All of the modules are operated satisfactorily which support BSA to grow reputably by 10% growth every year. This situation allows management to bring forward their expansion plans in next year.

Management of BSA realized that instead of having efficient operational system, it is substantial to increase the quality of managerial information for positioning BSA in today’s competitive market place. This information will be used for determining the future of the business and will be provided adequate data for decision making.

Regarding to organize the new system, Management plan to categorize the system into 3 broad areas:

1. Marketing Decision Support System (MDSS)

It is used for marketing planning and determine the sales target of the flight services in order to achieve the following objectives:

a.1. Whether to expand or contract existing flights

a.2. Determine the fare structures for private and corporate services

a.3. Decide when to purchase a new aircraft

2. Cash Management Decision Support System (CMDSS)

It is designed to support decision involved in the financial planning and budgeting and to achieve the following objectives:

b.1. Decide what to do with surplus funds in both short term and long term

b.2. Determine the yearly budget/sales forecasts

3. Human Resources Decision Support System (HRDSS)

BSA tried to outsource available decision support systems and executive information systems to address these management needs.

After considering several available decision support systems in website, Management found two software system which offer similar function with what they need. The first system, which called Planet Forecasting System (PFS) is produced by Kiehl Hendrickson Group in Mineapolis, USA. The other system, which called PROS RM eDynamic Pricing and PROS RM eForecaster are produced by PROS Revenue Management (PRM) in Houston, USA.

PFS is powerful computer modeling system designed to simulate the results and impact of an airline’s current or proposed flight schedule. This program is able to collect and manipulate the massive inputs and then analyze complex worldwide flight networks.

By bringing together market traffic and revenues, industry-wide competitive services, and the details of the user’s own proposed schedule, PFS performs an extensive series of steps leading to output in spreadsheet format. Further options and assumptions can be modeled by the user, such as market growth, carrier preference factors, market share penalties, or aircraft size impact.

The ultimate goal for a forecasting system is to provide the user with a reliable and sophisticated toolset, easy data access and manipulation. PFS provides flexibility to customize each analysis and user-friendly output spreadsheet to meet these requirements.

It offers wide range of utilization, such as:

• New service forecasting

• Additional frequency forecasting

• Competitive intelligence

• Merger impact analysis

• Strike impact analysis

• Opportunity analysis

PROS Revenue Management is the world’s leader in revenue management science and the pioneer and dominant provider of yield management to an airline industry. The PROS missions are to maximize the revenue of each client using its software and to provide solutions such as how to forecast demand, optimize inventory, and provide dynamic pricing to maximize revenue.

PRM automatically applies several sophisticated statistical models to forecast future demand across each segment and then generates the seating allocation for the fare-mix that will achieve optimal revenue. It examines historical bookings to establish a rational pricing structure that best suit each market in airplane route network. Moreover, it also dynamically evaluate each booking request from any point-of-sale in the world and its revenue impact across airplane network.

Below is the table that compare key areas which are required by BSA and offered by PFS and PRM:

REQUIRED BY BSA	OFFERED BY PFS/PRM
Expansion of existing flights Determination of fare structures Decision for deciding purchase new aircraft Decision for investment Determination of budget/sales forecasts Resources management	Retiming, adding frequency of flight (PFS) Automatic fare-mix (PRM) Upgrade of equipment on existing flight Upgrade/downgrade airplane (PFS) Measuring viability of potential Alliances (PFS) Automatic forecast demand (PRM) Broad impact of schedule changes (PFS)

• By using the PFS, managers can assess internal sales data and sales trend of different routes in the Booking and Ticketing System so as to develop a sales forecast using the spreadsheet depicting which routes need to expand or contract.

• By gathering external information from websites, relationships are sought to perform the sales and market analysis and modeling. The spreadsheet tools are available to analyze alternative ways of allocating resources in the company and to perform what-if analysis on sales forecast.
• The sales and market analysis and modeling offers managers to develop the marketing strategy, such as to reallocate different flights to respective routes or to expand the routes in the developing market area. This can minimize the cost by reallocating the excess resources, accommodate the customer demands and increase the competitive power.
• Based on the internal information and compared to external information, the system provide information needed for planning the marketing and sales program, allow the manager to compare the effects of alternate plans in promotion, pricing and other variables in the forecasting equation.

• PRM can assess the data of flight fares of different routes in the Booking and Ticketing System, and external market data, such as flight fares of competitor, economic index and forecast via Internet. Based on the information, managers can produce a summary and analysis of the flight fares and determine the marketing strategy for the company, such as to increase flight fares or issue discount packages for certain routes or to place advertisement for promotion.
• Managers can develop a fare structure analysis showing the relationship of fares and sales using the spreadsheet. Variable of fares can be changed by making assumptions, such as discount are given to particular routes or fares are increased by certain percentages, then sales figure and revenue in the spreadsheet will be changed accordingly. By doing this, optimal fare structure and the best price strategy to gain the competitive power in the market could be achieved.
• Manager can use another modeling technique, i.e. goal seeking analysis to achieve the objective. He can set the target revenue for the company and change the variable; i.e. the price level in the model until the target revenue is achieved. Thus, the appropriate price strategy can be determined in order to achieve the goal.

• PFS can assess the data of flight maintenance from the Fleet Maintenance System, which help to determine when to replace the new flight. Besides, data of sales analysis and trend can be assessed from Booking and Ticketing System, which helps to plan the aircraft utilization and number of flights required for the various routes.
• External market data, such as cost of parts of flight and cost of new flights, can be assessed via Internet, and then managers can compare the inventory and repair cost of flights and the purchase cost of new flight.

• After the sales forecast and target inventory levels for parts of flights were determined, the data gathered can be put to analysis using the spreadsheet tools. The result, which shows in reports or graphics, helps to determine the optimal decision to replace or keep the existing flights.

• PFS using the spreadsheet application for analyzing the cashflow. The spreadsheet includes formulas that calculating expenses, profits and cash flow.
• The sales revenue and profit data can be assessed in the Booking and Ticketing System so as to derive the cash flow and surplus fund for the company.
• Based on the information, the manager can project different assumptions such as increase in interest rate, inflation rate, change in revenue and expenses and etc, in the cash flow and investment analysis. He could use the formulas in the spreadsheet to recalculate the return of investment, such as, return of investment (ROI), payback period in order to determine the optimal decision in cash flow management and investment opportunities.
• Spreadsheet can store the monthly results from prior months to current months. The results from prior months can be used as a reference to determine the best investment alternative.

• By using PRM, user can use data analysis system to prepare the yearly budget. For instance, an online budgeting system can be developed, and used to compare the current result of operation to the targeted budget and variance can be analyzed.
• The user can use the analysis information system such as time series analysis of historical data to provide sales estimate, sales analysis of present operations, and forecast the next period based on the past performance.
• Regression models can be used to prepare the sales forecast. The variables such as the promotion program, customers needs and etc can be added to the model, that help to explain the performance of the variable being forecasted.
• The above two methods allow to perform variation and flexible testing of alternative what-if situations.

• PFS can perform analysis based on the cost and expenses in various airport offices, and help the managers to make better decisions about resources reallocation and staff requirement for each airport office.

• Database access and modeling

• Communication among decision makers (Group DSS)

• Quality Assurance

• Adequate validation of input data, output printed on reports
• Adequate backup and recovery procedures