I saw this list of Top 10 CIO Business and Technology Priorities in 2013 from Gartner the other day and it caught my eye. In particular I was struck by the potential for Decision Management to impact both business and technology priorities on this list. Obviously one can tie almost anything to a priority like “Increasing enterprise growth” so let’s focus on the strong, obvious ones. Business Priorities first:
2. Delivering operational results
The focus of Decision Management is on operational decisions. Only an improvement in operational decisions can improve operational results. Think about it – if you do the same (operational) things the same way you will get the same results. To get different results, better results, you must decide to act differently – to do this thing when before you did that thing. And operational results are going to be improved by making better decisions at an operational level. Operational decisions drive operational results so apply Decision Management.
3. Reducing enterprise costs
A really common use case for Decision Management Systems is reducing costs – not just IT maintenance costs but also by eliminating fines, breaking traditional staffing ratios, finding more fraud and more. Lots of cost reduction use cases are in the new version of the Decision Management Systems Platform Technologies Report.
4. Attracting and retaining new customers
If you want to attract more customers, you have to decide to market to them differently. If you want to retain more customers, you have to decide to treat them differently. Decisions are at the core of improved customer treatment, especially in the increasingly real-time and multi-channel world of today where centrally managed decision-making is the only way to target consistently and rapidly enough. Check out this post for more on using analytics in retention.
9. Implementing analytics and big data
Decision Management applies predictive analytics and big data effectively. Check out this article on Information Management “Predictive Analytics: Making Little Decisions with Big Data.”
Not bad. How about the Technology Priorities?
1. Analytics and business intelligence
Analytics and BI show an ROI because they improve decision making. Putting decisions first, identifying and modeling the decisions you want to improve, is going to be critical to effective application of analytics.
2. Mobile technologies
With different form factors and different use cases, mobile devices require more than just the effective presentation of data – they require back-end systems that make decisions, recommendations and suggestions. If you are putting a mobile interface on an old style application you’re just putting lipstick on a pig. Check out this article on mobile and Decision Management.
5. Legacy modernization
I have seen many legacy applications that could best be modernized by extracting one or two critical decisions and using a business rules management system to better manage those decisions. Most of the application could be left as is once the decisions had been extracted and were being managed. Check out this post on legacy modernization with business rules for instance.
7. CRM
Decision Management is by far the best way to improve your CRM approach – focusing on the customer treatment decisions that matter will maximize your ability to apply analytics and improve the effectiveness of your staff. Check out this post on Customer Decision Management.
As I said, I could probably tie Decision Management to all of these but these are the real connections. Decision Management can help you deliver on these priorities.
