Session 10 - Foundation of business intelligence - ENHANCING DECISION MAKING.ppt

Editor's Notes

• #3: This slide discusses the importance of improved decision-making and describes the three types of decisions that are made in an organization. Table 12-1 in the text illustrates how a small decision made hundreds of times a year can be just as valuable as a single decision made once a year. For example, the decision to schedule production to fill orders, made 150 times a year, with a value of $10,000 if this decision is improved, can mean an annual value of $1.5 million. The different levels in an organization tend to make different types of decisions, and require different types of support to make these decisions. Ask students to provide examples of each type of decision. Give students examples of decisions and ask what category the decision fall into and why.
• #4: This slide describes the types of decisions being made at the different levels within an organization. Semi-structured decisions contain a portion that is unstructured and a portion that is structured. Which portion, of the example question for middle managers, is structured and which is unstructured? What would make this question a fully structured question? Ask students to come up with additional examples of decisions at the executive, middle management, and operational levels of the organization, for companies they have worked for.
• #5: This figure provides an illustration of how the nature of decision making changes as you move up, and down, the corporate hierarchy. There are of course exceptions. Some senior managers like to take a hands-on approach to daily operations.
• #6: This slide describes the process of decision-making as a series of four stages. It is important to note that if an implemented solution doesn’t work, the decider can return to an earlier stage in the process and repeat as needed. Give the students an example decision, such as, “What college should I apply to?” and ask them to describe the actions taken at each of the four stages.
• #7: This graphic illustrates the four stages of decision making introduced in the previous slide, emphasizing that steps can be repeated as needed, depending on the outcome at each stage.
• #8: This slide discusses the idea that, while information systems can assist in making decisions by providing information and tools for analysis, they cannot always improve on decisions being made. Ask the students to provide examples of decisions that an information system might not be able to assist in. Is there any similarity among these example decisions, and what does this say about the types of decisions an information system can help with? You can understand the complexity and breadth of some of the decisions being made within an organization by looking at the activities of its managers. While the classical model of management sees five functional roles of managers, real-life observation of managers sees far more complexity in managerial activities. Ask the students to recall the five attributes listed in the book as differing greatly from the classical description. (1) Managers perform a great deal of work at an unrelenting pace (2) managerial activities are fragmented; lasting for less than 9 minutes (3) managers prefer current, specific, ad hoc information; (4) managers prefer oral forms of communication and (5) managers give high priority to maintaining a complex web of contacts as an informal information system. Ask students to explain attributes 3, 4, and 5.
• #9: Even in decision-making situations that can be helped by information systems, the information system may fail in helping to solve the problem or lead to a better decision. This slide describes the three main reasons why investments in information systems do not always produce positive results. What is meant by information quality? The text lists seven quality dimensions: accuracy, integrity, consistency, completeness, validity, timeliness, accessibility. Ask students to identify and/or describe these dimensions? Ask students to provide an example of what a management “filter” might be. Have they ever witnessed someone in a managerial position be unable to recognize or handle a problem because of a “filter” they are using (but don’t even know it)? Ask students why people within an organization would resist using an information system.
• #10: This slide looks at the growth of systems for executing high-velocity decision-making, such as financial trading programs. A second example is Google’s search engine. What types of problems lend themselves to this type of system? Ask students what other activities would benefit from humans being taken out of the decision making process.
• #11: This slide introduces the concept of business intelligence and analytics. The text gives the example of Hallmark Cards, which uses SAS analytics software to analyze buying patterns and determine the most effective marketing plan for different types of customers. For example, which customers would respond best to direct mail or email, and to what types of messages. It is important to understand that business intelligence and business analytics are products defined by hardware and software vendors. This is also one of the fastest growing segments in the U.S. software environment. Ask students why this might be so.
• #12: This slide looks at the six main elements at play in business intelligence. Ask students what is meant by managerial users and methods and why this is important. (Managers impose order on the analysis of data using a variety of managerial methods that define strategic business goals and specify how progress will be measured. Without management oversight, business analytics can produce a great deal of information that focus on the wrong matters and divert attention from the real issues. As the text notes, so far, only humans can ask intelligent questions.)
• #13: This graphic looks at the different elements in the business intelligence environment; from left clockwise: Data, infrastructure, toolset, managerial users, platform, and user interface. This is an overview highlighting the kinds of hardware, software, and management capabilities that the major vendors offer and that firms develop over time.
