One of the first books to probe the latest direction in computing technology, Thierauf's and Hoctor's innovative text explores ways in which smart business systems can help pick the best, most optimal or near-optimal solutions from among hundreds, even thousands of possibilities that threaten to swamp organizational decision makers daily. Authors make clear that while past information systems have focused on generating information that is helpful in the production of knowledge over time, smart business systems, utilizing optimizing techniques, can do it quickly, more efficiently, and in ways that can raise organizations to higher levels of competitiveness. Well-illustrated with examples and discussions of typical applications in such areas as strategic planning, marketing, manufacturing, and accounting, the book will help managers at all levels tie their organization's critical success factors into its key performance indicators and financial ratios. The result is a win-win situation within your company's complex of competing needs and goals, and a way to produce directly and immediately measurable benefits on the bottom line.

The book is designed for company managers and other decision makers and for information systems professionals. It provides understanding of one of the most important developments in systems-decision making, and how these smart business systems are constructed. It is also suitable in an academic environment, specifically in undergraduate and graduate courses that cover the fundamentals of smart business systems, and which give special emphasis to optimization models. The authors explain that enterprise resource planning and supply-chain management vendors include optimization algorithms in their products and that their book will make software optimization more accessible to developers of business systems. Although optimization is undoubtedly a complicated subject, Thierauf and Hoctor go a long way toward simplifying it. In doing so, they enhance its value as an important tool for decision makers in almost all organizational capacities.

ROBERT J. THIERAUF is Professor Emeritus of Information Systems, Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio. Formerly a staff accountant and consultant at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, he has written extensively on a wide range of topics in management, information systems, and operations research.

JAMES J. HOCTOR is an Information Systems Manager at the Cincinnati headquarters of Kroger Company and Adjunct Professor of Information Systems at Xavier University.