How to improve the decision-making process?
Today’s business environment is more competitive than ever before. It is becoming more and more difficult to stand out. Efficiency and consistency are the modern world’s drivers of success. As a result, an increasing number of decisions have to be taken quickly and with no margin for error.
Here are four elements that should be considered to help us make better business decisions:
Analyzing customer needs
Customers are increasingly demanding when it comes to having their needs met, which is leading many companies to resort to artificial intelligence to interact with them. Technologies using AI produce a myriad of "insights" into the customer’s needs, allowing companies to focus attention on the most significant requirements by developing solutions before problems become a hindrance. Basing decision-making on customer needs, companies ensure they are properly addressing their critical audience with each decision they take.
Harnessing the potential of data
Today, we have become saturated with data. Companies have access to a vast amount of information. The challenge is not to find data to analyze. Companies are using a huge amount of data, making significant "insight" difficult to obtain and often producing a kind of paralysis of the analyzing process.
Therefore, instead of being seduced by accessibility of information, we must seek to harness the potential of information that we can actually act upon.
Adopting emerging technology
New technologies are opening up a variety of opportunities for businesses, not only to improve their processes, but also to create new sources of revenue. In other words, better "insights" allow companies to make more informed and more appropriate decisions. With applications now existing for everything, there is almost no business sector or company that is unable to integrate decentralization into its decision-making process.
Reconciling a variety of views
It goes without saying that decentralized technology is not the only way to make the best business decisions. The decentralization of the decision-making process at the organizational level brings with it a raft of benefits, but most critically, it also allows those in charge of implementing the strategy to do so while in possession of as much information as possible. The participation of various levels of the organization in decision-making also offers the potential of being presented with better choices.
As has always been the case, information is power. If information is derived from "big data" or from interaction with customers, workers or other interlocutors, whatever it does, it can certainly act as an engine for improved decision-making. This is the reason why the need to improve our decision-making processes is so acute.
Jorge Nunes, Partner EY