Gartner distinguished research vice president Erick Brethenoux says tighter regulations and unprecedented levels of uncertainty are increasing the complexity of decision-making. He opined that chief data and analytics officers (CDAOs) cannot just collect data and create analysis, and then hope it is used.
Gartner says CDAOs need to learn to design better decisions and make changes in three ways.
"They must start thinking about how their data and analysis can be used to influence the way decisions are made. Collecting all the data, doing all the analysis, but not thinking about how to ensure it is used by decision-makers is a recipe for failure,” Brethenoux continued.
Alys Woodward, senior research director at Gartner, said that while CDAOs may not be the decision-makers, they should be the decision designers, designing analysis tailored for the particular decision-maker. They can do this in three ways:
1. Improve the timing of decisions
Consider using augmented analytics tools as their adoption will accelerate and quickly replace traditional reporting tools. CDAOs can use augmented analytics tools to not only proactively push analysis to decision-makers and provide it at the time they need it, but also use the analysis to prompt a decision.
2. Accelerate Decisions
As organisations grow and expand into new markets, decision making becomes more complicated. To accelerate decisions and drive better business outcomes, CDAOs can choose from decision augmentation or decision automation. In decision augmentation (hybrid decisions), both humans and systems work cooperatively to arrive at an outcome. At the decision automation level (machine-based decisions), the machines make decisions independently.
“Providing decision-makers with recommendations that they can accept or reject, or alternatively presenting automating repetitive or time-sensitive decisions can deliver significant benefits,” said Brethenoux.
3. Connect decisions
Today, digital business allows companies to automate process mining and connect decisions into a network of influence and impact, that improves decisions across the whole business, not just separate parts of their organisation.
