1. The document discusses different types of decision making and support systems at operational, managerial, and strategic levels of an organization. 2. At each level, decisions become less structured and involve more analysis of large amounts of data. Transaction processing systems support operational decisions while decision support systems and executive information systems support higher level decisions. 3. Visualization and infographics are used in strategic support systems to communicate large amounts of data through visual displays and dashboards, helping executives make unstructured decisions.

1. CHAPTER NINE
ENABLINGTHE ORGANIZATION
DECISION MAKING

2. LEARNING OUTCOMES
1. Explain the importance of decision making for managers at each of the three primary
organization levels along with the associated decision characteristics
2. Classify the different operational, managerial, and strategic support systems, and
explain how managers can use them to make decisions & gain competitive advantage
3. Describe artificial intelligence and identify its main types

3.  The most important and most challenging question confronting managers
today is how to lay the foundation for tomorrow’s success while competing to
win in today’s business environment.
 A company will not have a future if it is not cultivating strategies for tomorrow.
MAKING ORGANIZATIONAL BUSINESS
DECISIONS

4.  Decision making is one of the most important and challenging aspects of
management.
 Decisions range from routine choices, such as how many items to order or how many
people to hire, to unexpected ones such as what to do if a key employee suddenly quits
or needed materials do not arrive.
MAKING ORGANIZATIONAL BUSINESS
DECISIONS

5.  There are three primary managerial decision-
making challenges:
 Analyze large amounts of information
 Apply sophisticated analysis techniques
 Make decisions quickly
MAKING ORGANIZATIONAL BUSINESS
DECISIONS

6. MANAGERIAL DECISION-MAKING
CHALLENGES

7. THE DECISION-MAKING PROCESS
 The six-step decision-making process
1. Problem identification
2. Data collection
3. Solution generation
4. Solution test
5. Solution selection
6. Solution implementation

8. THE DECISION-MAKING PROCESS

10. • The structure of a typical organization is similar to a pyramid, and the
different levels require different types of information to assist in decision
making, problem solving, and opportunity capturing.
DECISION-MAKING ESSENTIALS

12.  Decision-making and problem-solving occur
at each level in an organization.
DECISION-MAKING ESSENTIALS
OPERATIONAL
MANAGERIAL
STRATEGIC

13.  Operational decisions: Affect how the firm is run from day
to day.They are the domain of operations managers, who
are the closest to the customer.
 Operational decision making - Employees develop,
control, and maintain core business activities required to
run the day-to-day operations.
 Structured decisions - Occur in situations where
established processes offer potential solutions.
Examples: Reordering inventory and creating the employee
staffing and weekly production schedules are examples of
routine structured decisions.
OPERATIONAL
DECISION-MAKING ESSENTIALS

14.  Managerial decisions: Concern how the organization should
achieve the goals and objectives set by its strategy, and they are
usually the responsibility of mid-level management.
 Managerial decision making – Employees evaluate company
operations to identify, adapt to, and leverage change.
 Semistructured decisions – Occur in situations in which a few
established processes help to evaluate potential solutions, but not
enough to lead to a definite recommended decision.
 For example, decisions about producing new products or changing
employee benefits.
MANAGERIAL
DECISION-MAKING ESSENTIALS

15.  Strategic decisions: Involve higher level issues concerned
with the overall direction of the organization.These
decisions define the organization’s overall goals and
aspirations for the future.
 Strategic decision making – Managers develop overall
strategies, goals, and objectives.
 Unstructured decisions – Occurs in situations in which no
procedures or rules exist to guide decision makers toward
the correct choice.
Examples include the decision to enter a new market or even a
new industry over, say, the next 3 years.
STRATEGIC
DECISION-MAKING ESSENTIALS

17.  Model – A simplified representation or
abstraction of reality
 Models help managers to
 Calculate risks
 Understand uncertainty
 Change variables
 Manipulate time to make decisions
USING MISTO MAKE BUSINESS DECISIONS

18.  MIS support systems rely on models for computational and
analytical routines that mathematically express relationships
among variables.
 For example, a spreadsheet program, such as Microsoft Office
Excel, might contain models that calculate market share or ROI.
USING MISTO MAKE BUSINESS DECISIONS

