Strategic Decision Making

1. Define TPS & DSS, and explain how an organisation can use these systems to make decisions and gain competitive advantages.

TPS - is Transaction Processing System. TPS’s often provide the foundation for all the other information systems. Many TPS’s are also outward-reaching and convey impressions to the customers about the quality of the business, eg. Point of Sale (POS) systems
•provides a standard browser interface
•allows multimedia data transfer
•fairly fast response time
•storage of large databases of graphics and videos
•is in real time
•lower cost – no humans

DDS - is Decision Support System. help managers make decisions, particular in relation to more complex problems, so called unstructured or semi-structured problems
•estimating the sum of future cash flows from the use of long-lived assets
•judging the adequacy of an argument promoting a reduction in the capital gains tax rate
•preparing an operating budget for the next 5 years.


2. Describe the three quantitative models typically used by decision support systems.
Three quantitative models used by DSSs include:

 Sensitivity analysis - the study of the impact that changes in one (or more) parts of the model have on other parts of the model.

What-if analysis - checks the impact of a change in an assumption on the proposed solution.

Goal-seeking analysis - finds the inputs necessary to achieve a goal.

Simple versions of all these tools are found in Excel, and you will apply these in the workshop.


3. Describe a business processes and their importance to an organisation.

A business process is a standard set of activities that accomplish a specific task, such as processing a customer order or enrolling a student. It is important because Organisations are only as effective as their business processes, these must be studied, understood and improved.


4. Compare business process improvement and business process re-engineering.

Business Process improvement is a continuous process model attempts to understand and measure the current process, and make performance improvements accordingly.

Business Process Re-engineering is the analysis and redesign of workflow within and between enterprises. It assumes the current process is irrelevant, does not work, or is broken and must be overhauled from scratch.


5. Describe the importance of business process modelling (or mapping) and business process models.
Technology makes the process invisible, so BPM makes the processes visible.
BPM is the activity of making detailed flowchart or process map of a work processes, it aims to;
a. Show process details in a gradual and controlled manner
b. Encourage consciousness and accuracy in describing the process model
c. Focus attention on the process model interfaces
d. Provide a powerful process analysis and consistent design vocabulary