Uses of DSS in Financial

Management

In the words of Steven Berger,

Financial Management is strategising
the organisations financial directions
as well as the performance of its dayto-day financial operations.

Functions

It provides online availability of funds

position and balances. It instantly
calculates more than a dozen
important aspects to indicate the
financial health of a company.
It helps in recording, classifying,
summarizing, analysing and reporting
on the financial transactions of the
organisation.

Day to day record keeping is automatically

done by the accounting module.
For any new business opportunity, it does
the cost benefit analysis.
It forces the top management to rationalize
the policies related to depreciation,
inventory and inflation.
It can easily compare the financial health of
a company with its competitors or among
various divisions or lines of business.

It can indicate the production

department about the amount of
inventory the company can hold
without losing on liquidity front.
For a company investing in stock
market, it studies the fluctuant, nonlinear and chaotic characteristics of
the stock options and helps avoid
manual errors during analysis.

It gives managers the ability to analyse present

market and economic trends to forecast the future
trends and make informed decisions regarding the
business and its operations.

It allows for careful financial planning and tax

planning.

It is not possible to analyse the portfolio of a

company at any point of time. However this has
become possible with the portfolio management
tool in DSS.

Uses of DSS in Production

Production Management refers to

application of management functions
to the production in the factory.

Optimally plan, implement, schedule,

sequence, and supervise all processes of
production.
Identify and solve exceptions and
deviations in performance in an
economical way and in real time.
Institutionalise lean manufacturing and
six sigma processes and monitor
production to drive continuous
improvement.

Develop members of staff efficiency and

build a superior class job atmosphere.
Capturing, management and analysis of
production related data becomes easier
especially in very large production houses.
It tracks and matches the purchase order,
inventory receipts and invoices generated
by the vendors. It also helps in order
tracking from time of acceptance of an
order till order fulfillment.

It maintains the revenue cycles from invoice

till cash receipt.
Use of data related to past trends in
production and forecasting techniques
instead of primarily informed, intelligent
assumptions to predict about future
production needs.
In case of a company having more than one
product, it can decide the optimum mix of the
product using linear programming technique.

It helps in deciding the optimum order

quantity and reorder level for each of the
stock item using inventory control tool.
In case the production requirement is
fluctuating from time to time, it helps in
planning, procurement, monitoring and
control of inventory.
It uses techniques like PERT and CPM to help
a project manager in Planning, Scheduling
and Controlling the time required in finishing
a project.

It complies with environmental,

health and safety standards.
Keeps a record of production
decisions taken for future reference.
Six Sigma: A systematic method for
improving the operational
performance of an organization by
eliminating variability and waste.

Linear Programming: A mathematical

technique used to obtain an optimum
solution in resource allocation problems,
such as production planning.
Programme Evaluation and Review
Technique: PERT is a method to analyse the
involved tasks in completing a given project,
especially the time needed to complete each
task, and identifying the minimum time
needed to complete the total project.

Critical Path Method: It is a project

managemnt technique which analyses
what activities have the least amount of
scheduling the flexibility (i.e., are the
most mission critical) and then predicts
project duration schedule based on the
activities that fall along the critical path.
Activities that lie along the critical path
cannot be delayed without delaying the
finish time for the entire project.