Making informed decisions is crucial for business success.
With decision support systems (DSS) in place, you can gather and evaluate information simultaneously, run automatic data or document collection processes, and enhance interpersonal communication between different departments.
All of these can help you make beneficial business decisions due to access to data, models, and knowledge.
Despite all these facts, only 20 percent of employers state that their organizations excel at decision-making while the majority say much of the time they devote to decision making is used ineffectively, reports the McKinsey Global Survey.
And there are several reasons why.
Setting up a DSS for your organization can be costly and involve multiple expenses. Moreover, without clear parameters, managers may take even more time in decision-making because these software can provide many potential options.
That’s why, we need to get the DSS that fits your needs the most considering all the requirements.
In this article, we’ll review the 5 best decision support software for large enterprises in 2024.
- VisiRule Expert Systems – Best for efficient diagramming and flow charts.
- 1000Minds – Best for decision-making using conjoint analysis.
- Decisions – Best for using an in-built rule engine to automate decisions.
- Minitab – Best for statistical analysis to improve business processes.
Let’s get started.
How to Choose the Best Decision Support System
When deciding to get the best decision support software, you should consider these key elements:
a) Artificial Intelligence and Automation
In modern times, both AI and automation solutions are handy for your business.
AI can elevate your overall decision-making by deploying chatbots, knowledge bases, and applications quickly. With automation, you can reduce manual interventions and test your data and models more efficiently.
b) Vendor Support and Training
If anything, decision support systems are not that simple.
That’s even more true for non-technical people. If a vendor that provides these solutions doesn’t offer any documentation or pieces of training on their product, then customers won’t be able to bring out the true potential of the software.
c) Scalability and Flexibility
A decision support system should be able to scale as your company grows.
For larger enterprises, making the right decision is not only more difficult but also more important. If the software doesn’t provide enough support to add new data sources or integrate with other systems, then it might not be a good choice in the long run.
1. VisiRule Expert Systems
VisiRule Expert System is a decision support and automation software.
It enables non-programmers and non-technical people to develop rule-based expert systems using decision logic. You can capture and share knowledge through decision graph diagrams.
You can draw charts and diagrams on your device or a browser and generate executable code from that. This accelerates your delivery of HTML client-side apps.
The combination of artificial intelligence, expert systems, business rules, rapid prototyping, decision tree flowcharts, and documents can handle any complex design, making VisiRule one of the best decision support software.
VisiRule’s rapid prototyping allows you to quickly create and immediately test your business logic with minimal training. You can iteratively enhance your product through incremental improvement and refinement, making it suitable for large enterprises.
VisiRule lets you deploy your charts in multiple ways. You can deliver as server-side HTML forms, client-side HTML/XML, or embedded Business Rules components.
Both low code and no code development opportunities make VisiRule a top choice in this list.
Best Features:
- Rapid prototyping and capture of knowledge through programming via flowcharting.
- Produces configurable risk assessment questionnaires with dynamic scoring and reports.
- Advanced analytics that displays how a chart is used. It helps you when you want to update the chart.
Pricing
Starting Plan: Contact VisiRule for pricing.
2. 1000Minds
1000minds is a decision-making and conjoint analysis software.
It provides you with easy-to-use tools to help you remove biases and make important decisions based on ranking, prioritizing, or choosing between alternatives.
You can either start from scratch or use their examples to build a model. Whether you want to work as a single decision-maker, together as a group, or survey as many people as you like, you can do that.
What sets 1000minds apart is the fact that it joins both decision-making and conjoint analysis in one beautiful package and takes it even further with its award-winning PAPRIKA method. This makes it one of the best decision support software.
The PAPRIKA method, invented by 1000minds’ founders, keeps participants engaged by asking one simple question at a time. More like having a conversation.
This lets you have high-quality responses that accurately reflect people’s preferences when making trade-offs.
Getting valid and reliable results through adaptive conjoint analysis makes 1000minds an ideal choice in 2024.
Best Features:
- Cutting-edge technology in Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) for better prioritization and reliable results.
- AI Assistant helps people build their decision model while keeping them fully in control.
- Conjoint analysis to find out how people feel about specific attributes or characteristics of your product offerings and management processes
Pricing
Starting Plan: Contact 1000minds to learn more about the pricing.
3. Decisions
Decisions is a no-code automation platform.
