What Is Decision Intelligence?

Decision-making is a crucial aspect of any business. From product inventory to marketing strategies, company officials make many choices that impact their business success. It's essential to strive for sound choices, as the right decisions could expand your customer base, increase revenue and build brand awareness.

Decision intelligence assists companies with all aspects of the decision-making process. This method uses gathered data and artificial intelligence (AI) to help you make quick and precise decisions. Decision intelligence collects current data, analyzes it and predicts the best decision outcomes for your company. This strategy continues to grow in popularity with businesses across all industries.

Read on for more information about decision intelligence.  

What Is Decision Intelligence?

Decision-making intelligence uses AI and compiled data to improve a business's decision-making processes. The data and predictive models let you make quicker and more accurate business decisions. Instead of making choices based on gut feelings, decision intelligence allows you to optimize plans through valuable insights.

Gartner, an information technology company, solidified the definition of decision intelligence. The Gartner decision intelligence definition describes it as multiple decision-making processes coming together. Overall, decision intelligence helps companies make choices more effectively, accurately and quickly.

Decision intelligence consists of multiple components, including:

• Artificial intelligence
• Contextual intelligence
• Automation

These factors combine to create actionable business recommendations. Decision intelligence can analyze past decisions and predict how new choices might affect the company in the long term. It collects holistic data across all the business domains within a company. Because the methods and approaches streamlines data analysis, decision-making also becomes less expensive for businesses.

Many decision intelligence platforms also use feedback loops for continuous improvement. The platform compares the original recommendation to the company's ultimate decision. After time has passed and companies can view the impact of their choice, the loop analyzes the effectiveness of their recommendations. It passes on feedback to the rest of the systems so that it can improve future decisions (through reverse ETL approaches, information gathered here could also help with feeding back into the business domains to further enrich information during intake). In other words, decision intelligence helps you continuously adapt decision models and processes for company improvement.

Why Companies Are Harnessing the Power of Decision Intelligence

With the hundreds of decisions that businesses face annually, investing in strategies to ensure financial success is crucial.

Decision intelligence continues to grow in popularity among businesses due to its effectiveness. With its implementation, you can improve your organization's outcomes while also providing richer experience to your consumers. It's a cost-effective and precise strategy for decision-making improvement.

Some of the other benefits of decision intelligence include:

• Speed: One of the biggest limitations businesses face is time constraints. The pressure to make decisions in a limited amount of time can cause companies to make rash or reckless choices. Decision intelligence quickens the process by organizing mass amounts of data and providing recommendations. Instead of sorting through individual data, these platforms combine and analyze it for you, letting your company make informed decisions in a much shorter time.
• Accuracy: Emotional or preferential biases can often cloud decisions. We often let past experiences and emotions impact our decision-making processes. If these biases affect your choices, you might make inaccurate assumptions about the best business decisions. Decision intelligence platforms examine current trends and business statistics objectively. They can recommend decisions without being affected by bias.
• Accessibility: Decision intelligence platforms can combine and distill business analytics. Raw numerical data and business trend analyses are often complex and unclear. Misinterpretation of data could lead to incorrect decisions. Decision intelligence breaks down business data into accessible and easily understandable reports. The better you understand business trends, the more educated business decisions you can make.

How Do Decision Models Work?

Companies often use decision-making models to simplify selection processes and help every team member feel included. These models provide helpful steps and guidelines for making decisions. Decision intelligence incorporates each of these decision models and uses them to optimize workflow and company choices. For example, common decision models include:

• Intuitive decisions: These decision-making processes are more subjective than other options. They usually rely on past experiences rather than current data trends and have less structure than other plans.
• Rational decisions: Rational decision-making is one of the most commonly used types. In this option, people identify their problem, find potential solutions, analyze their options and finally make a choice.
• Bounded rationality decisions: These decisions rely on finding a sufficient answer rather than the best possible one. In other words, you understand the limitations surrounding your decision and come to a compromise rather than a perfect conclusion.
• Creative decisions: You make a creative decision when you create an entirely new and innovative answer to a problem.

However, these four decision-making models each have limitations due to biases and other external factors. Decision intelligence platforms allow you to look objectively at the entire situation and compare your decision against current company data.

Instead of typical decision models, decision intelligence models use a five-step sequence:

1. Observability: First, decision intelligence platforms gather relevant information from many different business sources. From historical product trends to internal financial transactions, the platform takes all of this data and compiles it into one place.
2. Investigation: Once the system collects your data, it begins to analyze it. It strives to understand the entire situation and begins generating possible solutions.
3. Modeling: Next, the decision intelligence program will act out potential scenarios to see their impacts on your business. They can predict how this decision will lead to other events or choices in the future.
4. Contextualization: The model will ensure the potential solutions are fit for your current business context.
5. Execution: Finally, the decision intelligence platform will arrive at a recommended decision for your business, along with an in-depth analysis of how it will impact your business in the future.

Using decision intelligence instead of human-based decision models reduces the chance of biases hindering a correct decision.

Who Can Benefit From Decision Intelligence?

