Week Three - Strategic Decision Making

Define TPS & DSS, and explain how an organisation can use these systems to make decisions and gain competitive advantages

Transaction processing systems (TPS) is to support the performing of daily operational tasks. TPS can be used to manage business activities such as sales, withdrawing cashes from an ATM 

 Decision support systems (DSS): models information to support managers and business professionals during the decision-making process. This can be used by managers of a business in making more complex decisions.

Describe the three quantitative models typically used by decision support systems.

The three quantitative models used by DSSs include:

-Sensitivity analysis: the study of the impact that changes in one or more parts of the model have on other parts of the model

-What-if analysis: checks the impact of a change in an assumption on the proposed solution

-Goal-seeking analysis: finds the inputs necessary to achieve a goal

 (sets a target value and the system will process all other variables until the target value is met)

Describe a business processes and their importance to an organisation.

Business process is a standardised set of activities that accomplish a specific task, such as processing a customer's orders(see Figure 2.20) . Where the business process transform a set of inputs into a set of outputs (goods and service) for another person or process by using people and tools. Business processes integrate the various systems and improve organisation efficiency and effectiveness. Thus , is vital to the organisation  as it allows the business to run smoothly and combine similar task , optimising and automating business productivity.

 Figure 2.20 Customer service As-Is process model pg 80

Compare business process improvement and business process re-engineering.

A business process improvement is the attempts to understand and measure the current process and make performance improvements as a result.  The organisation begin documenting what they currently have; they then establish a way to measure the process, to measure performance, setting  clear goals, implement the changes and then measure the performance of the new improved process.  While, business process re-engineering (BPR) concerns itself with improving the experience for the company and often sets NEW standards for the industry. This is similar when implementing improvement process, but distinguishes itself by starting the business process document from scratch rather than use the business process document they have it and constantly improving it.

Describe the importance of business process modelling (or mapping) and business process models.

Business process modelling is the activity of making a detailed flowchart or process map of a work process and business process model is a graphic description of a process, showing the e sequence of process task, which is developed for a specific purpose and from a selected viewpoint.
 Business process  and model is important to business as it assists in mapping out each process. Being able to visualise an organisation's operation's the beginning of identifying problems or new opportunities that involve business performance. It also allow to:

-Show process details in a gradual and controlled manner

-Encourage consciousness and accuracy in describing the process model

-Focus attention on the process model interfaces

-Provide a powerful process analysis and consistent design vocabulary

  

Fig 2.19 Business Process Modelling

 Figure 2.21 Business Process model