Why ARE you still generating reports?

Mike Kavitz asked this question – Why are you still generating reports? – on his blog today and it made me think. Why ARE you still generating reports? Not just in the way Mike means the question (why is IT generating reports instead of empowering users with information). I mean this in a broader way – why is the solution perceived to be information, no matter how presented? The only reason to present information (other than the required outputs like invoices etc Mike identifies) is to help someone make a decision. So why not focus on the decision itself? Perhaps there is a person who should make the decision unassisted except by having access to information. More likely there is a lot more work the system could be doing. The work of making a decision could be shared much more effectively, in most cases, between the people and the machine. A focus on the decision and on how the decision is made, who wants to control the limits of the decision, what rules and regulations constrain the decision and on how the information available might influence that decision may just improve the presentation of information but it may also dramatically change how you think about the decision. Enterprise decision management is about this focus on decisions and about how computers can do more of the heavy lifting in decision-making.