A wide variety of industries implement decision intelligence to bring upon process efficiencies and cut back on decision cycle times. A few industries to list -

• Banking and finance: Finance professionals can use decision intelligence to analyze customer behavior. The platform can help them anticipate upcoming consumer trends and adapt their offerings to meet the expected demand.
• Energy sector: Decision intelligence helps those in the energy sector manage resources more efficiently. The software can even anticipate energy usage in the upcoming months.
• Healthcare: Many healthcare systems use data analysis to improve their treatment methods. Decision intelligence can assist with predicting medical outcomes or making future treatment decisions.
• Retail: Decision intelligence is highly beneficial in the retail sector. Businesses can analyze sales trends and adapt future product plans to meet demand. The software can also help with pricing decisions by examining current price ranges across the market. When you plan products more accurately, you can increase revenue and customer satisfaction.

Applications of Decision Intelligence

Depending on your company's needs, you can use decision intelligence in many aspects of the production process. Here are some examples:

• Stock management: Managing inventory is an essential task across industries. Retailers can use decision intelligence to optimize pricing and inventory strategies. Regularly monitoring inventory levels helps with overall profitability.
• Marketing techniques: All businesses work hard to create a brand and raise customer awareness. Establishing a strong brand identity involves marketing across many platforms, from social media to promotional ads. Decision intelligence helps you identify your top campaign strategies and offers recommendations for how to adapt future ads.
• Hiring processes: Onboarding new employees is often a time-consuming and complex task. Decision intelligence simplifies the process by examining potential candidates' past successes. Supervisors can focus on applicants that are most likely to succeed in the company, saving time in the long term.

How to Get Started With Decision Intelligence

Integrating decision intelligence is a beneficial choice that offers companies numerous advantages, from quicker decision-making to deeper analysis. Decision intelligence engineering can seem complex to those unfamiliar with the process. However, companies interested in decision intelligence will find it easier to get started if they follow the tips below.

1. Make Sure Data Ecosystem Is Already in Place

For a decision intelligence platform to work efficiently, it needs to integrate into an existing data architecture.

A data lakehouse allows for efficient data management practices that allows companies to access and update existing data in one place. Using AI and other automation methods helps them manage company information. The platform ingests current data and use AI to understand company data. By centralizing your data, you can uncover insights for efficiency improvement.

2. Have a Specific Focus in Place Beforehand

Try to have a specific plan for your implementation. With all the strategies that decision intelligence can offer, it can be overwhelming to try everything at once. It's best to take things one step at a time. A precise focus keeps you from overwhelming your team — you can introduce the concept in detail and ensure your team's understanding. Since decision intelligence is constantly changing to accommodate your needs better, you can take important updates and changes one at a time.

It's often best to start with the issue that first made you consider adopting decision intelligence. Many companies begin with processes that are well-defined with many examples. That way, you can gauge how well you've introduced the concept. For example, if you want to improve product pricing, you can start with a project focusing on that component. Solving a single project first allows you to try the implementation process before taking on more extensive implementations later.

3. Invest in Good AI and Make Sure It Works

Artificial intelligence in decision-making is fundamental for the technology to work properly. AI is a central component of decision intelligence, as it needs to use the output from your AI systems to function correctly. It's essential to invest in high-quality AI systems. Many companies have AI learning machine models that match their specific goals.

Whether you plan on using your current setup or investing in new software, be sure to use tested and recommended types. Additionally, ensure that your team members are adequately trained in working with your AI systems. The benefits of a decision intelligence platform depend on being able to interpret the AI readings. Having trained employees for AI helps you maximize the benefits of decision intelligence.

4. Utilize New Data and Avoid Biased Data

One of the advantages of decision intelligence is its ability to give unbiased recommendations. If you use old or biased data while working with decision intelligence, that inaccuracy might affect your decisions. Data analytics relies on precise measurements and your company needs accuracy to improve future products.

One way to ensure you have new data is by using data reporting and analytics software. Platforms like RightData's Analytics Hub can ensure you make strong decisions that help you meet your business goals. The Analytics Hub provides in-depth reports on company data year-round. It allows you to track customer behavior, seasonal trends and other crucial aspects of business maintenance. You can make the best decisions for your company with timely and precise data.

Harness the Power of Decision Intelligence With Dextrus From RightData

At RightData, we understand the importance of decision intelligence and offer various software product development solutions. One of our highlights is our Dextrus platform, which specializes in centralizing and analyzing company data. Dextrus lets you integrate decision intelligence software into your company easily.

Some of Dextrus's features include:

• Data preparation: Our software easily combines and prepares your data for viewing. Easy access and data analysis let you use your data more effectively. The more accessible your information is, the more informed your decisions will be.
• Data insight: Dextrus's "DB Explorer" component allows you to view in-depth insights into your company's data. You can save these datasets and use them for future planning, wrangling and modeling.
• Data analysis and reports: With embedded analytics, you can visualize your company's information while compiling it. Detailed analysis reports help you make well-informed decisions for your company's marketing, products and more.

Our Dextrus platform uses a comprehensive approach to sort and analyze your company statistics. In turn, you can make strong choices about future product lines, hiring decisions or whatever else you require.

Contact RightData Today

Decision intelligence continues to grow in popularity for companies across the globe, as making well-informed choices is crucial for company health and future profits. Installing a decision intelligence platform could be just what your company needs. You can process massive amounts of data with sophisticated tools, getting deeper insight into your internal processes.

RightData strives to empower organizations to accelerate data transformation. Our self-service and accessible tools allow companies to transform existing data practices. If you're seeking a decision intelligence platform, consider RightData's RDt. With Right Data Tools, you can use a cloud-based platform to enhance your data methods.

To get started with RDt, book a free demo today. You can also feel free to contact us with any questions.

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