Products
Frequently Asked Questions
Have a question that you don't see answered here? Call us at 302.529.1193 or e-mail us at Info@DataMachines.com. We'd be happy to answer your specific questions.
- Can Optsee® be used on all kinds of business and technical decisions?
- What kinds of teams use Optsee®?
- How can we quantify every part of a decision? What if we don't have all the necessary information?
- We're actually pretty good at making team decisions. How can Optsee® help us?
- Does Optsee® make the decision for us?
- Do you offer consulting services? How does a typical process work?
- How long does it take?
- What about choices involving variations or iterations of the same product or processes?
1. Can Optsee® be used on all kinds of business and technical decisions?
Yes. You can use Optsee® on virtually any decision that involves multiple choices. You'll find Optsee® particularly valuable for management team decisions that require consideration of multiple attributes. Some examples include selecting new development projects, choosing the best combination of product design features, contractor or site selection, personnel selection, budget choices, and capital purchase decisions.
2. What kind of teams can use Optsee®?
Many kinds of teams such as Senior Managers working to make strategic business decisions, Engineers and Project Teams selecting product design features, Search Committees selecting from a pool of qualified candidates, Quality Control Teams selecting contract manufacturers, and Special Task Force Teams charged with business reengineering or site selection decisions just to name a few.
3. How can we quantify every part of a decision? What if we don't have all the necessary information?
The Optsee® application works using a step-by-step process that begins with quantification and ends with an optimized decision. Your business and technical experts provide the decision model inputs. Based on those inputs, you'll know what information that is critical to the decision-making process. If you don't have all the information, then Optsee® can still help you model the decision using only the available information, and then quickly help you optimize the decision when the missing information becomes available.
4. We're actually pretty good at making team decisions. How could Optsee® help us?
It's great that you're good at making team decisions. Optsee® can help you become even better by providing a technology and methodology for modeling and capturing the process that you're currently using so that you'll be able to work faster, share your system with other teams, and record the process. It will also give you another model with which to compare your current results.
5. Does Optsee® make the decision for us?
Yes and no. You'll get an optimized decision model based on your values and choice attributes. You can quickly and easily fine-tune this model (by shifting resources, for example) to examine different portfolios. You can then choose to use the optimized Optsee® model, or make different choices. But we're confident that you'll find your optimized Optsee® model so compelling, logical and powerful that you'll use the optimized decision model.
6. Do you offer consulting services? How does a typical process work?
Yes, we can help facilitate your decision process using the Optsee® technology and methodology. Each project generally is performed in four (4) separate phases:
Phase 1: Assessment and Proposal: We provide a complete and detailed Proposal on the project, including objectives, scope, approach, organization, cost, timing, and deliverables
Phase 2: Quantification: Kick-off meeting with thought leaders, assignments and responsibilities, data gathering including choice information, attribute determination and ranking, and database compilation.
Phase 3: Visualization: A detailed model containing the Optsee® visual decision analyses with commentary and suggestions for optimization. We can also prepare brief individual analyses for individual team members.
Phase 4: Optimization: One or two meetings to further refine and optimize the decision model. Following those meetings, we provide a detailed report containing the optimized model.
The Optsee® process is designed to maximize the efficient use of your time in relation to the decision-making process. You'll find the entire step-by-step process to be clear, focused, and easy to understand. The time involved for moving through the process from beginning to end can be as little as one day for a simple decision-facilitation and modeling exercise to more days for more complex problems involving multiple decision-makers, complex data-gathering and numerous choices. But you'll know at each step of the way where you are in the process, and how long it will take to reach the end. Plus, you'll be able to concentrate on your business during the process, and not worry about the system itself. Finally, once you have developed an initial optimized model, future decisions involving the same decision-model can be re-optimized much much faster.
8. What about choices involving variations or iterations of the same product or processes?
Optsee® is terrific at helping you visualize and choose from multiple iterations of the same product or process. For example, if you wanted to select the best bundle of products to market together or the best set of design features for a new product, Optsee® would let you quickly model multiple combinations of each mix so that you could select the best choices.