Decision Support System: Effectiveness and Performance Analysis

This report investigates the perceived effectiveness of Decision Support Systems (DSS) and its impact on organizational performance. It begins with an introduction to DSS, highlighting its role in enhancing decision-making by analyzing raw data. A literature review explores existing research on DSS and its effectiveness, focusing on decision variables like satisfaction and usefulness. The research methodology employs simulation, involving teams in a real-world marketing scenario. Findings reveal the significance of user satisfaction and system usefulness in driving performance. The study also examines the relationship between system complexity and performance, identifying an inverted U-shaped curve. The report concludes with implications for management practices, emphasizing the importance of user satisfaction and effective data analysis for optimized performance. The overall evaluation confirms the article's efficiency in discussing DSS variables and the simulation process, while acknowledging the complexity and limitations of the simulation environment.

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Decision Support System
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Introduction
A Decision Support System (DSS) is interactive software that collects important raw
data, organizes and analyses it such as to provide relevance to the decision makers such that their
decision making capabilities are enhanced (Manzanares, 2014). It is meant to facilitate quality
decision making by analyzing the business data. Thus, the decision support system poses impact
on the decision made in an organization thus, affects the performance. Therefore it becomes a
necessity to measure the perceived effectiveness of the decision support system, thereby,
measuring the impact of the decision support system on the performance (Demirkan & Delen,
2013). The paper highlights the effect of the decision support system by accessing the factors
that serve to enhance the perceived effectiveness and the impact it imparts on the performance.
The paper also states that according to various researches confirm that the success and failure of
the information system depends entirely on the external environment of the Information system.
The research methodology used is simulation. A literature review is also provided and the
finding as well as conclusion is also provided. Finally, the overall evaluation of the article
regarding the effectiveness and credibility is also conducted.
Introduction to the topic
The article conducts a research on the perceived effectiveness of the Decision Support
System. The article also focuses on the impact that the Decision Support System imparts on the
performance. The Decision Support System is used immensely by the industries all around the
world as they assist the decision makers by analyzing the raw business data and personal
knowledge such as to solve various kinds of problems (Power, Sharda & Burstein, 2015).
Decision Support System is utilized to provide better decision such that the results obtained are

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more satisfactory. Moreover, the implementation of the decision support system leads to
performance optimization (Keshtegar & Vakili, 2018). The Decision Support System is
computer based interactive software that store and analyzes the raw business data such that they
would aid the decision makers of an organization to take decisions in such a manner that their
performance is enhance and is optimized. The decision support system generally collects
information regarding to the sales, revenue and the projections of sales of the new product
(Accorsi, Manzini & Maranesi, 2014). It also stores the information regarding the sales amount
within selected time interval. Moreover, it also stores the inventory data and organizes it into
relational database such that proper analysis of the data could be made.
Literature review
There exist numerous numbers of researchers that have researched on the Decision
Support System and the Information system has implemented instruments that have the
capability to measure the effectiveness of it different settings such as web based environment.
Other study was made on group support system and the impact it lays on the performance.
However, very few researches were made on the variables of the decision process such as the
satisfaction, usefulness and the usage convenience (Jouini & Dalla Pozz, 2014). Moreover, the
past studies were more concerned and focused on the achievement of the goals and the process of
attaining it rather than considering the decision variables impact on performance. The prime
focus of the article is to bring to light the perceived effectiveness of the decision variables such
as performance, satisfaction (Piltan & Sowlati, 2016). It research is conducted to investigate on
the factors the effectiveness of the Decision Support System. However, the research does not
evaluate the extent of the effectiveness of the decision variables on the performance and
satisfaction. It only compares the decision variables with the complexity of the system. However,

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the usage of spreadsheet was seen by a few companies as it was more effective and offers
various advantages as people are generally familiar with the Microsoft excel.
Research Methodology
The research methodology used was simulation to conduct the research. The simulation
method allows the members to gain understanding of new things by performing it in a real world
scenario such that the environment is authentic. Simulation aids the participants to acquire
managerial skills, data identification skills as well as critical thinking skills. It also helps the
participants to develop managerial skills through adoption of executive viewpoint by working in
an authentic environment (Bharati & Chaudhury, 2015). The research methodology incorporated
8 teams that were created without the consent of the researchers. The team operated in a real
world marketing scenario.
The methodology consisted of 8 runs of simulation with different groups of participating
teams where the participants played six simulation periods comprising a year time. Furthermore,
the companies were instructed to take certain decisions that would affect the current and
upcoming operations. Each week after the simulation run the decisions were taken and email was
sent to the instructor to feed the data in the computer program (Berner & La Lande, 2016). On
the basis of data the program analyzed the data and sent the output to the team, with the help of
which the team would take vital decisions in the subsequent periods. However, the success
parameter of the decision was measured by the performance of the system.
Findings
The results of the research were then obtained that validated some hypothesis and
rejected some as they did not correspond to the effectiveness of the decision variables. Most of

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the companies adopted a Chief Information Officer (CIO). However, there were no reports of
major modifications implemented and they implemented the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet as their
system for the Decision support system. Different companies adopted different data analysis
tools while only a few companies adopted the package provided.
Moreover, the hypothesis considering the impact of familiarization with the system, its
usefulness, personal use, user satisfaction, participation and the overall effectiveness of the
system were also evaluated. The results of the research were as; the system is strongly dependent
on the overall system’s effectiveness regarding the success of the entire company and also meets
the user expectations (Qrunfleh & Tarafdar, 2014). However, the hypothesis of the usage of the
system either by own or colleague, familiarity with the system as well as defining the system
does not have any impact on the perceived effectiveness of the DSS. On the other hand, the
performance of the company depends strongly on the user satisfaction, usefulness and DSS
meeting its expectations (Shibl, Lawley & Debuse, 2013). Moreover, satisfaction and
enhancement in performance are directly proportional. The investment of a greater number of
people does not guarantee increment in the performance.
In consideration to the third hypothesis, that compared the performance with the
complexity of the system, following results were obtained, the company with least complexity
showed below average performance as the user satisfaction was low (Scott et al., 2015). The
company with moderate complexity had the highest level of performance and thereby, the
highest value of perceived effectiveness (Rasmussen, Standal & Laumann, 2015). Moreover, the
multifaceted system showed close relevance to the moderately complex system. The
performance effectiveness and the complexity of the system represent an inverted U- shaped
curve as complexity increases.

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Implication for management practices
The article proposed various implications for the management practices. It clearly
showed that user satisfaction is the main criteria for enhancement of the performance. It also
started that the increased number of human resources does not necessarily guarantee the
enhancement in performance (Šperka, 2015). The article helps the managers to take effective
decisions such that the performance is enhanced and effective management of the information
system is possible. Moreover, the proper analyzation of the data help gain profits to the
organization as better decisions could be made through it.
Overall evaluation of the article
The article was based on the perceived effectiveness of decision support system and its
impact on the performance of the organization. It also provides a clear understanding of the term
Decision Support System and its advantages. The article was extremely efficient in discussing
the variables of the decision support system. It also clearly described the simulation term with
the procedure. The research methodology also provided the participants to learn by doing things
in an authentic scenario which forced them to work with an executive outlook. Moreover, the
literature review was properly conducted which proved that no previous research evaluated the
impact of decision variables on the performance (Yu, Duan & Cao, 2013). The hypothesis was
properly analyzed according to the results obtained. The article effectively analyzed the
hypothesis and provided the results accordingly. Moreover, the paper clearly mentions that
simulation is highly complex thus, cannot totally engross all the varied aspects of Information
System. Moreover, the authentic environment involved reports that were self made and
uncertainty lies as to whether the same would reflect in the real world scenario.

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Conclusion
Thus, with the above discussion it can be concluded that there are various decision
variables that poses significant impact on the performance of the organization. There are various
decision variables such as usefulness and user satisfaction that leads to the increment in
performance of the organization. The research conducted provided results that were compared
with the hypothesis and a strong dependency was found in the moderate complex system and the
enhancement of the performance.

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