Decision Analysis Tools

Initially researched by Beth Berns, Leah Homeister, Jason Sadler

This page assists in identifying and finding appropriate decision analysis tools.

Decision Analysis tools - DA tools help decision makers decompose and structure problems. The aim of these tools is to help a user apply models like decision trees, multi-attribute utility models, bayesian models, Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), etc. to find the probability and expected cost of different outcomes.

Decision Analysis Tools:

ANALYTICA www.lumina.com. Vendor: Lumina Decision Systems Product Description:Analytica is a visual software tool for creating, analyzing, and communicating quantitative business models. Analytica takes you beyond the spreadsheet, making it easy and fast to: (1) Communicate the essential qualitative structure of your models with the graphical clarity of influence diagrams. (2) Scale up your models to handle the multidimensional problems of the real world with power and ease using Intelligent Arrays. (3) Manage risk and uncertainty using efficient Monte Carlo simulation.
Demo? YES
Evaluation: Analytica brings clarity and power to business modeling.
E-mail: info@lumina.com Phone: (408) 354-1841

BestChoice3 www.logic-gem.com/bc.htm. Vendor: Logic Technologies. Product Description: BestChoice3 is a decision support system tool that utilizes a highly complex scientific method to make decisions. One of the keys to BestChoice3 is the ease with which someone can formulate the problem by simply and methodically inputting the choices and criteria, and arrive at a solution quickly and painlessly. Besides the mathematical formula that computes the best choice, an important aspect to BestChoice3 is paired selections. When the basic elements of a problem have been plugged in, BestChoice3 breaks down the problem into a series of paired comparisons where each person involved in making the decision will always pick the better of two choices. It is truly amazing how simple a problem can be when broken down to pick the better of two choices.
Demo? Yes
Evaluation: Rave Reviews, multiple uses from business to family decisions, and easy to use-good tool for the person who doesn't like to read the manual. BestChoice3 uses Paired Preferences to assist you in breaking down complex decisions into a series of small manageable decisions. A very easy yet powerful Decision Support System.
E-mail: webmaster@logic-gem.com. Phone: (800) 776-3818

Criterium DecisionPlus (CDP) www.infoharvest.com Vendor: Info Harvest. Product Description: Criterium DecisionPlus (CDP) is used by government and business managers to facilitate consensus building and structure the decision process for issues involving multiple criteria and stake holders, and to present and explain those decisions to constituents. It is also used by consultants to analyze decisions and explain those decisions to their clients, and by technical sales representatives to present complex tradeoff decisions between different technical solutions.
Demo? Yes
Evaluation: The leading 32-bit Windows® decision manager that helps you move quickly to a decision and successfully promote your recommendations.
Email: info@infoharvest.com Phone: 1-800-869-7150 Fax: 1-206-264-8991

DATA www.treeage.com. Vendor: Tree Age Software Inc. Product Description: Decision Analysis by TreeAge (DATA) is used by decision makers in a wide range of business and industrial sectors including: insurance, banking, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, health care, engineering, communication, aerospace, energy production and conservation, consulting, and high-tech. DATA is also being used at leading business schools in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Japan. Decision Analysis by TreeAge (DATATM) provides a systematic methodology and framework for understanding a problem, identifying available options, evaluating options in the context of associated uncertainties, and developing strategies which maximize the likelihood of success while minimizing unacceptable levels of risk.
Demo? Yes
Evaluation: DATA is used in over half the top Fortune 20 companies. Ease of use and analytical power make this a winner.
Email: General: info@treeage.com, Sales: sales@treeage.com, Support: techsup@treeage.com
Phone: 413-458-0104, or 888-TREEAGE (US only)

Determinator www.daltondialogic.com. Vendor: Dalton Dialogic, Inc. Product Description: Helps you ensure that every important decision you make is the best possible decision possible. It's a powerful guide leading you through seven easy steps to better decisions. The Expert Advisor will analyze your decision and suggest ways to improve it, and you can print reports of all steps of the program for your records or presentations.
Demo? Yes - goes through steps explaining the process
Evaluation: Helpful in creating different ideas and suggestions. It expanded a person's options and stimulates more ideas.
E-mail: piob@cyg.net Phone: (416) 469-5665

