SPECIAL KINDS OF DSS

SPECIAL KINDS OF DSS
Although all DSS are designed to tackle fairly specific types of problems, there are a number of recognized subcategories of DSS. Among them group decision support systems (GDSS) and executive information systems (EIS). At times these can be hard to distinguish from a "conventional" DSS, but both continue to enjoy solid backing in corporations and the separate terminology persists.

GROUP DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS.
As the name implies, GDSS are used to assist groups of decision makers who have common or overlapping responsibilities, such as executive committees, task forces, and work teams. Some of these tools are designed to be used directly when the group is convened. One example is tallying and processing group member preferences, and then presenting output for the participants to discuss. In other cases the group may never meet, but a centralized system is available to each member for common tasks they perform, such as financial monitoring and reporting.

EXECUTIVE INFORMATION SYSTEMS.
EISs are suites of data analysis tools that are meant to be applied to a company's most critical financial and performance data. In large organizations, usually this means the EIS has the ability to pull and manipulate data—increasingly in real time instead of waiting days or weeks for the most recent data—on multiple corporate systems. EISs enjoyed a resurgence in the 1990s in part because of widespread management interest in activity-based costing, data warehousing, and enterprise resource planning systems. Software advances have also made EISs less costly and more powerful. Many of the latest systems are run on client/server technology using a Web browser.