Discussion Topic:

Decision making
Decision making is the process of developing and analyzing alternatives to make a decision, a choice
from the available alternatives. Most decisions are made in response to a problem i.e., a discrepancy
between a desirable and an actual decision and involve judgment, the cognitive aspects of the decision-
making process.

Although each group of decisions is specific in domain and time demanding, there will be common
principles and tools for making better decisions. the following techniques to overcome the barriers to
effective decision making:

Increase knowledge. A lack of experience with the problem at hand can cause anyone to make poor
decisions.

• Be creative. Creativity is the process of developing original, novel responses to a problem. It is essential
for decision-making activities, such as discovering alternatives or defining problems. Creativity can be
cultivated by checking assumptions and thinking through the process, step-by-step.

• Use intuition. Intuition can be defined as a cognitive process whereby we unconsciously decide based
on accumulated knowledge and experience.

• De-bias judgment.

De-biasing judgment requires four steps:

(1) understand that the possibility of bias exists,

(2) understand how bias can affect judgment,

(3) analyze previous decisions to determine how bias may have affected them, and

(4) accept that while biases exist they can be minimized through diligence.

• Don’t over stress the finality of the decision. Very few decisions are forever; there is more “give” in
decisions than we realize.

• Make sure the timing is right.

The few Decision-making reporting tools are:

SAP Business Objects Software

SAP BusinessObjects is a business intelligence solution designed for companies of all sizes. It offers ETL
(extract, transform, load), predictive dashboard, Crystal reports, OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) and
ad-hoc reporting functionalities within a suite.

SAP BusinessObjects allows users to integrate with external systems, such as Salesforce and Microsoft
Office and combine data from these for executing business analytics and reporting functions.

IBM Cognos

IBM Cognos is an integrated, web-based analytical processing system owned by IBM. It contains toolkit
to perform analysis, reporting and score carding along with the provision to monitor metrics.
It also contains numerous inbuilt components to meet various information requirements in an
organization.

These components are mainly windows based namely IBM Cognos Framework Manager, cube designer,
IBM Cognos Transformer, map manager and IBM Cognos connection.

IBM Cognos Report Studio is used to create reports that are shared with knowledge processing
departments. It gives the flexibility to create any type of report including charts, lists, maps, and repeat
function.

IBM Cognos Analysis Studio is used to search for background information about an action/ event and
prepare the analysis of large data sources. Key OLAP features like roll up and drills down are used to get
a better understanding of information.

Halo Software

Halo is an end-to-end supply chain management and business intelligence platform that helps in business
planning and forecasting inventory for supply chain management. The system uses data from all sources
- big, small, and in-between - to form a cumulative view of all business information.

By combining the BI data analytics with a social platform, companies can use the data to spark dialogue
between employees, helping to generate ideas and guide business decisions.

Citations:

https://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/726670.4-DECISION_SUPPORT_AND_BUSINESS_INTELLIGENCE.pdf

https://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/best-olap-tools/

Responses to the Discussion and person names:

I responded to couple of people Victor Asuku and Sridhar Reddy Chitukula as below:

Repsone1:

Hi Victor,

Very good examples and nice explanation. Additionally, Decision making is the process of developing and
analyzing alternatives to make a decision, a choice from the available alternatives. Most decisions are
made in response to a problem i.e., a discrepancy between a desirable and an actual decision and
involve judgment, the cognitive aspects of the decision-making process.

Although each group of decisions is specific in domain and time demanding, there will be common
principles and tools for making better decisions. Couple of things are:
--Increase knowledge. A lack of experience with the problem at hand can cause anyone to make poor
decisions.

--Be creative. It is essential for decision-making activities, such as discovering alternatives or defining
problems. It can be cultivated by checking assumptions and thinking through the

--Gap Analysis - Understand that the possibility of gap exists and how that decision can affect judgment,
analyze previous decisions to determine how it may have affected them, and accept that while gaps exist
they can be minimized through diligence.

Thanks,

Ragini

Repsone2:

Hi Sridhar,

I enjoy reading your post and your post is quite accurate and informative. I found it interesting especially
the way you explained how the data extracted from database, then how they are representing and then
how it can be displayed effectively by data visualization. Additionally,SAS has become the undisputed
industry pioneer in business analytics area. The software offers tremendous selection of analytical
purposes, has amazing GUI (firm info & Miner) for people to know rapid and offers good technical
assistance and R is additionally the natural environment for advice investigation along with graphics. Due
to its data handling and modelling capabilities as well as its flexibility R is becoming the most widely used
software in bioinformatics. It is defined as the open source counter part of all SAS, which has customarily
been applied in the academics and research. As a result of available source personality, many recent
techniques become released immediately.

Thanks,

Ragini