Decision Support Sciences (DSS) is a marketing-science-based consultancy founded in 1990. Our central mandate is to deliver BOTH higher short-term profitability AND sustained competitive advantage for our clients. Two things, however, differentiate us from other firms:

First, to achieve BOTH these goals we listened to our clients.  They told us a mouthful!  Traditional market consulting was, in their words, "too often wrong...too costly...too infrequent...and too proprietary."  Our clients wanted world-class insight...but done LEAN;  cheaper, better, continuously...and theirs.

Second, this called for a new category of developing critical strategic insight - a category we term DECISION SUPPORT ENABLEMENT (DSE).  In short DSE addresses the nine core business issues that every firm must address to achieve sustained competitive advantage - but DSE achieves that advantage in a wholly re-engineered way. Our method? The DSS Design Cycle (see below). The result?  For each of these nine business issues we deliver world class insight done LEAN  (cheaper, better, continuously and yours. )

The benefits of  Decision Support Enablement?

• You get the same world-class decision support platforms and protocols that we have developed and licensed to the world's largest strategic consulting companies.  These are the same platforms and protocols that have been used in over 40 countries worldwide.
• You get it delivered your way - as consulting, platforms, or software.
• You get it priced your way - right-sized to your needs.  On average a DSE engagement costs only 30% as much as traditional consulting.
• You get it deployed your way - with your people. Or ours. Or both.  It's your call.

The end game?  Advanced, fact-based marketing insight... that IS better.  Because we listened.

What we do is simple to describe.  Business strategists recognize that firms must address NINE core business issues to achieve sustained competitive advantage;  innovation, positioning, product design, product line optimization, new customer acquisition/prospecting, customer satisfaction, predictive analytics, and market segmentation.  For each of these nine core business issues Decision Support Sciences has developed industry-leading consulting protocols, decisioning platforms, and decision support-based software.

Our decision support protocols (approaches), platforms, and software are outcomes of the DSS design cycle.  That continuous improvement cycle began 25 years ago....and continues today.  It has three steps:

First, we identify the LIMITATIONS of the conventional approaches used to address these eight core business issues.  Our primary tool was (and is) root cause analysis (RCA.) RCA is a principled, formal, sequential, iterative approach that finds the most critical root causes that block break-out business performance and sustained competitive advantage.

Second, for each of the limitations identified above, we identified the smallest number of most critical CHANGE STATES that eliminated those root causes. The most critical differentiation of our approach? For each root cause we a) scanned the applied and theoretical mathematical literature and b) developed decision support systems that "backfill" critical missing data AND analyze that data four ways (descriptively, inferentially, predictively, and causally.)

Third, we recognized that clients differ in their appetites and budgets. Accordingly, we re-engineered how those solutions were delivered. You get the same eight core business issues but delivered YOUR way;  as consulting (we do most of the work), decisioning platforms (we partner together) or decisioning software (you do most of the work.)  Or any combination.

Eight solutions.  Three deployment modes.  Three pricing tiers.

It's your call. Like it should have been all along.

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• Performed more multi-business line product line re-engineering engagements for top twenty banks than any other strategy firm worldwide. (1992-Present).
• Performed the largest retail segmentation to date in the financial service industry.
• Developed the mathematics and theory behind buyer value segmentation (BVS).  BVS resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars of increased revenue for leading banks.
• Developed the industry's leading value-based measurement approach: combining the benefits of discrete choice and partial profile conjoint analysis.
• Collected more value based (discrete choice/conjoint) data on banking customers than any other research firm in the last decade.
• Developed the industry's only approach to outcome-based customer satisfaction which links CS directly to profitability. (Customer Value Maximization).
• Developed the first automated and distributed datamining software yielding up to 50% more sales capture than standard data mining approaches.
• Designed and implemented Attitudinal Imputation Modeling (AIM), the industry's highest performing approach to adding attitudes and economic capacity to retail datamarts.
• Implemented the Consumer Insights component of Lean Transformation in Healthcare.
• Developed the Competitive Advantage Solver Suite - five decision support tools enabling firms to in-source positioning, cross-sell, up-sell, market segmentation initiatives.

While DSS has executed extensive engagements in healthcare, and retail our work has garnered attention in the financial services industry press.  Some examples include the following:

Our associates are leading professionals worldwide (e.g. project managers, datamart analysts, statisticians, programmers, and fieldwork professionals) who average over 20 years experience in their fields. DSS associates provide best-in-class project staffing without diluting our primary focus on developing leading edge consulting, platforms and software.

We have performed advanced consulting or deployed advanced decision support platforms at dozens of firms - most of them in the Fortune 500. A subset of these firms include:

We have signed technology agreements, alliance partnerships or non-disclosure agreements (in advance of such partnerships) with nineteen leading consulting, marketing or technology firms.  Here are some of those firms: