How BI Informs the 5 Steps of Decision-Making

It’s the age of information. So, everyone is making data-driven decisions, right? Not exactly.

While most company leaders believe that they should make decisions based on data, 50 percent of those leaders say that the information they need is unavailable. Thirty-nine percent say that their gut instincts or experience provide them with everything they need to make effective decisions. 

The risks of making important decisions without all the relevant information range from inefficiency to outright failure. Research shows that the opportunity costs for a decision-making process that excludes business intelligence can be quite high, including competitive disadvantages and lack of visibility into opportunities for profit growth. 

In contrast, BI can empower success at every level of an organization, from improved customer service to new revenue streams. Data-driven organizations are 23 times more likely to acquire customers and 19 times more likely to be profitable. Consider how to lead strategically and effectively by incorporating business intelligence into the 5 steps of decision-making.

 

1. Determine Your Business Objectives

The first step in an effective decision-making process is choosing a specific, measurable goal that aligns with the organization’s values, vision, and mission. Rather than general objectives like “grow the company” or “increase sales,” specific, measurable, and data-informed goals may sound more like:

• Increase market share among young people by 25 percent.
• Reduce customer service online chat wait time by half.
• Open ten brick-and-mortar stores by 2026.

Business intelligence can not only help achieve these goals, it can play a vital role in identifying and defining them. For example, a BI dashboard for a retailer may reveal that customers are regularly abandoning shopping carts. It may also show that a one-time effort at retaining those customers through follow-up emails was successful, but has not been consistent. Through examining the data, a business leader may decide that a specific, measurable goal could be “Reduce the rate of abandoned shopping carts by 40 percent after six months.” 

As a retailer, this goal aligns with the company’s overall objective to sell goods and achieves secondary objectives such as building customer loyalty. As a measurable goal with a set deadline, leaders and their teams can work toward success with clear guidelines.

 

2. Gather Relevant Data

Rod Johnson, Global President and CRO of Infor, an enterprise software company, has an ever-present question in mind when it comes to serving the organization’s customers: “How do we dramatically shrink the time it takes to deliver new technologies, tools, data, and insights to users?” 

This is a question he regularly uses business intelligence to answer. With tools that gather relevant data, Johnson can drill that original question down even further to make precise inquiries that lead him and his colleagues to the pertinent information they need. 

Take, for example, when Infor client Camatic Seating needed to improve the accuracy and efficiency of the organization’s processes. Camatic leveraged an Infor AI business intelligence software to generate forecasts. Previously, the company’s manual process for aggregating disparate CRM data had resulted in slow and high-risk predictions. Now, Camatic can gather relevant unsiloed data that in real-time. Camatic leaders say they have increased customer satisfaction and reduced manufacturing costs—all because they are equipped with tools that can gather data relevant to meeting their company goals.

 

3. Visualize and Analyze Your Data

As many company leaders are discovering, datasets are only helpful when they are easy to read, accessible, and up to date — and too often, they’re not. Ninety-one percent of business leaders report that the growing volume of data has limited organizational success. Not only that, but nearly three-quarters of business leaders say that the amount of data and lack of trust in it has stopped them from making decisions.

Enter business intelligence solutions. Tools that aggregate, analyze, and generate data visualizations can empower effective decisions and create a common understanding among internal and external company stakeholders. Rather than constantly updating spreadsheets with manual processes or creating slide decks that need to be updated by the time the presentation comes around, business leaders with honed decision-making skills and BI tools can focus on strategic choices and communication. 

For Sharks Sports & Entertainment (SSE), data analysis and visualization tools have fostered a culture of self-service among employees who can set and achieve goals strategically. Venue operators, for example, can adjust staffing needs based on attendance and parking data as a response to real-time entry traffic data. The human resources department has leveraged business intelligence tools to analyze employees and company culture, resulting in one-third of open full-time roles going to internal candidates and a 13 percent increase in workforce diversity and inclusivity metrics in just 16 months. Increased visibility has also decreased the full-time onboarding process by 33 percent and enhanced fan experiences.

Through comprehensive analysis and visualizations that are quickly and easily understood, companies like SSE are further empowered to set and attain their goals.

 

4. Develop and Implement a Strategy

With a clear objective as the guiding light, relevant data at the ready, and data visualizations that effectively communicate essential information, it’s time to leverage BI for strategy development. 

Based on key insights provided by business intelligence tools, such a strategy will be concrete, actionable, and time-specific. For example: “The social media team will host a month of giveaways to increase followership on Facebook. This will enhance our social media presence by 10 percent in the next 3 months.” Or “Project managers will address bottlenecks to reduce overdue tasks from 20 percent to 5 percent.” These strategies reflect clear goals, actionable insights, and measurable outcomes.

Business intelligence can play a crucial role in strategy development and implementation as leaders use BI tools to identify action steps, team members, and ideal outcomes. As leaders begin to act on the strategy, BI solutions can provide real-time insights into progress or opportunities for growth. 

 

5. Analyze Results and Measure Success

So, did it work?

That’s the question BI tools can help business leaders answer once a strategy has been enacted. With data analysis and visualizations in hand, organizational teams can determine if the strategy was successful and produced the right results. Maybe a targeted marketing campaign didn’t lead to the desired number of sales, but it revealed a loyal customer base in a specific demographic. Perhaps increased visibility into supply chain management across several warehouses reduced costs and increased productivity. 

The answer to “Did it work?” may not be a straightforward “yes” or “no,” and that’s a good thing. Data-driven decision-making is all about gaining the agility and insight to make informed choices that open the door to growth.

 

Build a BI Strategy for Success

Do you want to seize data-driven opportunities for the good of your organization? If so, the online Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) in Business Intelligence program at Marymount University Online can prepare you to lead at the intersection of business and technology. This fully online program can be completed in as few as three years and features courses in using data for business intelligence, ethical leadership, and business strategy in a changing world. 

Strengthen your decision-making skills, prepare to lead, and become a BI expert with a DBA in BI from Marymount University Online.