Today’s advanced analysis methods and the increasing availability of data are putting ever more pressure on established business structures and cultures to change. Decisions based on intuition and experience are increasingly being challenged by a data-driven decision-making style. However, organizations are still exploring ways to benefit from the collective intelligence of employees in the decision-making process.
Less than 50% of companies agree that information is highly valued for decision-making or treated as an asset in their organization today, but two-thirds believe it will be in the future.
Only one-third of enterprises currently use information to identify new business opportunities and predict future trends and behavior, but most of the remaining two-thirds plan to do so in the future.
Businesses with a collaborative style of decision-making treat information much more as an asset than companies with other decision-making approaches. They are also more likely to use information to identify new business opportunities, predict future trends and behavior or generate revenue with data.
58% of respondents say their companies base at least half of their regular business decisions on gut feel or experience rather than being driven by data and information.
Significantly fewer best-in-class companies than laggards base the majority of their business decisions on gut feel or experience (40% vs. 70%). This highlights a link between using information for decision-making and being able to benefit from information and achieve a strategic advantage over rivals.
On average, organizations only use 50% of all available information for decision-making.
The most commonly cited reason for not using information as the basis for decision-making is that the necessary information was not available.
The quality of data is the second biggest barrier to data-based decision-making. This reflects a clear need for greater attention to data quality and more efficient data governance. Because 62% of companies want to treat information as an asset in the future, it is critical that organizations invest in protecting the quality and value of that asset.
50% of all decisions in businesses are based on information, and only half of the available information in organizations is actually used for decision-making. In order to unlock the potential of the remaining data, the following needs to be done:
Overall, the median number of internal data sources used to support decision-making is 5, so most companies are dealing with multiple sources. The goal of having only one source, such as an enterprise data warehouse, has been achieved by only 6% of respondents. Integrating external data sources is also quite common: the mean number is three external sources.
Around a half of all respondents think that the number of data sources they use is increasing. The growth rate for external sources is a bit higher than that for internal data sources.
