Why the web needs a universal decision support system and not just another decision engine
Posted by Matt Rajkowski on May 11, 2011, 3:50 PM EDT
The best social sites and search engines alone won't tell you how valuable your business is, but a series of calculations against a few key answers you provide, compared to other businesses, will. That's why a decision support system (DSS) is needed.
Wouldn't it be great to go to Google and query "How much is my business worth?" and then have an input form with a few questions and then an answer on the spot? Today the top search result is for 'information' that goes into valuing a company and a link to purchasing a book for further guidance.
A DSS could also help you in times of a crisis to narrow down your exact situation and provide you with an answer specific to you. I often find that I need to read four or five web pages to pinpoint an answer. It would be great to have a workflow that arrives at this sooner and more accurately.
Existing crowd-sourced decision engines also take time to get an answer because they require knowledgable people who are willing to answer. The questions are often repeated on different sites with a different audience.
So, how does the world accumulate and share this information? That's the complicated part. Ideally there would be questionnaires, quizzes, polls and such that are aggregated – perhaps as part of the search results themselves. DSS widgets can blanket the web on sites similar to how advertisements do today.
At Concursive, we've made a DSS that can be authored by a developer and placed on any of our ConcourseConnect sites within a portlet. We're not sure how the rest of the world will use it, but today we're creating polls, assessments and training materials for our customers. I would love to see something universal.
