Decision Support System for Financial Resource Allocation at the University: Requirements and Outcomes

The present research has been carried out in two parts with the aim of identifying the design requirements of the financial decision support system and the experimental implementation of an example of strategic financial decisions based on the design model of the financial decision support system in the university. The required information in the first part was collected through semi-structured interviews with scientific-executive experts in the fields of higher education economics, financial decision makers in the university and information technology specialists. They were selected by purposeful sampling and snowball method. The findings were analysed using content analysis and a three-step coding approach. The data in the second part included financial and statistical data and information from the budget and credit office and the university's planning vice-chancellor, which were used to analyse the cost in the system. Based on the analysis of experts' opinions, the design requirements of the financial decision support system in the university are: Content, human, managerial, educational, cultural, infrastructural, technical and operational, software, hardware, legal, economic, security, environmental and cross-sectoral requirements, and acceptance of changes. The results of the experimental implementation have also shown that the financial decision support system improves the efficiency, effectiveness and quality of financial decisions and optimizes the process by accurately estimating costs, reducing time and cost, removing mental limitations, effective use of limited resources, etc. Therefore, the use of ICT and its capabilities to remove biases and cognitive errors and mental limitations of decision makers, introducing the path to improve the intelligentization of financial resource allocation decisions in the university, helping to promote knowledge-based allocation of financial resources, etc. were among the most important results of the present research.