This rules-driven Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) platform equips you with powerful tools to build enterprise software and workflows, regardless of whether you are a developer.
The Decision Rules Engine helps you process billions of rules every hour and Manage them all with a single, visual interface.
It also comes with a QA built-in. You can audit any business rule to find and fix bugs, pinpoint performance gaps, and validate your data.
On top of all these, you can use the Decisions Workflow Manager to simplify business automation by digitizing each step and action without coding, making it one of the best decision support software.
Decisions’ rich integration features allow you to centralize your operations. It includes no-code wizards and pre-built modules for better data management. You can easily enforce data integrity and standardize data models.
Decisions’ enterprise-scale logic, automation processes, and high-availability setups make it a great contender for large enterprises and so it made the list.
Best Features:
- Decisions Rules Engine enables defining, executing, and enforcing complex rule sets with complete precision.
- Real-time error notifications and powerful debugging tools enable you to test and improve as you build and track key metrics.
- Interface Designers gives everyone on your team the ability to build or modify user experiences within the bounds of your business rules
Pricing
Starting Plan: Contact Decisions to learn more about the pricing.
4. Minitab
Minitab is a data analysis, statistical, and process improvement tool.
Whether you need to solve the toughest business challenges or take the initiative to achieve business excellence, Minitab has the best-in-class tools you can access anywhere, anytime on the cloud.
Minitab’s user-friendly statistical software helps you explore and investigate your data, discover insights, predict outcomes, and improve your results.
Its statistical process control solutions allow you to use statistical methods to monitor, alert, and control your virtual processes in real time. This lets you know what part of your business process is failing so you can quickly address and fix any issues. This makes Minitab one of the best decision support software.
Minitab unifies many diagramming and mind-mapping tools so you don’t have to rely on multiple solutions. You can brainstorm, and create flow charts and organizational charts for processes.
Being a one-stop shop for all the necessary visual tools and powerful statistical software makes Minitab worth your attention in 2024.
Best Features:
- Generate diagrams, charts, value stream maps, etc to identify key areas of value to improve and solve problems.
- Start, track, manage, and share innovation and improvement initiatives from idea generation through execution.
- Automate reports to share and track information for meaningful business intelligence
Pricing
Starting Plan: $1780 per unit per year.
5. Statgraphics
Statgraphics is a business intelligence and data analytics solution.
It consists of three main tools. Centurion for statistical analysis, data visualization, and predictive analytics. Sigma Express, an Excel add-in, performs various calculations required when learning or applying Six Sigma. Lastly, Stratus is a web-based online statistics software.
Statgraphics Centurion comes with an easy-to-use GUI so that you don’t need to learn a complicated command language.
StatAdvisor is useful for explaining the results of statistical analyses in a manner suitable for presentation to non-statisticians, making Statgraphics one of the best decision support software.
Sigma Express provides sections for each item of the DMAIC paradigm (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control) and additional menu items for Tools and Help.
Stratus is extremely helpful if you need a remote solution for statistical analysis. You can feed data directly into the data editor or use text files and Excel files.
With tons of features for statistical analysis, Statgraphics is a demanding solution for businesses.
Best Features:
- StatAdvisor explains the critical insights to be gained from each output table, explaining the significance (or lack thereof) of the results.
- Control multiple process variables simultaneously with a dashboard that generates alerts when unusual events occur to improve quality.
- See the big picture and gain new insights when visualizing your data through interactive Statlets.
Pricing
Starting Plan: $990 per user per year for Centurion, $495 per user for Sigma Express, and $550 per user for Stratus.
Conclusion
A wrong decision can hurt your business badly in terms of growth and profitability.
Manual processes are much less efficient in 2024 than they used to be in the past.
Involving too many heads in the decision-making process can create conflicts and make everything even more complex. In fact, a Princeton University study shows that the smaller a decision-making group is, the more likely the group is to make the right choice.
A DSS can help you make better decisions using computerized systems and data instead of relying on others.
With a DSS, you can deploy automated processes so that even for a large enterprise, you can continue project efforts with the right data and facts.
If you need software that provides rapid prototyping of solutions with expert decision support system technology, then go for VisiRule.
If you’re looking to apply proven methods to your business logic and improve your product quality with conjoint analysis, then 1000minds is your best bet.
However, if your top priority is in better automation, scalability, and integration, then Decision will be your ideal solution.
