, audiovisual, networks
• Software
• People
– Trained meeting chair
– Willingness to participate

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 Software
• Electronic questionnaires
– Pre-meeting
• Electronic brainstorming tools
– Simultaneous and anonymous
• Idea organisers
– Organising ideas
• Questionnaire tools
– Support for meeting chair
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 Software
• Voting
– Voting, ranking and weighting
• Stakeholder identification and analysis
– Evaluate proposals and their impact
• Policy information
– Structured help for wording
• Group dictionaries
– Group definitions of words and terms
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 Electronic Meetings
• Electronic Meeting Systems (EMS)
– Attendees have networked workstations
– Meeting chair has console
– File server
– Projection from console
– May be in different locations

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 Electronic Meetings
• Supported by
– Office automation systems
– Voting systems
– Idea collation
• Provides
– Confidentiality
– Anonymity
– Simultaneous submission
• Helps to solve some of the meeting problems

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Executive-support Systems (ESS)
• Strategic level information system designed
to support unstructured decision making
• Designed to be easy-to-use
• Bespoke
• External and internal data sources

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 Benefits of ESS
• Flexibility
– No specific solution models
• Current and accurate data
• Trend analysis
– Analyse, compare and highlight
– Traditionally performed by other staff
– ESS reduce burden

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 Coursework
• Select a publicly quoted company, and
using your research skills, evaluate how
they use information systems (IS) in their
business model. You should look at how
they have used IS in the past, how they use
it now and formulate some ideas as to how
you think they should use IS in the future.

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 Coursework
• Next lecture:
– Each have example target company
– Ideas on how to research IS in the company
– Ideas on how topics to address from course
– Questions

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