TCS chief executive officer S Ramadorai told The Finanical Express on Tuesday that these solutions have become critical to most businesses especially in increasingly competitive markets. TCS has three years experience and expertise in offering DSS in 20 overseas projects to fast moving consumer goods companies, banks, financial institutions, white-goods companies, consumer-finance companies and manufacturing units.

Ramadorai, after addressing a seminar on "Decision support solutions- A business perspective," said, DSS can help organise and analyse the barrage of data to understand customers better and reduce decisions based on `intuition'. He informed that DSS will be made applicable in sales information, compensation planning, customer information, credit card management andrisk management.

TCS marketing head of computer data warehousing group Harish Menon said that it will organise similar seminars in Delhi, Chennai, Calcutta, Bangalore and Hyderabd till February next year in a bid to create awareness among domestic companies about DSS.

Menon said the process of integrating enterprise-wide corporate data into a single repository for decision support was fast emerging as a key component of corporate strategy. TCS' data warehousing services include high level warehousing strategy consulting, data extraction, data warehouse design and development and front-end on-line analytical processing (Olap) tool recommendation and implementation.

Olap is a category of software technology that enables analysts, managers and executives to gain insight into date through fast, consistent, interactive access to a wide variety of possible view of information. Olap is implemented in a multi-user client/server mode and offers consistently rapid response to queries, regardless of database sizeand complexity.

Menon said that data mining which is a critical component of businesses with large information requirements includes visualisation, classification, carrying out pilot projects and building prototypes along with business domain experts.

He said that no DSS can meet all information needs of a user and a full support from the user is required to effectively use a DSS. Usage level of DSS will grow with time as penetration is still low at senior management levels.

On customer relation management, TCS corporate transformation group head Subbu Iyer said a switch from enterprise centric business models to customer centric business models is mandating an external process view. Increasing global competition and the emergence of the global logistics network is forcing some enterprises to band together to compete more effectively.