Integrating Expert Systems, Executive Information Systems, and Decision Support Systems

The term Executive Information System (EIS) was coined at MIT in the late 1970s. Hailed as a new technology (see Rockart and Treaty 1982). the concept has spread with growing momentum into hundreds of large corporations. A study conducted at MIT’s Center for Information Systems Research showed that about one third of the large U.S. corporations now have some kind of EIS installed or underway. The study (Rockart and DeLong 1986) also indicated that about SO percent of surveyed EIS were directly used by top executives (e.g., CEOs, CFOs). That is, about one of every six top executives in large cqporations is on-line with EIS. Several recent studies provide general descriptions of EIS, for example, see Brody (1988) and McNurlin ( 1987). Specific case studies are provided by Houdeshel and Watson ( 1987), Fedorowicz (1986), and in a special issue of Informrim Cenfer (1988). Lately, the concept of EIS has been related to DSS. For example, since 1986 The Institute of Management Sciences has incorporated in its DSS Conferences a special EIS track which has been especially popular with conference attendees (see El Sawy 1987 and Fedorowicz 1986). One dimension of the relationship between EIS and DSS is the integration of the two. When data analysis and other capabilities are added to an EIS, the resulting system is sometimes referred to as an Executive Support System (ESS) (see Rockart and DeLong 1988). When Ben Heineman was the CEO at Northwest Industries. the system he used was an EIS with an option to use Express-based decision support systems (Rockart and Treaty 1982). The purpose of this paper is to describe how to make ESS more useful or “intelligent” by adding expert systems (ES) capabilities to it. Specifically. the paper covers the following topics: