Quality Evaluation of Economic Decision-Making Support Systems: Oil Industry Case

There is a wide variety of Economic Evaluation-based Decision Support Systems (EEDSS) on the market which are highly complex. Thus, evaluating and/or selecting one that meets the requirements of a particular organization is not an easy task. Additionally the Oil Industry demands Economic Evaluation Tools (EET) that approach its processes as integrated activities: exploration, production and refinement. Based on this need, the objective of this article is to propose a model that helps estimate the quality of the EET using the ISO/IEC 9126 standard as a reference. The proposed model quantifies the quality of the EET's examining three characteristics: Functionality, Maintainability, and Usability, with their corresponding metrics. We have applied the model to three EET's of the oil industry and have evaluated its effectiveness. The model enhances cross-organizational management, since it allows organizations to look at two perspectives: 1) The estimation of quality of EET's already in place in the company and 2) Based on that estimation, establish a criteria for EET selection that meets the company's needs.