In order to facilitate accurate decision making, it is desirable to be able to consider a maximum amount of available information in formulating a decision. Maximizing the amount of available information, however, often increases the difficulty of the decision making process, thereby reducing the accuracy of the corresponding decision. This is because the amount of information to be presented, assimilated, and considered in the making of business decisions can be significant in light of the current information age. Therefore, it is desirable to maximize the information presented to a decision maker while presenting the information in such a way as to be readily understood by the decision maker.
One approach to presenting information is to present raw information or statistics to a decision maker. This approach is generally not preferred because a large amount of time is expended by the decision maker in assimilating and understanding the information. Furthermore, the decision maker may not have the training or experience to correctly analyze the information.
Another frequently used approach for presenting information is to organize the material for presentation using graphs and charts compiled from the information. Many different forms of graphs and charts have typically been used, depending on the type of information to be presented. This approach can work well if the information is the type that is easily organized in graph or chart form. Again, however, information presented in graphs and charts can be difficult for the decision maker to assimilate, particularly when information relevant to one event must be compared with information relevant to other events.
Often, when there is a need to compare information from numerous events or transactions, there is a requirement to look at the historical statistics of the transactions. When the historical statistics of the transaction are relevant, concurrent presentation of historical data of the same type and format as the current data is required. It becomes extremely difficult to display historical data concurrently with current data in the same format on the same display using traditional graphs and charts. One reason for this difficulty is the limited space available on typical charts and graphs. In considering the limited space, a characteristic of the current transactional data must be deleted to allow room for each relevant historical characteristic that is displayed. This is especially true in the areas of business transactions, customer information support, and sales where there are large amounts of relevant data for each event, and historical event data are critical to efficient decision making by sales and marketing personnel.
Therefore, it is desirable for everyone in an organization, from the sales and support personnel to the chief executive officer, to be able to take a quick look at significant transaction data and make an efficient evaluation and determination as to the best potential business prospects to pursue or the most serious support problems to fix. Consequently, it is desirable to have an information presentation scheme to increase the efficient presentation of information in the general area of customer information management systems and contact management.
Another problem faced by many organizations in the current information age is that large amounts of information are frequently available regarding business transactions. However, as the members of the organization are mobile, particularly in a sales organization, it becomes problematic to get such large amounts of information into the hands of the individuals that need to act on the information. Furthermore, it becomes difficult to provide for communication among members of the organization, communication that improves the effectiveness of the organization and the personnel. It is equally as difficult to provide for communication among members of the organization and clients of the organization, something upon which survival of the organization may depend. Consequently, it is desirable to have an information provision scheme that is accessible by personnel from a number of locations.