What is a Decision Support system?
Decision Support is a set of methods that support decision-making through collecting, processing, and presenting data and information. This definition emphasises that people, not computers, make the decisions.
Decision Support systems have the power to transform business data into insights – clearly presented in reports and dashboards – on which management teams and managers can make decisions. Data stored in business systems thus becomes a decision basis that supports and improves operations.
While Decision Support can be based on various forms of rule-based artificial intelligence, it’s most commonly associated with systems for extracting and presenting data. Decision Support is often referred to as “Business Intelligence”.
What Does a Decision-Support System Do?
A good Decision Support system collects data and makes it accessible through concise KPIs. These indicate what has happened, why it happened, and sometimes what can be expected to happen in the future. This insight makes it easier to steer toward your goals.
If your business involves large volumes of data, it can be difficult to get a clear overview and a good decision basis – especially if your business systems are not interconnected. This is where Decision Support comes in.
A data warehouse is needed to extract data and convert it into actionable information in an efficient and quality-assured way. This is a form of database that facilitates the selection, processing, and analysis of data from multiple business systems. A good Decision Support system also includes a data warehouse.
The Decision Support system collects data from the different systems and converts it into meaningful information on which you can base decisions and actions. In practice, Decision Support connects Strategic Planning and Budgeting and Forecasting. This connection facilitates follow-up, analysis, and insights and ultimately informs decisions.
Examples of Different Parts of a Decision-Support System
Hypergene provides an excellent model, as it is a comprehensive solution that covers all the required areas for Decision Support.
Strategic Planning
Digitalising the strategic planning and follow-up processes makes it easier to define plans and share them with the organisation. Employees at all levels can contribute to the implementation of initiatives and activities, in harmony with the strategy.
Budgeting and Forecasting
Automating processes and involving the organisation in the planning process creates the conditions needed to improve efficiency and quality, ultimately ensuring better decision-making.
Decision Support contributes to better planning, enabling you to work with rolling and dynamic planning models optimised for your company’s planning.
Analysis and Insights
Analyses are carried out in this part of the system. Role-based portals are also available, and there are opportunities to initiate collaboration. With data volumes growing exponentially and with information often isolated in different systems, it is increasingly important to provide decision-makers with aggregated, coherent, and reliable information. Role-based access to views ensures the right person gets the right information.
Performance reporting
Many organisations spend unnecessary time and effort compiling and distributing recurring reports, such as management reports, board reports, monthly reports, and various operational reports. Often, the information is stored in a fragmented way in unconnected systems or Excel files.
With a decision-support system, you can automate recurring reporting processes instead of having to extract manually, quality-assure, and compile data from different sources.
KPI tracking
As the volume of information grows, it becomes more challenging – but also more essential – for managers and employees to focus on the overall vision and its associated KPIs. This focus is vital for ensuring sound decisions and appropriate actions. A decision-support system translates operational data into incisive KPIs that can be shared with decision-makers.
Hypergene's software provides Decision Support through the collection and presentation of business data to management teams, managers, and those who need to stay on top of Operational Management. Hypergene helps you make decisions, steer towards goals, and achieve higher levels of performance and efficiency.
10-minute video demo of Hypergenes solution:
What is Strategic Planning?
Strategic Planning forms the basis for setting goals and priorities, and for ensuring that an organisation’s plans are going in the right direction. When the plans of different departments are unified and in line with the overall goals, the company has established a common direction.
What is Business Intelligence?
Business intelligence (BI) is an umbrella term that refers to data-driven methods and processes for improving business understanding and decision-making.
What is Corporate Performance Management?
Corporate Performance Management includes all the actions taken by management at different levels to achieve a particular result. This includes leading, managing, and developing your business to ensure your resources are used as effectively as possible in achieving your goals. Management can be viewed as a cycle with three components: Planning, implementation, and monitoring.