3.1. Key Features
In order to provide the most crucial information in a usable format, which can be effectively accessed by managers. The Executive Information System, "The Pilot Suite Software (PSS)" should have the following four key features: critical success factors, information resources, drill-down capability and ease of use (as shown in figure).
Critical success factors
- BSA executives always find themselves suffering from information overload. To solve the problem, PSS has designed to provide related information for the critical success factors of the organization. As a result, executives can concentrate on the relevant important information, thus, this saves them a lot of time.
- In the airline industry, critical success factors such as sales, cost, profits are substantial. BSA executives can review the sales and market analysis and evaluate the revenue trends in the PSS, which provide the information for these critical success factors. The executives can use these information to run the business more efficiently and effectively.
Information resources
- All the information needed are generated from both internal and external resources. Blue Sky Airlines have good Oracle DBMS and email systems to support the internal information needs of PSS. For example, the sales and cost data, budgets and forecasts, etc are assessed in the Administration Database which interacts with the other systems in the company. Other documents include analyzing reports, meeting reports and email information are also available.
- External information is available via Internet such as useful information from government and public organizations. For instance, interest rate from Reserve Bank of Australia at www.rba.gov.au, traffic statistic from Australian Bureau of Statistics at www.abs.gov.au, and financial information from Treasury of Australia at www.treasury.gov.au and etc can be easily assessed through the respective website. Besides, reports, graphics and other multimedia files can be obtained from newsagents, suppliers and etc.
- It is recommended to establish a special data warehouse for PSS. Blue Sly Airlines is able to build a LAN-based data warehouses using the existing client/server technology. The data warehouse contains read嚙碾only snapshots of host data that are periodically refreshed. The use of the client/server technology minimizes network traffic and provides more support capabilities and security liability.
Drill-down capability
- Drill down capability is crucial because it helps executives to find the root of the problems by retrieve displays of information quickly at lower levels of details in areas of particular interest to them. For instance, executives can retrieve the detail information from Booking and Ticketing Database, Flight and Schedule Control Database and Fleet Maintenance Scheduling Database, or by sending email to the managers in regional offices to find the real situation of problems.
Ease of use
- Ease of use plays an important role for the success of PSS. It is mainly due to the following reasons:
- First, many executives are not specialised with complex computer functions. They will avoid using computers because complex functions of some applications make them feel uncomfortable.
- Second, executives are very busy, thus, they want to spend as little time as possible getting useful information. A good EIS should encourage them to use more extensively.
- The EIS has been designed by using various types of user/system interface, such as the graphical user interface (GUI) has been well accepted. Besides, pull-down menus, context-sensitive help, multimedia and voice input/output can enhance the ease of using an EIS by the executives.
