The Decision Support System for Maurice Hotels Group - Case Study Example

? Decision support system Decision support system Maurice Hotels Group has three branches that are located in Devon and Cornwall. Each of the hotels has about 100 rooms. All the hotels are located at the seaside. The hotel’s current decision support system only focuses on the hotel assets and not customers. The hotel has opened a new branch at the south coast. It requires a system that allows the CEO to easily access and monitor the activities taking place in the three hotels at the same time. The current information system of the organization does not effectively support the decision-making processes of the company. Appraisal of the hotel’s DSS systems The Decision Support System (DSS) is a technology that enables managers in organizations to make effective business choices or solve problems using the available information in the organizations. Almost all information systems help in decision-making. However, the DSS exclusively works with this function. The DSS helps in the analysis of huge amounts of data referred to as business intelligence. Maurier Hotels Group is an SME type of business that should be having enough employees and many departments that should help in making appropriate decisions using the DSS. Considering the current size of the organization, many types of DSS can be more effective since the cost will not exceed the benefits expected after introducing businesses intelligence. The common types of the DSS are the model-driven, communication driven, and the data driven. The data-driven system is usually programmed to use limited set of information such as the number of customers in the current quarter. During the analysis, the CEO or the customer relation manager in the organization will carry out a dialogue with this decision support system by highlighting various scenarios relating to customers. For instance, in order to attract more customers, the managers will use the customer decision support system. The system contains a model that connects various factors such the number of customers, their ages, and their intentions for visiting the hotels. By entering the different customer preferences in the model, the managers can easily know the best way to attract customers (Mora, Forgionne, & Gupta 2003, p. 22). Model-driven systems help organization in the formulation of alternatives and study their impacts. For instance the hotels can analyze different strategies of creating strong customer relations through this DSS. Many organizations have succeeded in choosing the best alternatives through this system (Koch 2007, P. 220). The hotel group may also use the communication-drive type of DSS. The category of DSS will help the customers care departments in the three hotels to collaborate and share information about their customers. This DSS is more effective for organizations such as the current Maurier Hotels that has to work in groups. The communication-drive intelligence systems will ensure that the hotel groups of the organizations co-ordinate their activities including the customer management services in the three hotel groups. This DSS is most appropriate in-group activities since it ensures easier communication between two groups. By introducing this type of DSS in the organization, the CEO will not have to move from one hotel group to another to collect the information about customers. The information is present on one system. This will help the CEO to monitor the activities taking place in the three hotels at the same time. The technology will help the organization to save the time required to compile information about customers in the three hotel groups. This means that this intelligent system helps in removing distance and time barriers in group businesses (Muntermann 2008, 18). The DSS is also effective because it supports group decisions in an organization. It will be easier for the three groups to make appropriate decisions that will positively affect them (Janakiraman & Sarukesi 2009, p. 43). This type of DSS is helpful because it helps different branches of companies to organize information and compile them in a ways that they can be easily recovered for future references. An example of suitable communication driven DSS for this business includes the Groupware (Gachet 2004, P. 16). The data-driven intelligence system is also a type of DSS that helps in the analysis of a huge amount of data using a process called data mining. The data-driven driven DSS can be helpful to the customer relation managers in various ways. For instance, it can help them to target customers using cheaper approaches. It will also help them to understand their current and future targeted customers. This is because the system can break down customers’ information such as their geographical and demographic information. With this information, a manager can make necessary changes in order to satisfy the hotel customers. The data-driven DSS can be more effective in this organization because it can also analyze huge and cumulative information. According to the CEO of the organization, the hotels have not been keeping integrated information about their customers. With this type of DSS, the data mining process will enable the managers to discover significant patterns such as the ages of their frequent customers, their preferences, time of visit in the hotel, and duration of visits. This will help manager to make appropriate decisions. The CEO also highlights the difficulty facing the organization when determining what to expect from the future visits by customers. Using the data-driven model, the managers know their future customers’ information using the predictive data mining. This type of data mining uses various statistical models. Apart from numerical data mining, this type of DSS can also help in analyzing textual information about the organization’s customers. Text mining helps in consolidating unstructured customer information from other networks such as the social media that are currently used by many organizations. Text mining can help the manager retrieve the customer’s information