Decision Support Systems for Business Intelligence, Second Edition

Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION

Virtually everyone makes hundreds of decisions each day. These decisions range from the inconsequential, such as what to eat for breakfast, to the significant, such as how best to get the economy out of a recession. All other things being equal, good outcomes from those decisions are better than bad outcomes. For example, all of us would like to have a tasty, nutritional breakfast (especially if it is fast and easy), and the country would like to have a stable, well-functioning economy again. Some individuals are "lucky" in their decision processes. They can muddle through the decision not really looking at all of the options or at useful data and still experience good consequences. We have all met people who instinctively put together foods to make good meals and have seen companies that seem to do things wrong but still make a good profit. For most of us, however, good outcomes in decision making are a result of making good decisions.

"Good decision making" means we are informed and have relevant and appropriate information on which to base our choices among alternatives. In some cases, we support decisions using existing, historical data, while other times we collect the information, especially for a particular choice process. The information comes in the form of facts, numbers, impressions, graphics, pictures, and sounds. It needs to be collected from various sources, joined together, and organized. The process of organizing and examining the information ...