An Architecture for Decision Support on Portfolio Design

Though organizations have more and more evolved into loosely knit structures and corporate alliances have therefore become central to most business models, only very few organizations systematically track the performance of their alliance portfolio. This paper is an exploratory paper aiming to present an architecture for decision support systems for the design of such a portfolio. In this paper we start with an introduction on the complexity of measuring portfolio performance. We will then advocate the use of simulation as an inquiring system best suited for the design of an alliance portfolio. Since the support we intend to provide is aimed at the actual operational business level, sincere challenges are faced for an underlying e-architecture. We describe such an architecture, and propose a transformation of decision support systems from stand-alone, office-alike packages to distributed well-interweaved services. This paper ends with the outline of a case on capital investment portfolio optimization. In this case we focus on the potential benefit we can make in choosing more advanced techniques for portfolio design.