The Ge Real Estate Company - Case Study Example

Name: Instructor: Course: Date: Introduction The Ge Real Estate Company Ge Real Estate is one of the leading real estate businesses in the world which acts as a lending and investment business to the world. It finances property development at an interest rate to its customers. The development of a decision support system for the company is of great welcome in the sense that the overall managerial decision are improved and this enhances the integrity of the company. The decision support system is a situation of modeling data and finally making decisions basing your argument on the model data. For the company to make right decisions concerning its operations or general management it needs to ensure that the data in place is well collected for an analysis and it should help them develop good business strategies for making the company command a great share on the global market. The decision support systems are mainly applications of computer coupled with the human resource for the analysis of the data of any given circumstance. Business goal Goals can be defined as the estimated results that an individual or a firm intends to achieve by the end of a stated time. Goals act as a guide of action. The following are the goals of Ge Real Estate and their respective operations: Profitability of the business – it is the aim or the goal of every business to make profit failure to which it will collapse. Since the year 2000 the firm has noted an increase in its profit. Ge Real Estate also aimed at obtaining a world wide market share. This was achieved through opening many branches abroad and also by ensuring that it does a timely delivery of quotes and approvals. Ge Real Estate Company sought to identify business opportunities in the market so as to pursue them. Like all other businesses that wish to expand, Ge Real Estate had to look for opportunities so as to expand its loaning activities. This was achieved through research and development to analyze the profitability of each and every deal. Satisfaction of market situation The goals of Ge Real Estate Company managed to satisfy the market situation since it has managed to satisfy its customer’s needs together with attaining a profit. There are some needs which made Ge Real Estate to fast improve its business performance. This needs include: The need to have an efficient and a system to track their projects performance. Ge Real Estate Company being a world wide investor had over 8000 buildings or branches all over the world and therefore the need to manage them properly which acted as a driving force to the improvement of its performance. Managing this businesses manually increases risk chances and its also quite uneconomical and this called for the company to improve its business performance to the use of Data support systems Using manual spreadsheets to store data posed a risk threat to Ge Real Estate and this created a need for the company to improve its business performance. using manual spreadsheet gave the employers a handsome of work in collecting data from the various company branches. The more the work, the higher the chances of risks and errors. The need to meet the customers needs to ensure their satisfaction made the company to improve its performance. By the year 2000, Ge Real Estate was able to price around 30, 000 deals which means that they had a large number of customers whose needs needed to be achieved hence the need to improve its performance to increase its output. Business operation and information that need to support computerized system: Business operations can be defined as the frequent activities which are involved in business running with the aim of producing quality goods. A computerized system uses the hardware and the software components of the computer to record and store data. To support this system the company should expand the use of internet or the World Wide Web which will enable it to enhance its computerized processes and hence act as a supporting material to the decision. Requirement for decision making in business operation To make a perfect decision in business operation the decision makers should first do a market analysis to determine the strengths which are basically internal factors and weakness and opportunities. Ge Real Estate was experiencing an industry growth and for it to make a decision on what market operation to use, it had to consider the possibility of any profitable opportunities likely to be found in the business and also evaluate its strength to use the business operation. The following are some of the characteristics of a decision support system: It aided decision making that is it supported the process of decision making. In our case, Ge Real Estate used the data support system to make managerial decisions. The system was used for repeated actions in the decision making processing. Introduction of a data support system in the company ensured a continuous use of it in decision making to support decision making tasks as noted by (Sprague 1992). It was ancillary in that it was used by managers in all levels of management in the organization. In Ge Real Estate, introduction of decision support system was to ease employee the hard work of manual recording of data and therefore this system was used by all people including the employees. The system was task oriented in that it gave the company the capability to perform one or more tasks which consist of decision making and analysis of data. In Ge Real Estate the data support system used helped the management to work on risk minimization. The system also had distinct impact on decision making in that it should ensure the attainment of quality service as it ensures use of an independent system as noted by Turban ( 1995). In Ge Real Estate company introduction of DSS led to a quality service to its customers as tracking of their funded property was made easy  Capabilities of decision support system in Ge Real Estate It increased the company’s net income. In the year 2006 the company noted an 8 percentage increase after it incorporated decision support system in its operation as compared to 2000 when it used manual spreadsheet. This lead to triple increase in the net income in a period of 6years. The decision support system had the capability to support decision making process where the company was able to use the automated which enabled it to make large scale decision making. The following are the benefits accruing from the use of decision support system in Ge Real estate: The use of the technology helped the firm to properly manage its branches like Europe, North America and Asia. With the help of decision support system the company was able to use the technology to be efficient and effective and profitable as there was no inaccurate information leading to fewer risks. The system saw the company to become of multimillion investors in the world. Through this technology the company was able to monitor improvements