The Future of Decision-Making: Decision Intelligence

The success of any business is built on sound decision-making. But reaching reliable conclusions is now tougher than ever. In addition to having to process vast amounts of data, today’s decision-makers need to consider potential enterprise-wide impacts. And time pressure or lack of information often result in decisions based on habits, bias, and heuristics. Now there’s a powerful toolkit that supports more effective and accurate decision-making. Its name? Decision intelligence.

Decision Intelligence 101

What exactly is decision intelligence and how does help companies make the right calls? Essentially, decision intelligence is a practical approach designed to improve decision-making by first understanding and then engineering the way decisions are made and how outcomes are evaluated, managed, and improved based on feedback.

Above, I’ve described decision intelligence as a toolkit. This is because it’s not a single technique but, rather a wide array of decision-making techniques, ranging from conventional analytics all the way through to artificial intelligence (AI). What’s more, decision intelligence leverages a whole host of cutting-edge technologies, including the latest and greatest in machine learning and automation.

Greater Insight, Better Decisions

By drawing together these diverse domains, this approach helps companies enhance their ability to process and understand vast volumes of data – allowing them to gain greater overall insight, see their business decisions in a much broader context, and review potential impacts across and beyond the organization.

In a nutshell, decision intelligence enables companies to harness AI and data to rapidly make accurate, consistent decisions and zoom in on specific needs and issues in their business. It allows them to gather data and use machine learning to model it in order to accurately predict outcomes for optimal commercial decision-making.

Powerful Support for Business Decision-Making

So, in what concrete ways does decision intelligence support businesses’ decision-making? It’s important to understand that this involves three quite distinct levels. The first and most basic of these is decision support. As the name suggests, decision-makers leverage tech (for example, analytics and data exploration) that merely assists them in reaching their decisions.

The next level is decision augmentation. Here, technology plays a greater, more sophisticated part. Decision-makers enlist the help of machines not only to provide support, but also to analyze data and even provide recommendations and predictions.

The third and final level is decision automation. Here, technology takes on an even greater, more autonomous role. In fact, it does almost all the heavy lifting – applying rules, optimizations, and AI-based predictions to arrive at decisions independently. In a further step, the technology actually executes these decisions – under the watchful eyes of human experts.

Greater Data Volumes – Faster Decisions – Fewer Errors

Decision intelligence has three key business benefits: First, it supports data-driven decisions by allowing the full spectrum of relevant data to be analyzed in real time. This enables companies to recognize patterns that would otherwise go undetected as well as potential anomalies that could impact outcomes.

The second major advantage is that decision intelligence empowers companies to reach decisions faster. This is mainly thanks to AI systems, which can process vast volumes of data at hitherto unthinkable speeds, significantly accelerating the entire decision-making process.

And last but not least, decision intelligence helps eliminate errors and prevent bias. It does this by basing decision on all the available data while avoiding bias by executing programmed algorithms – rather than relying on intrinsically fallible human judgment and gut feeling.

Decision Intelligence in Action

In view of these benefits, it’s small wonder that decision intelligence is now being deployed in the core processes of many different industries. In the financial services sector, for instance, firms leverage the toolkit to process credit, mortgage, and car loan credit applications based on data such as applicants’ income and credit score.

Healthcare is another sector where decision intelligence solutions are making their mark. Here, they enable medical practitioners to analyze medical imaging reports and propose diagnoses faster. In addition, decision intelligence allows doctors to prioritize cases with an eye to improving medical outcomes.

Finally, the retail industry is also reaping the benefits of the tech. Players in this sector are deploying decision-intelligence solutions to optimize inventory and fulfilment and more precisely align their warehouse management with demand forecasts.

The Bottom Line

As these examples show, decision intelligence enables businesses to make better decisions faster. Not only does it help companies become data driven and unlock the associated benefits; it also allows them to tap into the largest possible array of relevant information.

Could decision intelligence be the right solution for your company? As ever, if you’d like to dig deeper into this technology, its real-world applications, and how it could benefit your business, feel free to reach out to me. And if you have any thoughts of your own on this topic, please share them in the comments section.