ABSTRACT
Continuous improvement programs (CIPs) came as a result of new challenges and changes that are facing organizations in the era of digital ecosystem. These changes include technological advances unprecedented rate, customers’ behavior as well as ethical and environmental awareness of the community issues. CIPs have become an important tool for these organizations, it also described as a systematic process actively seeking new improved ways of performing tasks. CIPs are being used by organizations all over the world in order to increase their profits in the short-term whilst maintaining these gains in the long-term and also making the organization more competitive by making the business more efficient and effective. The introduction of management information system (MIS) facilitate the processing of data into a useful informative report where managers can use for further decision-making purposes such as sales analysis, and product performing. Effective decision-making is difficult as the business environment is constantly changing; therefore in order to ease the decision-making process, the decision support system (DSS) has been introduced. DSS allows users to analyze the massive data collection and provide better solutions to the problem and most importantly enable better decision making. This chapter explore the usage of CIPs within an organization includes the use of CIPs in matters relating to human resource management, customer relations management as well as product development. The scope of this report has been narrowed to these three fields as it was determined that these fields have been the greatest affected by the adoption of CIPs by organizations. Additionally, an explanation of the background including the characteristics of CIPs has also been provided.
