A decision model for information technology selection using AHP integrated TOPSIS-Grey: The case of content management systems

Content Management System (CMS) is an information system that allows publishing, editing, modifying content over internet through a central interface. By the evolution of internet and related communication technologies, CMS has become a key information technology (IT) for organizations to communicate with its internal and exterior environment. Just like any other IT projects, the selection of CMS consists of various tangible and intangible criteria which contain uncertainty and incomplete information. In this paper the selection of CMS among available alternatives is regarded as a multi criteria decision making problem. A decision model which consists of seven criteria and four alternatives is built, AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) integrated Grey-TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) method is proposed, and applied in a Turkish foreign trade company. In the proposed model, the weights of the criteria are determined by AHP method and the alternatives are evaluated by Grey-TOPSIS. Due to the uncertainties, grey numbers are used for evaluations of the alternatives. One at a time sensitivity analysis is also provided in order to monitor the robustness of the method. Besides, the effects of using different distance functions, such as Manhattan, Euclidian and Minkowski distance functions on the results are examined.