Decision Support Systems in the UAE Context - Case Study Example

DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS IN THE UAE CONTEXT Decision Support Systems in the UAE context Affiliation Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Introduction to Decision Support Systems 3 Examples of Decision Support Systems 4 American Airlines 5 Equico Capital Corporation 5 Current and Future Trends in DSS 5 Advantages of DSS 6 Disadvantages of DSS 7 DSSs in the UAE 7 The use of DSS at International level Vs. UAE 9 Recommendations and Conclusion 9 References 9 Introduction In the past few years, there has emerged a number of changes and innovations in the horizons of the business intelligence, which has always been changing, and it has now turned out to be more complicated. In this scenario, these rapid changes in the business intelligence force business organizations to act rapidly in response to ever-increasing changing environments and to survive competently in the manners they work. In order to deal with these varying conditions business organizations need to be agile as well as to make rapid and regular tactical, strategic and operational decisions. At the present, we can see lots of innovations in how business organizations make use of automated information systems in making decisions. In fact, as a number of business organizations and managers have become more knowledgeable, decision support systems (DSS) have started evolving from its opening as a private support tool and now it has emerged as the common resource in a business organization (Xiaoli & Gaojin, 2010). Especially, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) where the majority of organizations heavily rely on data and decision making to run their businesses. This basic purpose of this research is to discuss the use of decision support system in the context of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This paper shows how the use decision support systems and techniques can be useful especially in the UAE. List of Acronyms: IS, DSS, MIS, ANN, UAE, Data mining Introduction to Decision Support Systems A “decision support system (DSS) is an application of an information system that provides users with the appropriate decision-oriented information when a decision-making situation takes place.” Additionally, a decision-support system allows the business management to take effective decisions by collecting and combining information, appropriate logical models and applications, and user-friendly interface into a single strong system that facilitates unstructured or semi structured decision making. In this scenario, a DSS also offers to its users a proper set of tools, techniques and support and services for making effective use of key blocks of data (Laudon & Laudon, 1999, p. 468; Whitten, Bentley, & Dittman, 2000, p. 47). The basic objective of a decision support system is to help top management in decision making. In this scenario, decision support systems are not developed to be used by technically skilled people however these systems are particularly designed by keeping in mind the specific needs and requirements of managers or CEOs. Additionally, they are provided with an easy to use interface through which they can interact with the system. These systems are built using advanced techniques of data mining. Basically, these techniques are applied on data in order that some useful patterns can be derived from these data. For instance, a company can use DSS to determine the areas where their sales are increasing or decreasing. They can derive strategies according to these facts (Laudon & Laudon, 1999, p. 468; Whitten, Bentley, & Dittman, 2000, p. 47). Examples of Decision Support Systems The concept of decision support system is new in the UAE and it has been already extensively used in the developed countries because they have all the expertise to take complete benefit of this technology. In their book, (Laudon & Laudon, 1999, p. 468) discuss a number ways a decision support system can facilitate the management: American Airlines American Airlines has implemented a decision support system to effectively determine and set the price and select the route for the planes. In this way, this American Airlines is getting a number of benefits from the usage of a decision support system. This system has helped the company save a lot of time. Equico Capital Corporation Equico Capital Corporation deals in capital investment matters. They implemented a decision support system that could help them with investment evaluation. This decision support system helped them improve their business performance by taking effective business decisions. Current and Future Trends in DSS At the present, decision support systems are being improved by means of a variety of algorithms and techniques such as that come under data mining practices. For instance, neural networks are being heavily utilized in a decision support system. Basically, these allow us to find out patterns based on the identified results, then for these data permits the neural network imprecise on massive amounts of data provided. For instance, a credit card business can have more than 60,000 data records, in which more than 100 records are recognized as the fraud records. In the same way, a variety of other techniques are also being used. For instance, cluster detection, wh9ich is used to assess the relationship between market and business transaction data because it discovers associations from data patterns. In addition, link analysis attempts to discover associations, either in dealings, various products, consumers, etc. as well as reveals those associations. Genetic algorithms work in the same manner as bacteria spread in a petri-plate. The Genetic Algorithms enter a trend that expectantly improves the efficiency of last consequence (Chicago Business Intelligence Group, 2011; Han & Kamber, 2006; Laudon & Laudon, 1999). Advantages of DSS The advantages that are achieved from the usage of DSS are same in each country. However, it depends on the purpose of their implementation. Some of the advantages of the DSS are outlined below (Zhykharyev, 2007; Turban, Aronson, & Liang, 2004; Metaxiotis, Ergazakis, Samouilidis, & Psarras, 2004): When an organization has a huge amount of business data that is not easily understandable for the business management. The implementation of a decision support system makes it simple for the organization to collect, process, and analyze that data to derive effective decisions for the betterment of their organization. Without a doubt, decision support systems combine data from a wide variety of sources so when this data is combined it becomes difficult to understand the purpose and meaning of that data. In this scenario, decision support systems provide easy to use tools that deal effectively with business data coming from different sources and DSS tools make them coherent format A decision support system can combine data coming from other departments