Knowledge-based decision support system for competitive software audit

There is a growing trend in the use of the knowledge-based techniques in business and marketing decision making. Nevertheless a few investigations on the topic of marketing decision support in software industry have been reported. The goal of the present paper is to gain inside the development of a knowledge-based system for decision support in a competitive software business environment. Analysing the company's decision structure we derive a procedure for a competitive software audit and determine the use cases. A general architecture of a knowledge-based decision support system is proposed. Object modeling and problem solving methods are briefly discussed. The solution of two different decision making problems is illustrated by proper case studies.