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74 Part I • Decision Making and Analytics: An Overview

table 2.1 Simon’s Four Phases of Decision Making and the Web

Phase Web Impacts Impacts on the Web
Intelligence Access to information to identify Identification of opportunities for
problems and opportunities from e-commerce, Web infrastructure,
internal and external data sources hardware and software tools, etc.
Access to analytics methods to Intelligent agents, which reduce the
identify opportunities burden of information overload
Collaboration through group support Smart search engines
systems (GSS) and knowledge
management systems (KMS)
Design Access to data, models, and solution Brainstorming methods (e.g., GSS)
methods to collaborate in Web
Use of online analytical processing infrastructure design
(OLAP), data mining, and data Models and solutions of Web
warehouses infrastructure issues
Collaboration through GSS and KMS
Similar solutions available from KMS
Choice Access to methods to evaluate the Decision support system (DSS) tools,
impacts of proposed solutions which examine and establish criteria
from models to determine Web,
intranet, and extranet infrastructure
DSS tools, which determine how
to route messages
Implementation Web-based collaboration tools (e.g., Decisions implemented on browser
GSS) and KMS, which can assist in and server design and access,
implementing decisions which ultimately determined how
to set up the various components
that have evolved into the Internet
Tools, which monitor the performance
of e-commerce and other sites,
including intranets, extranets, and
the Internet

Note that there are many other decision-making processes. Notable among them is
the Kepner-Tregoe method (Kepner and Tregoe, 1998), which has been adopted by many
firms because its tools are readily available from Kepner-Tregoe, Inc. (kepner-tregoe.
com). We have found that these alternative models, including the Kepner-Tregoe method,
readily map into Simon’s four-phase model.
We next turn to a detailed discussion of the four phases identified by Simon.

sectiOn 2.3 revieW QuestiOns
1. List and briefly describe Simon’s four phases of decision making.
2. What are the impacts of the Web on the phases of decision making?

2.4 Decision Making: the intelligence Phase
Intelligence in decision making involves scanning the environment, either intermittently
or continuously. It includes several activities aimed at identifying problem situations or
opportunities. It may also include monitoring the results of the implementation phase of
a decision-making process.

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