Competitive intelligence for SMEs: a web-based decision support system

The proposed architecture will enable SMEs to scrutinise their business environment, extract actionable meaning from structured and unstructured information and social interaction patterns and finally provide flexible, easy to use and affordable CI decision support services assisting in their strategic planning process.

Abstract

The development of decision support systems facilitating competitive intelligence (CI) for SMEs is a rather under-explored research area. That is exactly where this paper sets its vision and objectives by aiming to provide the academic and business community with an innovative concept, a proposed architecture and a sample walkthrough scenario capable of supporting SMEs in their daily struggle to become more intelligent and thus more competitive. Our proposed architecture, when implemented, will enable SMEs to scrutinise their business environment, extract actionable meaning from structured and unstructured information and social interaction patterns and finally provide flexible, easy to use and affordable CI decision support services assisting in their strategic planning process. The main innovative concept of our proposal lies on the model-driven decision support engine, which will use computed market trends and supplier/customers-related forecasted parameters in order to populate advanced supply chain management models. The model solvers using optimisation techniques or simulation processes will be able to provide optimal solutions to the decision making needs of SMEs.