AutoDM

Where Human Intelligence meets Technology

 “Being a successful business owner or manager, or indeed successful in your whole life, is based on making successful decisions”

Making decisions is something we do everyday. In fact, every rational act is the result of a decision. Of course, many of our decisions have relatively little or no effect on our lives. But there are decisions of great importance and which have both long and short-term consequences on us.

The quality of our decisions depends on two factors:

• The availability of information relating to the decision, and

• The quality of our judgment

If relevant information is available, the decision making process is easier. But the difficulty increases when there is little or no information. In this case we have to rely more and more on our own judgment, and in this event, the quality of our judgment depends to a large extent on the processing capacity of our brains. The processing capacity of human brain is limited. That is why we need calculators and computers to solve complex problems.

The problem with decision making is that it is manly a personal process, often factors outside influence a decision, sometimes choices are not correctly evaluated and, within a business there will be a variation in the final decision from person to person, resulting in wasted money and resources, problems and difficulties.

What is needed is something which helps the decision maker to focus accurately on the best choice and decision criteria, relate them to each other, and arrive at the best option.

For some years, it has been possible to apply quite advanced mathematics to such decision making process, but in every day terms this was beyond the typical business owner and manager … until now!

“Today it is possible to use a new software package to help and support your decision making and bring to it a new approach, one which is logical, consistent, safe and successful.”

Using a carefully researched scientific process, AutoDM (Auto Decision Maker) evaluates compares and computes your choices and criteria to reach a clear and accurate decision. At each stage of this process, your choices are measured for consistency and shown graphically on the screen … any misjudgements are immediately apparent and can be corrected.

Developed for the corporate and business user, colleges and universities, this version offers a very powerful six-level decision making structure.

Who should use AutoDM?

Well virtually anyone in a decision making role … buying, recruitment, sales, engineering, production, research and development, local authorities, planning, consultancy, administration, accounts, professional services, distribution, transport, marketing, general management, training, etc. It costs only $149. If you require a site licence please contact us for details.

“Just think about the decisions you made yesterday. The importance of many of them, the money and resources involved, the potential risks and the many outside factors which probably and often wrongly, influenced you. Then think how much easier, safer, and more successful life can be using a valuable and powerful management tool like AutoDM.”

 

What is AutoDM?

AutoDM (Auto Decision Maker) is a decision-support system designed specifically to help individuals and groups enhance the quality of their decisions by bringing structure to their decision making process.

Auto AutoDM is a multi-criteria decision-support software tool based on the world’s most popular decision-making methodology: the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). With AutoDM you can identify the criteria and alternatives, and evaluate key trade-offs in a straightforward manner. It assists you in building a model for your decision, and then leads you in judging, via pairwise comparisons, the relative importance of the variables.

AutoDM provides a powerful approach to making complex multidimensional decisions in organisations. AutoDM uses state-of-the-art method based on Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MADM). It allows you to compare and prioritise the relative importance of the decision variables. AutoDM then synthesises your judgments to arrive at a conclusion and allows you to examine how changing the weighting of your criteria affects your outcome.

Using AutoDM

AutoDM is a dynamic decision support and performance management system that can be used for planning, development, consensus building, decision-making and evaluation.

Dr Thomas Saaty, the inventor of the AHP and author of over thirty books on the subject, said in his book (Fundamentals of Decision Making):

“Using AHP, we have predicted, with consistent success, the outcome of U.S. presidential elections, the results of sport contests and the winners of chess matches. Another recent example is the use of the AHP to predict the value of the dollar versus the yen, done in 1986. Not long before then, the dollar was worth 240 yen. We forecast, with the participation of knowledgeable colleagues, that it would hover around 139 yen over the following several months. It did, and it stayed near that level for many years. – (Fundamentals of Decision Making, p 6).

An IBM Report on AHP says: “AHP is an extraordinary powerful decision-making tool. It brings structure to decision making, yet it’s flexible…”. The AHP contributed to IBM producing the best-selling computer, the AS/400 that led to their winning the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award.

