Executive

Support System
 What is ESS?
• A Reporting Tool(software)
• Also known as Executive information System
• Allows you to turn your organization’s data into useful summarize reports
• These reports are generally used by the executive level managers for quick
access to reports coming from all company levels & departments.
 Characteristics of ESS

• Computer based information system

• Enables users to extract summary data & resolve complex problem
• Provides rapid & direct access to timely information and management reports.
• Capable of both accessing internal & external data.
• Can be easily given DSS support for decision making
Components of ESS

Hardware Software

Telecommunication User Interface

 Hardware

The Basic hardware needed for a typical EIS includes 4 components:

• Input data-entry devices

• Central Processing Unit (CPU)
• Data Storage Files
• Output devices
 Software

The typical EIS includes four software components:

• Text-handling software
• Database
• Graphic Base
• Model Base
 Telecommunications
• Transmitting data from one place to another has become crucial for
establishing a reliable network.

• Telecommunications within an EIS can accelerate the need for access to

distributed data.
 User Interface
Several Types of Interfaces can be available to the EIS structure, such as:
• scheduled reports
• questions/answers
• menu driven
• command language
• natural language
• input/output.
 Architecture of ESS

Architecture of ESS
Where is ESS?
 Range of ESS

ESS mainly deals with data related to key departments like

billing, accounting, scheduling, staffing etc. In addition to providing quick access to
the data, ESS also acts as an analysis tool and provides good understanding of the
various possible outcomes depending upon
the changes in input data.
ESS can be customized to suite the user requirements and its functioning is solely
dependent on the skills of the developer.

ESS thus saves valuable time of the executives in digging the huge pile of
information to identify the critical data and helps them spend more time on
brainstorming and decision making by providing only the required data. ESS
can be used to view and analyze both the present data and predicted future data.
Features
 Features
 Contemporary ESS bring together data from all parts of the firm and enable managers to select,
access, and tailor them as needed using easy-to-use desktop analytical tools and online
data displays.
 Through their ESS, many managers have access to public data, such as news services, financial
market databases, and economic information.
 ESS has the ability to drill down, moving from a piece of summary data to lower and lower levels of
detail.
 Well-designed ESS also has some facility for environmental scanning.
 A key information requirement of managers at the strategic level is the ability to detect signals of
problems in the organizational environment that indicate strategic threats and
opportunities.
 Ability to analyze, compares, and highlight trends.
 Advantages

 Improved personal efficiency

 Increased organizational control
 Competitive advantage over competitors
 Automation of the managerial processes.
If there is no ESS/EIS?
Without ESS: A Re-Active Business Decision
 A CEO receives a call from an online advertising company offering an
incredible rate on pay-per-click ads, but for a limited time.
 Now it’s up to the CEO to quickly figure out which products will yield the
most return on the advertising investment.
 First the executive logs into an online advertising dashboard to compare costs,
response rates and
return from previous campaigns.
 Then he gets on the phone with a warehouse account manager, or logs into
an inventory management database.
• From the warehouse, he finds out the cost to ship each product, the list price
of each product and which products have been sitting on the shelves the
longest or accruing the most storage fees.
• With all of this data and information in place, the executive can figure out
which product will likely yield the highest return and finally respond to the
advertising offer before the deadline expires.
What will happen when we use ESS/EIS inside
an organization?
With ESS: A Pro-Active Business Decision
• The ESS sends an alert to the company CEO that product “X” was stored for “X”
number of days, or that the warehouse storage costs for product “X” have exceeded a
certain total dollar amount.
• Working from that report, the executive alerts his sales and marketing employees to
research the most cost-effective ways to move product “X” off the shelves.
• Here the CEO is not scrambling to reply to an outside call
from an advertising company
• The ESS alert put him in the driver’s seat and gave the sale and marketing team lead
time to find the best
 Future of ESS
• Toolbox for customized systems • Web-enabled EIS
• Multimedia support • Automated support and intelligent assistance
• Better access (via PDFs and cell phones) • Integration of EIS and Group Support
Systems
• Virtual Reality and 3-D Image Displays
• Merging of analytical systems (OLAP / • Global EIS
• multidimensional analysis)) with desktop • Integration and deployment with ERP
products
publishing
• Client/server architecture
Summary

Executive Support Systems meet the needs of corporate executives by

providing them with vast amounts of Information quickly and in graphical
form to help them make effective decisions.
ESS must be flexible, easy to use, and contain both internal and external
sources of information.