From Web Based to On-Line Decision Support

The paper tries to identify some causes and implications of the web phenomena into the decision making field. It also includes examples in order to better justify the ideas. The literature and the practice are very rich in examples of Decision Support Systems (DSS) and Business Intelligence products but they are rather considered complex applications made to interact over the internet but not entirely running within the Internet. In order to arrive to this title we have also tested a few on-line products starting with simple office tools (Google docs – spreadsheets) or more specialized ones (Nesstar - analytics). And why this counts in this article? - Partially because when thinking of solvers and trend charts a spreadsheet may be considered a basic form of DSS. The main question is whether or not the on-line applications developers implement such functionalities in their products. Beyond the practical approach and the obvious criticism, the main idea of the paper is to make us realize the trend of many applications that serve decision making. The main implication of the trend-line mentioned in our article is related to the fact that in terms of technology any decision will become easier to be made when thinking of the mobile devices available nowadays. Thus the paper needs to be considered in relation with this topic. The main idea when speaking of originality is basically to show something previously not seen, not tested or not proved. In this case, the originality mostly consists in seeing beyond the traditional approaches of the decision support systems. The on-line category is one belonging to the places beyond these borders.