The AHP is used in Finland in power generation, in Sudan for transport planning, in Xerox Corporation in their strategic decision-making, in the US Department of Energy and the Department of Commerce for evaluating buildings and building systems.

AutoDM is a very flexible tool that has been used for a wide variety of decisions by a diverse range of professionals including Academics, Managers, Planners, Engineers, Civil Servants, Medical Professionals, Military personnel and other decision makers.

Applications

AutoDM can be successfully improving decision making in a very broad range of areas, including:

 

• Acquisition/Merger Decisions

• Benefit/Cost Analysis

• Consumer Choice

• Customer Satisfaction

• Economic Planning

• Education

• Energy

• Engineering Design

• Environmental Decision Making

• Financial and Investment Decisions

• Forecasting

• Government Policy

• Health and Safety

• Hiring and Evaluation

• Human Resources Development

• Legal Applications

• Location Problems

• Marketing Strategies

• Marketing Decisions

• Negotiation and Conflict Resolution

• Organisational Development

• Performance Evaluations

• Personal Applications

• Planning and Policy Decisions

• Politics

• Predicting Outcomes

• Recommending Policies

• New Product Development

• Project Management

• Proposal Evaluation

• Purchasing Decisions

• R&D Planning

• Recruitment and Selection

• Resource Allocation

• Risk Analysis

• Police and Security

• Science and Technology

• Site Selection or Relocation

• Strategic Planning

• Total Quality Management

• Business Process Re-engineering

• Transport Systems

 

Powerful Features

Powerful and easy-to-use, AutoDM provides you with an unparalleled set of features including:

 Main Features

• Rigorous Decision-Making algorithm

• Powerful Processing Engine.

•  Integration of both quantitative and qualitative information into your analysis.

• Powerful On-line Automatic Structure Editing.

• Automatic Mouse-driven Rating Capabilities.

• Breaks down decisions into manageable parts

• Dynamic Value Judgment showing Priority Vectors, Consistency with Graphics.

• Makes group consensus easy.

• Dynamic Simulation.

• Performance Analysis Capability.

• Comprehensive Reporting System.

 

Ease of Use

AutoDM makes the process of decision-making easy. It allows AutoDM to:

• Enter alternatives

• Enter the criteria or standards on which alternatives will be judged

• Enter your evaluation of each alternative on each criterion

• Enter your weighting or preference on each criterion.

 

Structuring Features

• Visual point-and-click approach to model building

• Visually organise a complicated model into a hierarchy of comprehensible and simple modules

• Visual approach with nodes, leaves and links showing relationships between model variables.

• Clearly displays the hierarchy structure, making it easier to report, audit and maintain.

• Display dynamically the prioritisation vector values and consistency measures at every step.

• Automatic links of attributes and alternatives.

• Definition sheet for attributes and alternatives.

• Display the numbers of Aggregate attributes, Basic Attributes and Total number of judgments.

• Show / Hide alternatives link lines.

•  Levels indicator

• Lock / Unlock facility

 

Rating Features

• Automatic generation of all decision matrices with lists of all items.

• Point-and-click pair comparison and automatic data entry

• Numerical, Graphical and semantic pair comparison preferences

• On line change of comparison wording.

• Colour coded grid for clear decision matrix

• Automatic change of matrix dimension.

• Dynamic report and display on inconsistency for every rating step.

• Automatic calculation of the utility score for each alternative, given a set of preference weightings

• Automatic recommendation of the best alternative, and listing of best choices in order

• Comprehensive reports including detailed information and easy-to-read graphics.

 

Analysis and Simulation Features

• Display bar charts with values of all attributes and alternatives

•  Increase or decrease the value of any attribute with dynamic change of other attributes and alternatives.

• Go to the original values at any time.

• Contribution graph of all attributes and alternatives with lists and values.

 

Reporting Features

• Summary results in matrix format for all priority vectors and consistencies.

• Comprehensive report generation for printing. Print the hierarchy, decision matrices, bar charts, contribution chart and summary table.

• Export to Excel with various reporting choices.

•  Full customisation of printed report.

 To download a free demo of AutoDM click here.