such as their visiting trends in the hotels and the popularity of the hotel. This can help in making decisions such as finding new ways to satisfy customers or changing the marketing strategy used by the hotel (Stair 2013, P. 330). This type of business intelligent will benefit the hotel by making their daily activities efficient. For instance managers will be able to identify facts and draw conclusions regarding their relationships with their customers using this type of DSS. Data-driven is more expensive compared to the two. However, its benefits outweigh their benefits (Power 2002, P.48). An enterprise system approach is a strategy used by organizations to integrate a complex system. The organization should select a system that will make it acquire more benefits, in comparison to, losses. For example, the systems selected for the hotel should enable the organization to access the customer information from the three hotel branches at lower costs. The system should also help in increasing the customers’ satisfaction. Failings of the current information system The current system has more disadvantages over the DSS. For instance, the system fails to integrate all the information of the activities taking place in the three hotel groups. Different information is stored in different systems. The information about clients and company accounts, is all stored in different databases. This makes it tiresome and time consuming to access the information about clients especially in the past years. Additionally, it takes a lot of time for the CEO to analyze the client’s information in the three hotels at the same time in the current system since each group keeps their separate records. As such, the CEO has to visit each hotel at different times. This makes it difficult to monitor the customer management activities occurring in the three hotels. Additionally, it is difficult for the organization to understand the effective strategies for improving their operations because it is difficult for the business to monitor or study the past customer trends. It is also tiresome to retrieve all the clients’ information in the past years in the current system. The current system has also failed because it does not allow the managers to know the characteristics of their current customers and their preferences. It is difficult for the organization to make decisions regarding how to maintain the loyalty of their customers. Most organizations lose most of their customers because they do not understand them. Moreover, it is difficult to for the organization to predict its future in the current system. The growth of any profitable organization relies on its clients. Currently, the hotel receives many customers especially during holidays. However, the hotel managers are not sure if it will receive more customers in the future due to lack of reliable customer information. The current system does not allow them to foresee the interests or preferences of their future customers. The current system also fails to assist the organization make appropriate decisions within the operational areas of the hotels. For instance, managers are not able to know important information about the quality of their services. The profitability of organization depends on the quality of its services or products. Quality can be increased if workers are loyal to the organization. In the current system, it is difficult for the organization know its loyal employees since it does not have cumulative data. One ways to know the quality of the services of a company is to find out the customers’ comments. In the current system, it is difficult to combine all the customers’ feedbacks especially for the previous years. Additionally, the current system is not effective since it does not produce specific data. For instance, it only gives general information about financial data and staff. This can encourage fraud in the hotels special since the CEO cannot be in the three hotels at the same time. When the CEO is not in other hotels, workers can be tempted to manipulate financial figure. With DSS, this will be prevented since the CEO will be constantly updated about the activities in all hotels without his presence. Due to the failure of the current system, the organization needs to choose the most appropriate DSS. The most appropriate information systems that the business should use are the data-driven and communication-driven business intelligence. The two systems will integrate cumulative data about clients and coordinate all the customer service activities in the three hotels. With these systems, the organization will easily make important decisions that affect its clients positively. For example, the availability of the information will enable the organization improve the quality of its services. Additionally, it will be easier for both external and internal systems to access the information about customers. This means that both external and internal stakeholders of the company will easily access the information. The two information systems in the company will also be less costly. The company will only need 1500 dollars to introduce them. Apart from using it in the Customer Relation Management area, the organization can also use the system in other areas such as the human resource and finance departments. List of references Gachet, A, 2004, Building model-driven decision support systems with Dicodess, Zu?rich: vdf, Hochsch.-Verl an der ETH. Koch, C, 2007, The science of success: How market-based management built the world's largest private company, Hoboken, N.J: Wiley. Janakiraman, V, & Sarukesi, K 2009, Decision support systems, New Delhi: Prentice-Hall of India. Mora, M, Forgionne, A & Gupta, E 2003, Decision-making support systems: Achievements, trends and challenges for the new decade, Hershey, PA: Idea Group Pub. Muntermann, J, 2008, Event-driven mobile financial information services, Germany: Deutscher Universit?ts-Verlag. Power, D, 2002, Decision support systems: Concepts and resources for managers, Westport, Ct: Quorum Books. Stair, R, 2013, Principles of information systems, S.l.: Cengage Learning. Read More