• #14: This slide looks at the main functionalities of business intelligence systems. Parameterized reports are reports that can be adjusted to reflect user-defined parameters. The text gives the example of viewing a report by region and time of day to see how sales vary by these parameters. Ask students what is meant by drill down and give an example (the ability to move from a high level view summary to a detailed view.) For example, a summary view might present the total numbers of products by category sold world wide. Drilling down, views might go to products sold at national, regional, and local levels, and down from product categories to single products and product versions.
• #15: This slide continues the look at how business intelligence is used today, in this case, who uses business intelligence? By far the greatest number of users are managers relying on production reports of varying types (Table 12-5 lists a variety of prepackaged reports for the different business functional areas). (The next slide’s graphic illustrates the different categories of user.)
• #16: This graphic looks at the different types of users and what they use BI applications for. On the left, power users (users who rely on BI most intensively) are broken into four main categories, with each category placed beside the types of reports it uses most. On the right, casual users are also broken into various categories and placed along the types of capabilities used most. For example, senior managers rely most on parameterized reports and dashboards. Ask students if they have ever used BI reports in a job setting.
• #17: This slide looks at various additional examples of BI applications. The text gives the example of FedEx using predictive analytics to develop models that predict how customers will respond to price changes, and has been giving an accuracy of 65 to 90%. Ask students if there are any disadvantages to predictive analytics. Ask students for any examples of data visualization tools they have come across. An example might be tag clouds used for topic navigation on the Internet – the larger the tag, the more popular the category. Note that BI is also used in the public sector for analyzing data and determining public policy, such as allocating school resources, an example discussed in a chapter case.
• #18: This slide looks at the options a firm has in purchasing BI and BA applications. There are advantages and disadvantages to both options – in one case a single vendor might be easier to deal with, but harder to switch. Using multiple applications means that each solution might be more specifically suited to your business, but may pose difficulties when integrating with hardware or other software. The text points out that the marketplace is highly competitive and “given to hyperbole,” and managers will need to carefully examine the software’s capabilities in light of needed expenditures.
• #19: This slide and the next several slides discuss the systems used by different levels in a firm to aid decision making. Ask students to recall what types of decisions operational and middle managers make. Ask how TPS systems fit into this picture (MIS produce standardized reports based on data from TPS).
• #20: This slide looks at the decision support systems used for the semi-structured decisions made by the business analysts and “super users” identified on the previous slide and outlines a variety of analysis methods that are utilized. Ask students to give examples of the different types of analysis. Remind students that DSS are business intelligence systems. The text cites the example of Progressive Insurance which uses business intelligence to identify the best customers for its products.
• #21: This graphic illustrates the results of a sensitivity analysis of changing the sales price of a necktie – it answers the question, “What happens to the break-even point if the sales price and the cost to make each unit increases or decreases?”
• #22: This graphic shows the same Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with a PivotTable with two dimensions – it shows where customers come from in terms of region and advertising source.
• #23: This slide looks at the business intelligence used by senior management. These executive support systems utilize some type of methodology to determine which information affects the profitability and success of the firm and how this information can be measured. One popular methodology is the balanced scorecard method. Another popular method is discussed on a following slide. Ask students how the scorecard itself is determined (A scorecard is developed by consultants and senior managers).
• #24: This graphic depicts the balanced scorecard methodology that many managers use to measure the performance of their business, and to understand how firm strategies are impacting the four dimensions of interest. For each of these dimensions performance is operationalized by identifying key performance indicators for that dimension.
• #25: This slide continues the discussion of business intelligence used by senior managers. Another methodology used by ESS, similar to the balanced scorecard method but with a stronger and more explicit emphasis on corporate strategy, is BPM. Ask students to describe what drill-down capabilities are and why is this important. It is important to note that information systems today allow for real-time management – information gathered on the factory floor is transmitted and summarized within hours and seconds for executive dashboards.
• #26: This slide discusses GDSS, another type of system that supports decision-making. What types of problems might a group encounter when trying to make a decision as a group? What kinds of decisions might need to be made as a group? Increasingly, GDSS uses a virtual meeting or telepresence capability rather than physical group decision rooms which were used when these techniques were first developed.