in their projects; it also shortened the time required for project approval that is it has reduced the transaction period. With the use of the data support system the company’s abilities were strengthened leading to a faster response to the clients. Through the introduction of data support system the firm was able to assesses the conditions of its market segments more accurately as technology based projects are quite reliable to businesses. Benefits of decision support system brought to Ge Real Estate Company The development of a decision support system for the company will help in improving the general personal efficiency within the top management of the company alongside other employees of the company thus building up good customer relationship. Another great benefit that can not be underestimated is that of problem solving. The advancement of the a decision support system for the Ge Real Estate company will help in speeding the process involved with solving of problems and this enhances the integrity of the company. When there is a good decision support system in place for the company, there interpersonal relationship is enhanced and this in return promotes the process of induction within the staff of the company. It also helps in ensuring that the control within the operations of the company is promoted. The use of decision support system for the Ge Real Estate company will help the management to be in a position of discovering new ideas concerning the development of the company as well as giving them fresh thinking abilities (Power 85). Type of decision support system used by Ge Real Estate Company Ge Real Estate used the Model-driven data support system which used complex systems to analyze decisions to help the management to choose between various. This type of date support system was used options by managers in all levels and all employees to make decisions. Functions of a data support system in supporting decision making problems The following are the four decision making phases applied in identifying data, models and technologies to support decision making process. Intelligence phase which is also referred to as the diagnostic phase. In this phase the decision maker looks on the loan type, property, location, ownership, and even tenant mix. These factors are use to determine a problem in the market. The decision makers will then be faced to by the problem of identifying the profitability of the identified opportunities. This phase can be used to identify data which I our case will be the problem noted in the market. Once the decision maker has identified the data or the problem then he or she should identify the model or the method of approach to use in the problem evaluation. The method to be used here to solve this problem will be model-driven, data-. Once the method is determined the decision maker should design the kind of technology or software and hardware to use as a data support system. Design phase gives adequate solution to the noted problems. In this phase the decision maker keys in the problem or the data into the data support system. Once processing is done the data support system gives the decision maker tangible solutions. This phase also displays to the decision maker the model used in it. Models used must be compatible with the data and the technology and therefore displaying the model tells the decision maker about the used technology. The choice phase enables the decision maker to choose the best solution depending on the advantages and disadvantage of each solution. On evaluating the opportunities in market concerning the loan the decision maker will have many. Choices to choose from, that is different profitability level for different customers and hence the need to choose the best as noted by (Power 85). The implementation phase is the last phase where the best of the alternatives is put into place. The most favorable solution from the choice phase is then put into action. According to Alter (1990), using the phases of decision making will enable the chief executive officer to identify any likelihood of a profitable loan opportunity and favorable terms and conditions of the loans. I would therefore advise the CEO to use the phases of decision making in order to understand perfectly the loan opportunities. Designing a decision support system A well designed DSS is a system based on software which helps the decision makers to combine important information from a set of data so as to make decisions and hence solve problem. The following are some of the components of a decision support system It has a model which gives the decision maker the criteria to use in problem solving, a database which serves as the source of knowledge for identifying problems and a user interface. It also consists of inputs, outputs, user knowledge and decisions. Outputs are the generated decisions from inputs, inputs are the raw data, user knowledge requires analyzing the user manually and decisions are the generated results based on criteria and it is done by the decision support system. In analyzing a decision support system a new area operator should be created whose responsibility will be to ensure that tools used in processing maintain optimal levels of health Decision Ladder Specifying the technologies and hardware for supporting such type of DSS.                      Data support technology has the following levels User application which allows the decision maker to make decisions concerning a certain problem. A generator of hardware and software that helps people to develop data support system application. Decision support system consisting on languages, libraries and modules. Analysis of hardware and software selection. Analyze the technical requirement of the company and evaluate the company’s needs for the new technology Find more about technical criteria and their options. Do research on the new technology and check specifications like processor speed, storage, input, output and memory size. Solicit quotes for proposal. Here the management should take advantage of the competition for supply of the system. References Alter, S. Decision Support Systems: Current Practice and Continuing Challenges. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, Inc. 1990. Pg 43-45 Holsapple, C. W. and A. B. Whinston. Decision Support Systems: A Knowledge Based Approach. Minneapolis, MN. West Publishing, Inc. 1996 Power, D. J., Decision. Support Systems: Concepts and Resources for Managers, Westport, CT: Greenwood/Quorum Books. 2002. Sprague, R. H. and E. D. Carlson. Building Effective Decision Support Systems Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1992 Turban, E. and J. E. Aronson. 5th ed. Decision Support and Intelligent Systems Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1995 Bertin, J. Semiology of Graphics. The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison.1983  Adler, P.New Technologies, New Skills. California Management Review, 1986, Pg 9-28. Read More