DPL www.adainc.com. Vendor: Applied Decision Analysis, Inc Product Description: Developed to meet the requirements of decision makers in business and government. Offers two major decision-making tools, influence diagrams and decision trees that assist in structuring complete and focused analysis.
Demo? Yes - if you call (888) 926-9251, they will send you one. However, not yet available through the web site
Evaluation: Good structuring device; adds structure to the decision-making process. A problem with this is that a person using the device must make sure they know exactly what the diagrams and charts mean in order for it to be useful.
E-mail: dplinfo@adainc.com Phone: (888) 926-9251

ERGO www.arlingsoft.com. Vendor: Arlington Software. Product Description: It encompasses a sophisticated suite of tools and technologies that support all dimensions of organizational and individual decision-making. The patent pending pattern recognition techniques and advanced 3-D visualization features enable users to make effective decisions based on human judgement as well as science, making it the most powerful decision making tool available.
Demo? Yes-can do it online or can download.
Evaluation: A good way to view decisions. It provides a multidimensional view to decisions and makes decisions more self evident.
E-mail: decision-request@arlingsoft.com (subscribe to mailing list), pr@arlingsoft.com (public relations and media contact), tech@arlingsoft.com (technical support), sales@arlingsoft.com (sales) Phone: (613) 746-1140

Ethos System www.taknosys.com. Vendor: Taknosys Software Corporation. Product Description: Provides a framework that assists the decision-maker in approaching, analyzing and solving the problem. It assists in analysis and suggests possible solutions that arise from analysis. It allows the user to maintain the utmost control of the judgements and considerations that must be made during the decision making process. It brings advanced decision-making technology to the commercial software and consultation markets.
Demo? No
Evaluation: Ethos provides a good way to analyze ethical problems and situations. It is very flexible and structured, therefore, analysis is more convenient and consistent.
E-mail: info@taknosys.com Phone: (847) 550-8038

Judgment Maker www.electriciti.com/~fuzzyweb Vendor: Fuzzy Logic Inc. Product Description: The Judgment Maker helps you make decisions by breaking the decision scenario into small parts that you can focus on and input easily. It then uses theoretically optimal methods of combining the scenario pieces into a global interrelated whole with an indication as to which alternative is the best within the constraints and goals of the decision scenario. The assumption in this product is that a judgment consists of a known here and now (the constraints) , a hoped for future there and then (the goals) and various paths (the alternatives) for getting from the present here and now to the future there and then. The problem is then the selection of the path (alternative) that optimally supports the present constraints and the future goals. Making a Judgment when faced with several alternatives, which initially appear equally good or desirable, can be a time consuming and often painful process. This program overcomes the (human) memory and processor limitations by allowing the decision maker to selectively evaluate small amounts of the necessary information at any one time (i.e., the fuzzy values of goal and constraint satisfaction and simple, one-at-a-time paired comparisons). Then, when it becomes necessary to evaluate all the pertinent data, the computer can be utilized to perform the decision task in a straight forward manner.
Demo? yes
Evaluation: Download for demo was difficult to accomplish and slow. Not impressed.
E-mail: fuzzyli@cts.com Phone: (619)456-2634 Ph. & FAX

Matrix Cognition at matrixcognition.com Vendor:Frenster Associates Product Description: As a horizontal decision-making system equipped with interactive parallel thinking and artificial intelligence capabilities, Matrix Cognition^TM takes a 100% user-driven approach to problem-solving. It begins each analysis by deeply questioning the user about the choices within each dimension. After capturing this user information, the system mathematically weighs all the responses to calculate the optimal decision, for either business or personal decisions.
Demo? No
Evaluation: Hard to formulate an opinion as not much information provided and no demo to try the process out.
E-mail: matcog@ix.netcom.com, Phone: 650/367-6483; FAX: 650/364-1773

TreePlan at www.treeplan.com Vendor: Decision Support Services Product Description: TreePlan for Excel helps you build decision tree diagrams in Excel worksheet using dialog boxes. The decision trees include formulas for summing cash flows to obtain outcome values and for calculating rollback values for determining optimal strategy.
Demo? Yes - can download and use in Excel.

E-mail: decision@compuserve.com (publisher), middleton@usfca.edu (author - Mike Middleton)
Phone: 415-673-6217