Developing a decision support system for business model design

Software vendors are increasingly offering e-services next to their software products. Consequently, the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) pricing model is increasingly being adopted. Herein, software is offered as a web-based service in exchange for a subscription fee. However, SaaS is more than just a new revenue model for the appropriation of customer value. The importance of the value network of service partners in the generation of customer value requires e-service providers in general and SaaS providers in specific to undertake business model (BM) design activities. A study was conducted in collaboration with a large enterprise software vendor to develop a decision support system (DSS) for supporting BM design decisions within an organizational context. In this paper, such a DSS is developed by using a design theory, which consists of a design process guided by several design methods. The outcome of the design process is a spreadsheet-based DSS that takes into account important BM evaluation criteria in performing market analysis, BM design and decision analysis around critical BM design issues. The execution of the design process led to insights on how the design process can be improved and formalized. The use of the spreadsheet-based DSS illustrated the importance of modularity in its construction. This modularity implicates, that if the DSS is decomposed into several independent sub-components, then sufficient usability of the DSS within an organizational context can be attained. This also implicates that the DSS should provide the ‘option’ to using specific DSS capabilities for decision support. This means that the use of specific capabilities should not be obligated and the capabilities should not be dependent on stringent information requirements.