19. Types of MIS Systems for Decision Making
USING MISTO MAKE BUSINESS DECISIONS

20.  Transactional information encompasses all the
information contained within a single business process
or unit of work, and its primary purpose is to support
the performance of daily operational or structured
decisions.
 Transactional information is created, for example,
when customers are purchasing stocks, making an
airline reservation, or withdrawing cash from an ATM.
 Managers use transactional information when making
structured decisions at the operational level, such as
when analyzing daily sales reports to determine how
much inventory to carry.
OPERATIONAL SUPPORT SYSTEMS

21.  Transaction processing system (TPS) – Basic
business system that serves the operational level
and assists in making structured decisions (payroll
system or an order-entry system)
 Online transaction processing (OLTP) - Capturing
of transaction and event information using
technology to process, store, and update
 Source document –The original transaction record
OPERATIONAL SUPPORT SYSTEMS

22. SystemsThinkingView of aTPS
OPERATIONAL SUPPORT SYSTEMS

23. MANAGERIAL SUPPORT SYSTEMS
 Analytical information encompasses all organizational information, and its primary
purpose is to support the performance of managerial analysis or semistructured
decisions.
 Managers use analytical information when making important semistructured
decisions, such as whether the organization should hire additional sales reps.

24.  Online analytical processing (OLAP) –
Manipulation of information to create business
intelligence in support of strategic decision
making
 Decision support system (DSS) – Models
information using OLAP to support managers
and business professionals during the decision-
making process.
MANAGERIAL SUPPORT SYSTEMS

25.  DSSs enable high-level managers to:
- examine and manipulate large amounts of detailed data from different
internal and external sources.
- analyze complex relationships among thousands or even millions of data
items to discover patterns, trends, and exception conditions.
Example: Doctors entering symptoms into a decision support system so it
can help diagnose and treat patients.
MANAGERIAL SUPPORT SYSTEMS

26.  Four quantitative models used by DSSs include
1. What-if analysis
2. Sensitivity analysis
3. Goal-seeking analysis
4. Optimization analysis
MANAGERIAL SUPPORT SYSTEMS

27. SystemsThinkingView of a DSS
MANAGERIAL SUPPORT SYSTEMS

28. Interaction Between aTPS and DSS
MANAGERIAL SUPPORT SYSTEMS

29. STRATEGIC SUPPORT SYSTEMS
 Decision making at the strategic level requires both business intelligence and
knowledge to support the uncertainty and complexity associated with business
strategies.
 Executive information system (EIS) – A specialized DSS that supports senior-level
executives and unstructured, long-term, non-routine decisions requiring judgment,
evaluation, and insight.
 These decisions do not have a right or wrong answer, only efficient and effective
answers. Moving up through the organizational pyramid, managers deal less with
the details (“finer” information) and more with meaningful aggregations of
information (“coarser” information).

30. Organization Information Levels
STRATEGIC SUPPORT SYSTEMS
The three organizational levels from bottom to top are as
follows: 1. Operational level; 2. Managerial
level; 3. Strategic level.
-Granularity ranges from fine through coarse.
-Processing ranges from OLTP
through OLAP.
-Processes ranges from transactional through analytical.

31. Interaction Between aTPS and EIS
STRATEGIC SUPPORT SYSTEMS

32. STRATEGIC SUPPORT SYSTEMS
• Infographic (information graphic): A representation of information in a graphic
format designed to make the data easily understandable at a glance.
• Visualization: Produces graphical displays of patterns and complex relationships in
large amounts of data.

33.  Common elements of an infographic include the following:
STRATEGIC SUPPORT SYSTEMS

34. STRATEGIC SUPPORT SYSTEMS
• Executive information systems use visualization to deliver specific key
information to top managers at a glance, with little or no interaction with the
system.
• People use infographics:
- to quickly communicate a message
- to simplify the presentation of large amounts of data
- to see data patterns and relationships, and to monitor changes in variables
over time.
Infographics abound in almost any public environment—traffic signs, subway
maps, tag clouds, musical scores, and weather charts are just a few examples,
among a huge number of possibilities.

35. A common tool that supports visualization is a digital dashboard.
STRATEGIC SUPPORT SYSTEMS
Digital dashboards:
- track key performance indicators (KPIs) and critical success factors (CSFs) by compiling
information from multiple sources and tailoring it to meet user needs.
-deliver results quickly. As they become easier to use, more employees can perform their
own analyses without inundating MIS staff with questions and requests for reports.
- enable employees to increase business performance directly. With them, employees can
react to information as soon as it becomes available and make decisions, solve problems,
and change strategies daily instead of monthly.

36. STRATEGIC SUPPORT SYSTEMS