Do the right thing - Beacon Rock's SureFire Decisions decisionmaking software - Software Review - Evaluation

Home Office Computing, May, 1997 by Carol S. Holzberg

SureFire Decisions

RATING: *** 1/2

A snap judgment could mean the difference between profit or loss for your small business. The new SureFire Decisions helps you set your priorities and options as it guides you through the decisionmaking process.

The program uses intuitive wizards to guide you to a plan of action based on your answers to questions they raise. With the Quick Decision Wizard, we pondered turning our home business into a corporation. First, we identified the decision objective: Should We Incorporate? Then, we listed the options: No; Yes; Yes, But Not Immediately. Next, we itemized evaluation factors, such as limited liability, corporate taxes, retirement plans, opportunities for capitalization through outside investment, maintenance costs, and the need to avoid double-taxation.

SureFire Decisions prompted us to rank these factors in terms of business priorities. By outfitting each factor with a graphical button that you can glide up and down, we could easily adjust a factor's relative importance as we calculated which ones would weigh more heavily in the decision. After weighing the factors, the program analyzed the responses and reached a conclusion. Based on our priorities, SureFire Decisions decided that incorporating the home business wasn't a good idea at present. All things considered, that's actually how we feel.

The program lets you display its analysis in table format or as a written evaluation for export in different formats, including HTML for posting on the Web. Even after reaching its conclusion, SureFire Decisions let us fine-tune the choices. We adjusted a factor's relative weight, sorted priorities, edited the factors list, and attached personal comments.

SureFire Decisions

Publisher: Beacon Rock, 972-392-7857, www.beaconrock.com

Est. Street Price: $80

Requirements: Windows 95, 16 MB of RAM, 4 MB of hard-disk space