Scarce Decision Support Analytics!
Business Objects released the results of a survey that attempted to see if corporate Executives were able to make informed business decisions. Here are some highlights from the survey results:
- 154 Global C-Level Executives surveyed
- Less than 10% of Executives believe they have the necessary information needed to make critical business decisions
- More than 50% of these Executives are concerned about poor decision-making due to the lack of adequate information
- Twenty-five percent believe that Management frequently or always gets its decisions wrong
- Seventy-two percent of executives believe management decision-making is only moderately efficient – or worse
In an earlier post, I suggested we will start to see a proliferation of companies filling the position of Chief Analytics Officer, which, if done right, should bring some relief to Executives making decisions based on their gut. It blows my mind that leaders are still making decisions without having all of the facts. Reminds me of Reverse Analytics! The most shocking statistic from this survey is that less than 10% of Executives believe that they have adequate data to make critical business decisions. Utterly shocking!
My suggestion, start by reading Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning. This book by Tom Davenport and Jeanne Harris does an excellent job establishing the concept of building a competitive strategy around data-driven insights. If you find yourself culpable of informal and ad-hoc decision-making, then do yourself a favor and retain some assistance! Don’t fall into the trap that so many do, of making a large investment in software to solve the problem. Fixing a problem like this is just as much about the right skill sets and knowledge, then it is a large BI software platform.
I also find it very convenient that this article hit the news right after rumors appeared that Business Objects may be up for sale. On September 17, Reuters reported that Business Objects has retained Goldman Sacs as advisors. Stay tuned!
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October 10th, 2007 at 3:05 am
[...] a friendly takeover of Business Objects. Check out the press release here. In an earlier post, called Scarce Decision Support Analytics, I cited another news release where Business Objects [...]