WEB BASED EXPORT TREND ANALYZER AND DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM

Abstract

EXPORT TREND ANALYZER (ETA) is a database driven decision support system which is delivered on World Wide Web. The system primarily seeks to assist policy makers, international trade promoters, market and product development officials of business support organizations (BSOs) or researchers for online retrieval and analysis of statistical data pertaining to international trade transactions originated from Sri Lanka (exports). Customized and dynamically created reports are enhanced with regression analysis and graphical depiction. This would facilitate sensible and rational decision making and recommendations in formulating export promotion strategies, setting targets and planning activities. Exports sector in any economy, takes leading role in achieving a realistic growth in the Gross Domestic Production (GDP), thereby enhancing the quality of life of it’s inhabitants. It is critical for an economy of a country like Sri Lanka which is constrained by relatively small size of the domestic market. The contemporary international market is governed by vigorous and dynamic competitive forces which result in continuous changes in market requirements/trends and quick switching of “windows of opportunities”. Hence it is of paramount importance that we continuously monitor and analyze the twists and turns of the international market place, facilitating our policy makers to be sensitive and reactive to the changing environment. In this regard researchers or officials of export related business support organizations and even exporters themselves need extensive analyzes of the trends and patterns of products exported from Sri Lanka, suppliers of theses products and the export destinations. The ETA system seeks to provide a reliable, dependable and flexible IT solution to facilitate such efforts with wider geographical reach. Implementation of Export Trend Analyzer (ETA) is backed by fully open source bundle of LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) although the WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP) which is a derivative of LAMP architecture is used in the development process together with iterative prototyping approach.