Editing Decision support system (section)

{{Short description|Information systems supporting business or organizational decision-making activities}}
{{for|the academic journal|Decision Support Systems}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=June 2023}}
[[File:Decision Support System for John Day Reservoir.jpg|thumb|360px|Example of a decision support system for [[John Day Dam|John Day Reservoir]]]]
{{Recommender systems}}

A '''decision support system''' ('''DSS''') is an [[information system]] that supports business or organizational [[decision-making]] activities. DSSs serve the management, operations and planning levels of an organization (usually mid and higher management) and help people make decisions about problems that may be rapidly changing and not easily specified in advance—i.e., unstructured and semi-structured decision problems. Decision support systems can be either fully computerized or human-powered, or a combination of both.

While academics have perceived DSS as a tool to support [[decision making process]]es, DSS users see DSS as a tool to facilitate organizational processes.<ref>{{cite journal|author=Keen, Peter|year=1980|title=Decision support systems : a research perspective|publisher=Cambridge, Massachusetts : Center for Information Systems Research, Alfred P. Sloan School of Management|hdl=1721.1/47172}}</ref> Some authors have extended the definition of DSS to include any [[system]] that might support [[decision making]] and some DSS include a [[decision-making software]] component; Sprague (1980)<ref name='sprague1980'>Sprague, R;(1980). "[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.476.4750&rep=rep1&type=pdf A Framework for the Development of Decision Support Systems]." MIS Quarterly. Vol. 4, No. 4, pp. 1–25.</ref> defines a properly termed DSS as follows:
# DSS tends to be aimed at the less well structured, underspecified [[Problem solving|problem]] that upper level [[Management|manager]]s typically face;
# DSS attempts to combine the use of models or analytic techniques with traditional [[data access]] and [[data retrieval|retrieval]] functions;
# DSS specifically focuses on features which make them easy to use by non-computer-proficient people in an [[interactive]] mode; and
# DSS emphasizes [[flexibility]] and [[adaptability]] to accommodate changes in the [[Knowledge environment|environment]] and the [[decision making]] approach of the user.

DSSs include [[knowledge-based systems]]. A properly designed DSS is an interactive software-based system intended to help decision makers compile useful information from a combination of raw data, documents, personal knowledge, and/or business models to identify and solve problems and make decisions.

Typical information that a decision support application might gather and present includes:
*inventories of information assets (including legacy and [[relational database|relational data]] sources, [[data cube|cubes]], [[data warehouse]]s, and [[data mart]]s),
*comparative sales figures between one period and the next,
*projected revenue figures based on product [[Financial forecast|sales assumptions]].