Usually managers are unable to do anything directly with this information. Analysing the information can be a slow and tedious process requiring numerous manual calculations. A DSS allows managers to take information from a MIS and build complex business models. Instead, by providing a modelling capability it gives managers the ability to explore new and different business scenarios and it provides new insights into business problems. Comshare describe Prism as a multi-dimensional business modelling product .
Prism is designed for large, complex, corporate, business applications.
It is designed to allow organisations to model a business problem and to analyse the problem from a number of different angles. The primary interface window is very similar to a conventional spreadsheet, with rows and columns intersecting to form cells. When first attempting to build a model using Prism, it is difficult to see the advantages over a conventional spreadsheet and it may even appear inferior. This is the type of application in which Prism excels and is the reason why many large corporate organisations are willing to pay a substantial amount of money to use Prism. What Prism is Not Labelling Prism as a DSS is often taken to infer that it is a tool designed for mathematical and statistical operations.