Business informatics, business intillegent, decision support system

Business informatics, business intillegent, decision support system

Business Intelligence Systems UG/G 7156/6680

 

Unit Convenor and Moderator:
Assignment:	Proposal for decision support system
Due Date:
Word Count:	4 Pages, 1092 words (Excluding cover page, table of contents and references)

 

Student Declaration

I certify that the attached assignment is my own work.  Material drawn from other sources has been appropriately and fully acknowledged as to author/creator, source and other bibliographic details using the UC standard for the Harvard author-date system.

Student Number	Name	Signature
	Abbas Khan	AK

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table of Contents

Executive Summary. 3

Introduction. 4

Health industry. 4

Statement of problem.. 4

Managerial control 4

Decision structure. 5

Users of DSS. 5

Data issues. 5

Proposed Decision Support System based on Excel 5

Time line. 6

Conclusion (Benefits and Limitations) 6

References. 7

 

 

 

 

Executive Summary

Nutrition Australia is the one of the most active organization working towards ensuring a healthy and safe lifestyle choices for all Australians. The health industry in Australia is very aggressive not only towards the treatment of fatal diseases but also towards their prevention. Organization like Nutrition Australia are working on creating awareness in and motivating Australians to adopt a healthier lifestyle. This document proposes a system that allows such organization to keep track of risk factors that are associated with heart diseases. The prevention can be better targeted with accurate identification of areas where people have shown risk factors like high cholesterol levels and high blood pressure level. The efforts can then yield better results by targeting segments that are in need of a change in their lifestyle options.

 

 

Introduction

Nutrition Australia is an organization working endlessly to promote healthy lifestyles for all Australian by disseminating relevant information regarding food variety and physical activity. Doolan, Langlois and Semsarian (2004) have discussed a number of causes of sudden cardiac death in young Australian in their paper. Although the results were inconclusive, the authors pointed out various important symptoms like obesity, high cholesterol and blood pressure levels.  Each year around 54,000 Australians suffer a heart attack (Heart Foundation Australia, 2014) and every 12 minutes a person dies victim to factors that can be controlled and monitored are an alarming situation and need immediate attention. Nutrition Australia can work towards this regard with the proposed decision support system (DSS).

Health industry

According to a blog written by a census expert in 2013, health care is now the biggest industry in Australia (Expert, 2013). Out of all industries, the largest number of workers are being employed by the health sector. This industry is also catering to the needs of the whole of the population thus its market is excessively large. The proposed system will be a new aiding tool to help this industry in serving the market.

Statement of problem

1. Identifying areas where majority of residents are overweight and have high cholesterol levels. The organization will then look into strategies to promote healthy living style among the residents.
2. The company will also create awareness regarding other factors like smoking and high blood pressure that can lead to people dying from heart diseases.
3. The DSS will help the organization be informed about areas where people are smokers or have high cholesterol and BP levels. The information will allow organization to increase their efforts of promoting a healthy lifestyle in these regions.

Managerial control

The organization is operating at a huge level and thus cannot just use this DSS at an executive level from the beginning. Organization’s volunteers and mid-level managers will use this DSS for tactical decisions and the control of the DSS will remain with them.

Decision structure

Organization will require information that allows it to take decisions like how much to invest in the awareness campaigns for areas with highest risk of heart diseases. These decisions are not structured but rather semi-structured and require a lot of accurate information to be made.

The data will be managed in a way that it provides trends and patterns as well as figures which allow Nutrition Australia to engage other resources and come up with the most effective strategies. This DSS will be the cornerstone for the promotion strategies that will eventually be formulated.

 Users of DSS

Mid-level managers and the volunteers working on awareness campaigns alongside the marketing department of the company will be interested in the strategic information extracted by using the proposed DSS. Other organization promoting healthy living will also be interested in using the DSS for a sense of understanding that can help formulate more high level strategies especially Australian Health Promotion Association. The decision support system can also be used at executive level of Nutrition Australia however it is constructed to ease decision making at mid-level which are then presented to the executives of the organization for approval of strategies and budgets.

Data issues

Nutrition Organization will not be able to use this data in its raw form because it is random and is not sorted into any order. Before using this data for the DSS it will be cleaned by taking out any redundant data. The data needs to be sorted into some manner such as obesity by region or high blood level by age etcetera. The sorting on the basis of the geography will be best suited but the sorting can be changed according to the requirement of the problem.

Proposed Decision Support System based on Excel

Daniel Power has very thoroughly explained the overview of different decision support systems based on various software in a paper published in 2008. There are a number of software that will serve the purpose and help Nutrition Australia strategically. Some of these are only suitable for executive level decision making while some are too incapable to be use for tactical level decisions. Spread sheet is not only easy to use but also easy to maintain. Data entry is flexible and so are the analytical tools that allow user to calculate results using multiple variables. Microsoft excel will allow the user to view data in various forms like statistics, diagrams, charts and graphs. William in his research paper on use of excel as a DSS claims that this software is highly recommended for organizations that deal with huge amount of data. The organization will be able to view a clearer picture related to heart diseases caused by multiple factors combined or in isolation. The additional add-ons enhance the capabilities of the software and therefore the quality of information extracted using excel. The company will be carrying out what if analysis and scenario building.

Time line

The prototype will be ready to be tested by the second week of May, 2016.

Conclusion (Benefits and Limitations)

The statement of problem clearly states the problems that Nutrition Australia will be able to solve using this DSS. The organization will be able to identify communities that are not following a healthy lifestyle and thus are at the risk of fatal diseases especially linked with heart. The campaigns will be more focused in these regions compared to those where people are health conscious.

This however, requires users to be very thorough in entering new data because as time passes, this data will be become outdated and obsolete. The results of the data can never be a 100 percent sure because external factors are always at play. Further analysis may be required to devise lasting strategy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

Doolan, A., Langlois, N. and Semsarian, C., 2004. Causes of sudden cardiac death in young Australians. Medical Journal of Australia, 180(3), p.110.

Expert, G. -. T. C., 2013. Health Care is now Australia’s largest industry!, Collingwood, Australia: Dot ID the population experts.

Heart Foundation Australia, 2014. Heart disease in Australia, Australia: Heart Foundation Australia.

Power, D.J., 2008. Decision support systems: a historical overview. InHandbook on Decision Support Systems 1 (pp. 121-140). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

Territory, A.C., Wales, N.S., Territory, N., Australia, S. and Australia, W., Australian Health Promotion Association.

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