Failures, Uncertainties and Limitations in Decision Support Systems

Failures, Uncertainties and Limitations in Decision Support Systems




Decision support system has been integrated into business for many years. All involving include entrepreneurs, programmers, and business consultants agree that such systems are not perfect. Decision support system has limitations as follow:



1. Technological knowledge of users is required

Although decision support systems have more user-friendly in recent years, it remains an issue, especially for small business firms that lack of technological knowledge of users. Most decision support systems still need technical term knowledge for the analysis.



2. Hard to Quantify Factors

In actual world, some values cannot be specific and some are hard to quantify factors such as future interest rates, new legislation or product shelf life that may all be considered while analyzing. Even though the decision support system may provide the certainly result, the decision maker must use their own judgment in making the final decision.



3. Hard to collect all of related data

At times, data are not recorded correctly or data without beware of errors or some data cannot be recorded. Some data must be evaluated in Analysis. Thus, the certain value from decision support tools may be different from what it should be.



4. Processing Model Limitations and Assumptions

As same as the processing analysis data in economics model, Decision makers may not be fully aware of the limitations or assumptions of the particular processing model. The assumptions and limitations are about “The situation MUST be under condition like this, the result should be…” but the situations cannot be controlled like assumptions and limitations of the decision support model.

Realize that we are under uncontrollable environment such as interest rates, political, disaster and more in actual world. Bringing the result from analysis to use in another condition without considering about uncontrollable factors or beware may cause incorrect decision making.

We must be aware of using result from decision support system as helper tools in making decisions. Realize of doing analysis under limitations and assumptions are important.



5. System design failures

Because of problems of each individual users are different, it’s a challenge of Decision support system developers to design program to support each person. Some decision makers don’t exactly know what they want and what they can obtain from decision support system or requirement may not well obtain.

Decision support system may be designed and not match to exactly what decision makers want. When it’s being used, the result from system may not be what decision maker want and information getting may not be sufficient to make any decision for decision maker.



6. Organization Resistance

Any new technology change will cause resistance from some users or stakeholders. Some people may fear of learning how to use new system or lost of status or influences in organization. Sometimes developer may have adequately received corporation by users in organization or no intention in using DSS system of users.

Outcome system may not be what users want. Benefit from using DSS at any issue may not be as much as expected.