Price decision support system for Cambodia

• Main Author: Bunton, Has
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 1999
• Subjects: Decision support systems; Management information systems; Consumer price indexes; Computer systems; Hardware Systems; Management Information Systems; Systems and Communications
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_masteral/1967
• Institution: De La Salle University

This study presents a nation-wide coverage of the Consumer Price Index (CPI). It designs the country's Price and CPI database. The study facilitates the analysis and forecasting price and CPI of the country, most required by planners, politicians, decision makers, businessmen, and researchers by providing the decision support capabilities of the proposed system. The new system is, therefore, capable of automating the CPI computation of the country and supporting decision making as well as economic planning and price monitoring. In the process of defining the countrywide CPI computer system, the country uses current CPI system for Phnom Phenh as its foundation of automating CPI computation and follows the four major steps of the system analysis and design methodology. These are the analysis of requirement and current problem identification, the requirement specification of the proposed system, the logical system specification, and the physical design. In the requirement analysis, the study carefully investigates the system in use and its environment. The identified requirements are then expressed as the detail system specifications and be the basis for logical design to build the proposed system. Graphing techniques, analyzing and forecasting methodologies are also identified in this phase. In the final step, the physical design, the defined data and processes are converted into a design that would run the target environment. Microsoft Access 97 is chosen as the platform of system implementation due to its availability, popularity and advantages. To prove the design and to show interfaces needed in the new system, the study develops the system's prototype that includes major computation and analysis features required in the new system. Price and CPI data from three provinces of the Philippines, namely: Cebu, Davao Sur, and Pangasinan, are arbitrarily chosen in testing the prototype.The study finds that two kinds of subsystems are required to handle the countrywide CPI computation and to integrate the country's CPI database. These are the Provincial Subsystem and the Central Subsystem. The provincial subsystem is responsible for capturing price data, doing provincial CPI computation and providing decision support in the respective province. The central subsystem, on the other hand, is responsible for gathering price data from all provinces, doing national level CPI computation and facilitating decision making for the country. The study concludes that the system design that deploys the well-accepted system analysis and design is efficient and reliable. The database design as the result of relational data analysis technique is sufficient and dependable. Even in the form of prototype, the system has already been appreciated by the price experts of the National Institute of Statistics (NIS). The prototype is able to convince that the design of the study is not only capable of automating the country's CPI computations but is also facilitating price-related decision making process.