Blog: Data Insights

What is Decision Intelligence? Everything You Need to Know

January 6, 2023 - by Synoptek

You’ve heard them all before: Business Intelligence (BI), Machine learning (ML), Artificial intelligence (AI), and the list goes on. Most organizations have invested millions in these emerging technologies but struggle to drive tangible business benefits.

According to a study by Forrester, in 2022, only 20% of decision-makers reported increased revenue as a primary benefit of using data and analytics. What about the rest? They are lagging because of their inability to effectively connect these technologies and use the insights delivered into one cohesive ecosystem.

So, how do you get the best out of these technologies? You need to move to the next frontier of decision intelligence. A space that encourages you to integrate decision support, decision management, and complicated systems applications. Keep reading as we dig into what decision intelligence is and why your organization should consider implementing it.

What is Decision Intelligence?

As organizations look to digitize and gain competitive value from new technologies like AI and ML, decision intelligence is emerging as an innovative solution that combines the philosophies and skills from three disciplines – data science, social science, and managerial science. By translating advanced data models into user recommendations, decision intelligence helps contextualize insights and enables effective and accurate decision-making – while reducing dependence on human judgment.

Using decision intelligence, organizations can make better decisions, accommodate factors of uncertainty, and work towards better decision-making models. This continuous enhancement of enterprise-wide decision-making can improve traceability, replicability, relevance, and trustworthiness. Since it finds patterns and relationships, it eliminates bias and offers simple solutions to tough situations. Given the benefits, it is estimated that the decision intelligence market will be worth $36.78 billion by 2030.

Why Are Organizations Becoming Increasingly Interested in Decision Intelligence?

One of the top priorities for any organization is to become an analytics-driven company to keep up with evolving market trends and customer trends, become more resilient and responsive to change, and succeed amidst new digital competitors. But with data constantly growing in volume, velocity, and variety, most businesses struggle to get their hands on skilled talent that can convert this burgeoning data into useful insights.

Although analytics platforms have been in use for several decades, the lack of the right strategies, people, and processes restricts businesses from achieving the optimum results through these platforms. Despite helping organizations uncover cutting-edge insights, these platforms don’t help decision-makers take action. This disconnect between insights and actions prohibits businesses from bridging silos and enabling contextual decision-making.

Did you know that only 20% of enterprise decision-makers use enterprise applications to make decisions? The remaining 80% still rely on their data and analytics experts to collect & analyze the data and prefer to present the findings in PowerPoint.

Being an engineering discipline that augments data science, decision intelligence enables organizations to take a more structured approach to business decision-making. For organizations still doing things the old and manual way, decision intelligence can help gain substantial competitive value from AI and ML- especially in cases where there is a mismatch between the organizational decision-making model and the scope of complex problems. Here’s how:

  • Decision intelligence uses a visual design language incorporating insights into an easy-to-understand format to aid quick and effective decision-making.
  • It provides an intuitive common language that is easily understood by all participants and can be used to enhance collaboration.
  • It democratizes data, making it possible for anyone and everyone to have quick and easy access to data and insights and use them to guide decisions – without intervention from technical experts.

What Are the Top Industry Use Cases of Decision Intelligence?

Decision intelligence empowers anyone in an organization, from front-office employees to business analysts, to close the gap between insight and action and make better and faster decisions. If BI dashboards are not enough to make effective decisions, there arises a need to evolve the capabilities of the organization and its workforce beyond what is comfortable- a point that results in better outcomes. Let us look at the top use cases of decision intelligence:

  • Supply chain: Decision intelligence can help identify and act on risks that impact on-time shipment in the realm of the supply chain. Using insights, enterprises can build prescriptive optimization models to make improvements across the entire chain.
  • Financial services: Decision intelligence can power financial services organizations’ wealth management platforms. They can leverage cognitive capabilities to enhance predictive analytics and build AI-suggested winning strategies for the customers to invest more smartly.
  • Healthcare: decision intelligence can help deliver the highest level of care – with limited resources – for healthcare organizations constantly challenged by conflicting objectives. It can help eliminate biases, enhance precision in diagnosis, and improve therapy regimes while driving operational excellence throughout the patient lifecycle.

Pave the Way for a More Predictable and Risk-free Future

In a dynamic world where the pace, scope, and complexity of change are constantly increasing, organizations are under immense pressure to act fast. But given how quickly data is growing, staying afloat in the sea of information hasn’t been easy. Decision intelligence serves as the missing link between data and decision-making, helping organizations overcome uncertainties and risks and pave the way for a more predictable future.

If you are in need of reliable decision-making, decision intelligence can enable you to make the most of your data and optimize the potential of AI and ML tools you’re already using. Contact us today to speak with a member of our team about how you can get started.

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