UL marketing management decision support system

Abstract

The title of this project is "UL marketing management decision support system" here referred to as UL-DSS. The system is designed to assist the sales and marketing managers III making more accurate and timely decisions supported by available data. In terms of functionality, the system is a web based database oriented application with PHP as the interface programming language. The system accepts input in form ofraw field data for analysis and eventual generation of output inform of reports for management. The raw data is gathered and fed in to the system on a continuous basis by the field sales representatives. The information collected relates to competitor activity, individual product performance, market share and customer service issues. At intervals of specified periods of time, the field sales representatives will feed current information into the system to reflect current occurrences in the market. For data analysis and processing purposes, SQL statements are used to retrieve specific informatior from the system in the required format. Such information may be time based, in which case it becomes useful in generation of reports that reflect patterns and trends that are important for decision making. Some of the mportant trends generated include price variations for different products or product categories over time, seasonal variation in sales volumes of certain products and product dominance in different regions. The system enables exporting of information from the underlying database into a Microsoft excel worksheet for further analysis and manipulation. It makes use of the chart generation capabilities in excel to enable the user come u p with more precise reports for management.