Management Support Exercise
A. Match the best level of support with the Problem Statement
| Problem Statement | Support Level |
| 1. Board of Directors needs to determine what the firm's strategic plan ought to be. | a. Operational |
| 2. The Human Resources Manager of a small firm wants to hire an additional sales person and wonders what questions to ask in the interview. | b. Expert |
| 3. A group of employees wants to figure out whether or not they should volunteer to raise the profile of the firm in the community by establishing a charitable group to work with disadvantaged children. | c. DSS |
| 4. Despite all efforts to get machine 34 going again, the foreman believes that it can be fixed in time for the next shift. Should additional effort be put into fixing the machine by two of the current shift's operators? | d. Consulting |
| 5. Employee needs to know where to send a customer with an item to return that the customer claims doesn't work the way it's supposed to despite the "no returns" policy of the company. | e. MIS |
| 6. The Chief Financial Officer wants to know what the impact on the firm's income statement is going to be if interest rates on the outstanding loans goes from 5% to 6% annually. | f. Presentation |
| 7. A marketing specialist wants to find out whether or not introducing an improved version of the SuperBaby doll in the Midwest will improve sales enough to overcome the costs of the improvement to the product. | g. None |
B. Suggested Answers
1. To assist managers in coming to conclusions; to increase their confidence that they are doing (will do) the right thing.
2. Intelligence, Design, Choice, Implementation, Learning
or
Gather data, Access knowledge, Evaluate alternatives,
Act or Operate, Provide Feedback
| Problem Statement | Support Level |
| 1. Board of Directors needs to determine what the firm's strategic plan ought to be. (discussion, position papers, negotiation, contention) | f. Presentation |
| 2. The Human Resources Manager of a small firm wants to hire an additional sales person and wonders what questions to ask in the interview. (get consulting advice about what makes a good salesperson, then determine the questions to be asked) | d. Consulting |
| 3. A group of employees wants to figure out whether or not they should volunteer to raise the profile of the firm in the community by establishing a charitable group to work with disadvantaged children. (Nothing inside the firm is going to help here...far too complex for support) | g. None |
| 4. Despite all efforts to get machine 34 going again, the foreman believes that it can be fixed in time for the next shift. Should additional effort be put into fixing the machine by two of the current shift's operators? (CALL THE EXPERTS, those who have created the machine...don't waste employees' time) | b. Expert |
| 5. Employee needs to know where to send a customer with an item to return that the customer claims doesn't work the way it's supposed to given the firm's "satisfaction guaranteed" policy (This should be automatic..."push a button" and send to "customer claims office") | a. Operational |
| 6. The Chief Financial Officer wants to know what the impact on the firm's income statement is going to be if interest rates on the outstanding loans goes from 5% to 6% annually. (Classical What-if situation based on known relationships between interest rates and payments) | c. DSS |
| 7. A marketing specialist wants to find out whether or not introducing an improved version of the SuperBaby doll in the Midwest will improve sales enough to overcome the costs of the improvement to the product. (look up past history of sales and try to intuit whether sales will increase based on company sales skills) | e. MIS |
C. Phases of Problem Solving
| Problem Statement | Support Phase |
| 1. Board of Directors needs to determine what the firm's strategic plan ought to be. (discussion, position papers, negotiation, contention) |
f. Presentation (Intelligence, Design) |
| 2. The Human Resources Manager of a small firm wants to hire an additional sales person and wonders what questions to ask in the interview. (get consulting advice about what makes a good salesperson, then determine the questions to be asked) | d. Consulting (Design, Choice) |
| 3. A group of employees wants to figure out whether or not they should volunteer to raise the profile of the firm in the community by establishing a charitable group to work with disadvantaged children. (Nothing inside the firm is going to help here...far too complex for support) | g. None |
| 4. Despite all efforts to get machine 34 going again, the foreman believes that it can be fixed in time for the next shift. Should additional effort be put into fixing the machine by two of the current shift's operators? (CALL THE EXPERTS, those who have created the machine...don't waste employees' time) | b. Expert (Design, Choice, Implementation, Learning) |
| 5. Employee needs to know where to send a customer with an item to return that the customer claims doesn't work the way it's supposed to given the firm's "satisfaction guaranteed" policy (This should be automatic..."push a button" and send to "customer claims office") | a. Operational (Implementation, Feedback) |
| 6. The Chief Financial Officer wants to know what the impact on the firm's income statement is going to be if interest rates on the outstanding loans goes from 5% to 6% annually. (Classical What-if situation based on known relationships between interest rates and payments) | c. DSS (Choice, Learning, perhaps Implementation) |
| 7. A marketing specialist wants to find out whether or not introducing an improved version of the SuperBaby doll in the Midwest will improve sales enough to overcome the costs of the improvement to the product. (look up past history of sales and try to intuit whether sales will increase based on company sales skills) | e. MIS (Intelligence, perhaps Design) |
D. The Goal of any Management Support System is to Improve the QUALITY of the SUPPORT available to Managers, in the future, for similar problems.
1. To build a presentation model to define problems (none
to presentation)
2. To create a data model (i.e., data bases) to collect data for exploring and
intelligence (presentation to
MIS)
3. To create similarity models to understand what matters in design (
MIS to consulting)
4, 5. To create causal (what-if) or logical (IF-THEN) models to improve
predictions' accuracy, reliability and validity in choice (consulting
to logical or
decision support
(i.e., evaluation of outcomes))
6. To assist in implementing decisions (evaluation of
outcomes to operational)
Hence the goal of deployment of information systems in business is essentially to go from "haven't a clue" to "here's a situation" to "here are similar situations" to "here's what might happen" to "here's the solution" by accumulating experience from data to information and deriving knowledge. This is the proper role of information systems in supporting managers.