Week 5 Project
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Examples of DSS Applications—Part 1
Some of the many examples of DSS applications are:
Asset utilization: Parkway Corporation, Philadelphia, manages 100 garages and 30,000 parking spaces in East Coast cities from Jacksonville, Florida to Toronto, Canada. Their new DSS system enables Parkway to analyze revenue by type of garage, rate structure, duration of stay, utilization rates, and overtime costs. This enables managers to make better decisions on garage space allocation and pricing. Parkway can also identify its most pro�table customers and determine the best mix of daily, weekly, and monthly parking in a speci�c city. The DSS system has helped Parkway increase the percentage of �lled spaces per lot. In addition, Parkway increased revenue by nearly 10% and reduced overtime costs by 65%.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM): The U.S. division of The Body Shop International plc, the skin and hair product vendor from the U.K., wanted to boost the ef�ciency of its mail order business. The Body Shop acquired predictive analysis software tools from Sightward to improve the analysis of its database of web, store, and catalog customers. Predictive analysis used historical data, data mining techniques, and assumptions about future conditions to predict outcome. The Sightward tools helped the company identify customers who were more likely to make catalog purchases. Therefore it could build a more targeted and precise mailing list for the 120,000 copies of its fall 2001 catalog. Revenue per catalog increased from 10 to 20%.
Pricing decisions: ShopKo Stores Inc. in Greenbay, Wisconsin, has 162 ShopKo discount stores in midsize and large cities and 165 Pamida discount stores in small rural communities. Pricing decisions made at each store have a large impact on pro�ts. ShopKo uses Spotlight Markdown Optimizer software to determine the optimal price and time for marking down items. The software estimates a seasonal demand curve for each item. It also predicts the number of units that will sell each week at various prices by analyzing sales data of several years for similar items. ShopKo often marked down items 3 or 4 times before using this software. It now makes 1 or 2 markdowns to sell all items.