I did some wiki-reading on advances in decision support systems (Cognitive Science is a personal interest of mine. It is like psychology or artificial intelligence with the hardware abstracted). It struck me that these systems are in use by another name… Consider this excerpt:

A properly-designed DSS is an interactive software-based system intended to help decision makers compile useful information from raw data, documents, personal knowledge, and/or business models to identify and solve problems and make decisions.

Typical information that a decision support application might gather and present would be:

• an inventory of all of your current information assets (including legacy and relational data sources, cubes, data warehouses, and data marts),
• comparative sales figures between one week and the next,
• projected revenue figures based on new product sales assumptions;
• the consequences of different decision alternatives, given past experience in a context that is described.

The last 3 points are things that I see and hear regularly in meetings and videoconferences. But it wasn’t until I read the common benefits of a DSS that I recognised the app.

1. Improves personal efficiency
2. Expedites problem solving
3. Facilitates interpersonal communication
4. Promotes learning or training
5. Increases organizational control
6. Generates new evidence in support of a decision
7. Creates a competitive advantage over competition
8. Encourages exploration and discovery on the part of the decision maker
9. Reveals new approaches to thinking about the problem space

If you added Create powerful, dynamic SmartArt diagrams to this list, you would almost have the top ten benefits of PowerPoint 2007! (well, sort of). This made me think about the decisions that PowerPoint helps make, in its own little way.

Digging into Microsoft’s own Master Slide Library (a cloud-based virtual hypothetical satirical data-mall of every powerpoint slide ever created, rumoured to be buried 20km under Mt. Rainier) I was able to dig up some really interesting examples of how PowerPoint slides have been used to help make some business critical decisions over the years, here is one of the oldest examples:

Alexander The Great was a renowned orator and looking at these slides I can see some of that genius coming through. A little bit of time spent on introducing yourself is well spent – it helps the audience connect with the speaker. The large photo is a nice touch – it makes it easier for the people in the back of the coliseum to recognise you out on the forum.

This is a classic example of good scene-setting. Alexander restates the mission and summarises the operating environment (I assume that he would have used a snazzy transition between slides 5 and 6).

Unfortunately the classical greek – modern english translation is not 100% accurate. Historians believe that Darius was referring to Alexander’s mother’s favourite hoplites, known to strike fear and uncertainty into his competitors.

Alexander was very widely read. Under the tutelage of Aristotle, Alexander developed a passion for business, marketing and management literature. The above slide seems to indicate Alexander’s go-to-market strategies were influenced by the very influential “Crossing the Hot Gates”, by Herodotus.

So, what did we learn from all of this?

• wikipedia can be a wonderful research tool, but it is quite easy to end up down a rabbit hole of unintended information.
• late night blogging does not yield very informative posts
• Used effectively, PowerPoint is a fantastic decision support system!

If you would like to see some more interesting business plan templates, check out Office Online.