such as inventory data, sales data, market research, supplier data A decision support system comprises a wide variety of tools and applications that can be used to format data in order to ensure data consistency. A decision support system also allows the organizations to analyze the database DSS tools offer multiple analysis tools and techniques for different kinds of user These systems offer high quality reporting and analysis capabilities which allow business managers to take effective decisions. Disadvantages of DSS Some of the key disadvantages of the DSS are outlined below: It can be costly to implement the decision support system The implementation requires high level computing skills that can be expensive to hire if not exist in the organization Proper use of DSS can require some training DSSs in the UAE In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), there is a lot of construction work is going on all the time. In fact, the UAE is believed to be one of the major countries, developing its structure in a wide variety of fields. Though, in the UAE significant developments are taking place in all the areas, however the construction field is believed to be one of the leading developing areas. Additionally, in the UAE the greater part of the national income is spent on the construction that is always increasing with the passage of time especially due to the discovery of oil. Hence, the major uses of decision support systems are seen in this area. For instance, the organizations make use of decision support systems to decide for the estimates and prior work before the initiation of new work. Here, these decision support systems allow the organizations to lead to some effective decisions in this area. There are many examples of successful implementations of decision support systems in UAE. For instance, ADNOC (Abu Dhabi National Oil Company) implemented a decision support system for the exploration of upstream petroleum business and this implementation proved to be a great success. In fact, the system was awarded with the ESRI award in the 2009 ESRI UC, USA (Abdou, Lewis, & Radaideh, 2003; Boussemma, 2010). It is believed that decision support systems are huge and complex information systems and these huge systems are developed in and by the majority of developed countries in order to comply with the needs and requirements of the stakeholders inside the domain of business in which they are being implemented. So, in order to be used them in the context of these developing countries need to be tailored according to the needs of the developing countries. In this scenario, the research of (Kamoun, Werghi, & Blushi, 2010) concludes some of the interesting results. In view of the fact there exists a wide variety of information systems and they all serve a specific purpose and needs so the organizations must carefully determine their needs and requirements before the adoption of these information systems. The UAE is a developing country and the majority of businesses working in this country depend on information technology, especially the information systems in order to run their businesses smoothly. In the present, the information systems such as decision support systems are being used in all the areas and domains of organizations for instance, these are being implemented in oil industries, human resource management, and financial management. In addition, a large number of banks in the UAE use decision support systems to derive some useful practices. These decision support systems are based on some of the above mentioned practices (Kamoun, Werghi, & Blushi, 2010). The use of DSS at International level Vs. UAE As we have seen a few examples of the usage of DSS, it is clear from the examples that the use of decision support systems is much higher in the developed countries that the UAE. The basic reason is that those countries are the developer of decision support systems and they have required expertise that are required to implement and run the decision support systems. However, the trend of decision support systems is emerging in the UAE at a rapid pace and the organizations have started to implement the decision support systems at every level. Recommendations and Conclusion The research has covered several aspects associated with decision support systems. These systems are used to support top management in decision making. The research has discussed how organizations get benefits by implementing decision support systems. However, the use of decision support systems in the UAE is at the initial level and organizations starting to implement decision support systems for improving their decision making capabilities. Top managers should learn from the examples of developing countries how they are making use of decision support systems to improve the capabilities of their organizations. References Abdou, A., Lewis, J., & Radaideh, M. A. (2003). Web-Based Inception Decision Support System for Healthcare Construction Projects. Hershey, USA: Idea Group Inc. Boussemma, M., 2010. Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), Abu Dhabi, UAE: Abu Dhabi Systems and Information Centre. Chicago Business Intelligence Group. (2011). Data Mining Techniques. Retrieved February 09, 2014, from http://www.chicagobigroup.com/business_intelligence_white_papers/business_intelligence_data_mining_techniques.pdf Han, J., & Kamber, M. (2006). Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques (2nd ed.). BOSTON: Elsevier Inc. Kamoun, F., Werghi, N., & Blushi, M. A. (2010). On the Appropriateness of Incident Management Systems in Developing Countries: A Case from the UAE. Journal of Technology Management & Innovation, Volume 4 Issue 5, 58-69. Laudon, K. C., & Laudon, J. P. (1999). Management Information Systems,(6th ed.). New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Metaxiotis, K., Ergazakis, K., Samouilidis, E., & Psarras, J. (2004). Decision support through knowledge management: the role of the artificial intelligence. International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology, Volume 9 Issue 2, pp.101-106. Turban, E., Aronson, J. E., & Liang, T.-P. (2004). Decision Support Systems and Intelligent Systems, 7th Edition. London: Prentice Hall. Whitten, J. L., Bentley, L. D., & Dittman, K. C. (2000). Systems Analysis and Design Methods 5th Edition. New York: Irwin/McGraw-Hill. Xiaoli, M. X., & Gaojin, L. (2010). Research on Application of Data Mining Technology in Financial Decision Support System. 3rd International Conference on Information Management, Innovation Management and Industrial Engineering (pp. 381-384). IEEE. Zhykharyev, A. (2007). The decision support software ERGO from Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC) Inc., which has been used to substantiate decisions with far-reaching consequences, utilizes logic that leads to arbitrary results. Retrieved February 20, 2014, from ValueFocusedDecisions.com: http://valuefocuseddecisions.com/space_agency_and_ERGO.htm Read More