Decision Support System Application

I think that the success of a business depends upon the quality of the decisions it makes at each customer contact. Such decisions must reflect the business strategy, the interests of the customer, his or her value and risk to the business. In addition, because of growing customer expectations and increasing competition, businesses are under pressure to provide personalized customer service within mass market cost levels. This is why customer satisfaction for me, is a very big part of business success. A good DSS system must be able to support such a critical business function

Decisions about customer interactions must take into account each customer's likely behavior. At each individual contact with the customer the business must consider the relative likelihood of the customer responding to an offer, taking his or her patronage elsewhere or causing some loss to the business. The business that can determine and implement a personalized management strategy for each customer has the means of ensuring that the most suitable decisions are made in accordance with its overall objectives.

A good data driven Decision Support System comprises a suite of active decision management offerings which is proven not only to help businesses make better decisions, but also to implement those decisions in each customer contact and monitor the results. This ensures a far more responsive, customer-focused and ultimately successful business.

Customers interact with an organization through many different channels: branches, intermediaries, direct mail and e-mail, call centre, website, sales force, interactive TV etc. My DSS system would be designed to interface seamlessly with any customer handling system, adding intelligence to the customer interaction, regardless of the channel used. Changes to the way customers are handled can be immediately implemented in every channel with no maintenance required.

The database management system would allow managers and decision makers to perform qualitative analysis on the company's vast stores of data. A supervisor or manager would be able to use a data-driven DSS to search large databases, internally and externally, to get detailed information about its customers, such as the type of fitness equipment our customers prefer to use most, and what type of equipment they prefer not to use at all to satisfy their work outs. It can provide feed back on what our customers think about the facilities and