Operational Decisions Matter

In 2004, an Opinion Research Corporation^[1] survey of executives found a clear opportunity to automate and improve decisions.  Operational decisions were high-impact, but only a fraction had been automated, and maintenance cost and time to market were real problems.  Specifically, the findings included the following:

• More than 90 percent felt that front-line operational decisions affected profitability.
  
  
• About half had not yet automated about 25 percent of these decisions, and nearly 80 percent still lacked automation for more than half of them.
  
  
• Making the right decisions with a high degree of accuracy and precision was very important to more than 90 percent of respondents.  More than 60 percent also rated consistency of decision making and effective management as important.
  
  
• 85 percent expressed difficulty in changing decision-making criteria in their systems, with more than 50 percent saying it took months to get business changes implemented in production.
  
  
• 60 percent felt that automated decisions were carried out inconsistently or they were forced to deal with redundant logic in multiple systems to prevent this problem.
  
  
• 70 percent of chief information officers/chief technology officers (CIOs/CTOs) didn't believe they were getting the most value they could from their data.  The most common reason was that their inability to blend business rules with data prevented them from maximizing the value of their data.

In a survey by Teradata^[2] in 2004, 75 percent of the senior executives of top U.S. companies said that the number of daily decisions has increased over the past year, and more than 50 percent said that decisions are more complex this year than last year.  The overwhelming majority of respondents, more than 70 percent, said that poor decision making is a serious problem for business. The top casualties of poor decision making are profits, company reputation, long-term growth, employee morale, productivity, and revenue.

References

[1] Opinion Research Corporation, "IT Professionals and Decision Automation," A sample of 200 IT professionals at companies over $100 million in revenue, including 40 CIOs/CTOs.  Companies included retail banking, credit card, mortgage, property and casualty, health, life insurance, telecom, retail, and healthcare providers.  Survey was conducted July 1–29, 2004.  

[2] Teradata 2004–2005 Report on Enterprise Decision-Making, fielded by BuzzBack online market research between July 23 and August 3, 2004, querying 202 executives, with follow-up conducted September 3–9, 2004.