For many years, the business world’s most effective decision-makers relied on “gut feel”. An informed decision was a luxury, because people simply didn’t have easy access to the quantity – and quality – of data required for making informed decisions.
Having good gut instinct or intuition usually marked an individual out as being a better decision-maker. But I believe that breed of businessperson has had its day. Gut feel is no longer good enough on its own.
Nowadays, the abundance of data and the flexibility of Business Intelligence tools means that making informed decisions is a minimum requirement – not a luxury.
Making Informed Decisions
The decision-maker of the 21st century relies on data to support and inform decisions.
Data is no longer a rare commodity. Indeed, we’re surrounded by more data in 2017 than ever before in Human history. Those with the power to leverage data, and effectively use analysis to drive business decisions, are the ones who are now making themselves stand out from the crowd.
This data-driven decision making approach is helping more and more savvy businesspeople make informed decisions. It is also slowly but decisively marginalising the “gut instinct” dinosaurs who don’t see the value of effective data analysis. Sure, their instinct may turn out to be right – but their conviction would carry a lot more kudos if it were backed up by tangible, measurable benefits.
The Emerging Approach
We are witnessing a growing demand in the workplace for business intelligence that can actively support the decision-making process.
Insightful visualisations can communicate key messages from millions of rows of raw data in a few seconds, meaning that decisions can be made with greater speed and clarity. The lead time from data capture to reporting has shortened so considerably that businesses are able to be more proactive, rather than reactive, when making decisions.
There can be no denying the fact that high quality business data is playing an ever-increasing role in smart decision-making. Intuition is still a valuable asset, and there will always be a place for good instinct in business, but I believe that the future belongs to those who listen to what their data is telling them.
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