Decision Intelligence: The Near Future of Decision-Making

When it comes to business decision-making, not only can it be difficult to make that decision, but even more difficult to live with the decision that was made when it does not turn out well. Below are a few common difficulties when it comes to business decision-making.

• Incomplete Information: Not having enough information to help make an informed business decision is a major challenge for most managers and organizational leaders. A lack of available information leaves decisive leadership in a sea of uncertainty and makes you unable to interpret that information to help you make the right decision.
• Information Overload: Traditionally, most people thought that if you had more information and data at your disposal, then you could make better decisions. But we’re all familiar with the taunting acronym “TMI” (too much information) when information is overshared. In today’s business environment, too much information and data can make decision making more complex. When there is too much data to evaluate, people can easily become overwhelmed or overthink each decision, further slowing down the decision-making process or compromising it altogether. Too much data is not always better.
• Time Constraints: Time constraints can add pressure to have to quickly decide upon a business course of action quicker than originally anticipated. If business decisions must be made quickly, it could compromise the desired results. You might accidentally overlook or fail to mention important data or forget about the impact of one course of action over the other. 
• Uncertainty: For decision makers in an organization, uncertainty is another challenge. Even though organizations are faced with uncertainties on a regular basis, it can be difficult to overcome uncertainty about the future with even the most seasoned leader. Uncertainty can stem from changing business environments, incomplete information, and misinterpreted or misunderstood data. 

Fortunately, these common difficulties and pain points that organizations deal with when it comes to making tough business decisions can be relived with decision intelligence, a key component of any enterprise-level decision process. Decision intelligence is a powerful tool that can be used to make more effective and accurate business decisions. By augmenting artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, decision intelligence is an automated, engineered approach that gives organizations the ability to process large amounts of data to improve business decision making across its enterprise. Merging social science with data science, decision intelligence democratizes analytics and applies machine learning to your existing data to help business leaders make decisions. Decision intelligence doesn’t focus on who is right or the smartest in the room. Instead, it takes your business insights that are already there, automates its delivery, and explains those insights in a way that even a non-technical user can understand. Through automated knowledge and understanding, organizational leaders can use decision intelligence to make the right, informed decisions.

You may be wondering why you should get rid of your existing decision models for ones driven by AI. Business decisions that are made using traditional models can lead to decisions made from habit, or biases, or an inability to identify the vulnerabilities in those models. But decision models driven by AI and analytics – decision intelligence – enable organizations to meet changing customer demands, stay ahead of competitors, and become more responsive and adaptable to change.  Decision intelligence can strengthen decision models by connecting machine learning algorithms and decision making together.  Companies that use AI to go about their day-to-day decision-making need to be able to trust in AI outcomes and decision intelligence platforms are being used to accelerate making decisions in a variety of industries.

Decision intelligence has many benefits for today’s businesses. Below are a few of those benefits you can expect when implementing decision intelligence into your decision-making model.

• Data-based decisions: To gain a competitive edge in today’s business world, your decision-making models must have the ability to study the available facts, predict forecasts or outcomes, and choose the best option for your organization. AI-decision-making systems in decision intelligence look at the data much more closely, detecting any abnormal or unseen patterns. By AI pointing out potential abnormalities, it also eliminates the possibilities of vulnerabilities and hiccups in the data that could have a big impact on the organization.
• Quicker decisions: If your organization spends too much time trying to make the perfect decision, AI-decision-making systems significantly speed up the process entirely by immediately processing large, scattered amounts of data. Reducing the process of analyzing massive amounts of data can allow your organization to make the right decision in a shorter period.
• Elimination of biases and errors: If your leadership team keeps running into cognitive and emotional biases when trying to make decisions, decision intelligence systems can help eliminate them completely from having a direct impact on the outcomes of business decisions. Since algorithms in decision intelligence objectively looks at the available facts and aren’t susceptible to cognitive and emotional biases, it is able to avoid these biases completely.

What can you do next to implement decision intelligence into how your business makes decisions? CDW Amplified™ Data Services, including artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) services, offer actionable insights that give you a stark competitive advantage. Design, build and deploy a modern data platform built for analytics and AI/ML solutions with optimal storing, transforming, discovering, and operationalizing of your data.

Decisions, decisions, decisions. We make them every day. Being able to make quick, efficient decisions a is an important ability to have in today’s business environments. Why is the speed of decision-making so vital? Because in our fast-paced world, being able to be quick on your feet to make decisions gets you ahead of your competitors. CDW’s Data Services can provide your organization the AI-driven decision-making system you have been looking for.