1. Explain how Talon helps Harley Davidson employees improve their decision making capabilities
Talon is Harley-Davidson’s proprietary dealer management system. Talon handles inventory, vehicle registration, warranties, and point-of-sale transactions for all of Harley-Davidson’s dealerships. The system helps improve decision-making capabilities by offering an enterprise wide view of operations, sales, and expenses. The system automatically generates part orders, taking much of the guesswork out of replenishment. Most significantly, the system allows the company to review and analyze information across its global organization giving it a 360-degree view into enterprise wide information that supports strategic goal setting and decision making throughout all levels of the organization.
2. Identify a few key metrics a Harley Davidson marketing executive might want to monitor on a digital dashboard.
An executive information system (EIS) is a specialized DSS that supports senior level executives within the organization. A digital dashboard integrates information from multiple components and presents it in a unified display. A digital dashboard is a form of EIS. Harley-Davidson could help its executives gain access to greater amounts and details of enterprise wide information through a digital dashboard. According to Nucleus Research, there is a direct correlation between use of digital dashboards and a companies’ return on investment (ROI), hence Harley-Davidson could increase its ROI through a digital dashboard running on an EIS. Key metrics could include:
* Best-selling product
* Worst selling product
* Date of highest sales per month
* Date of worst sales per month
* Correlation between product sales
* Online orders verses in-store purchases
* Sales by region
* Sales by season
3. How can Harley Davidson benefit from using decision support systems and