The Digital Organization is About Better Decisions

The need for better and faster decisions is rising fast and the means for enabling them is growing fast. The challenge for organizations will be to learn how to master the new approaches for better decisions. We all heard of the story about correlating beer and diaper sales resulting in higher revenue. This story emerged in an age where speed and scope were much different than today with expanding scopes, increasing speeds and new combinations of analytic capabilities (poly-analytics). Let's dive into some of the factors to consider in decision making today.

Inside / Outside:

Because of performance issues, decisions were determined in a separate environment and slow analytic behavior was the norm. Today with big data, in memory and in process context, there is a big opportunity to make better and faster decisions. Now decisions can be made in-line emerging scope processes. Also the variety of data types is expanding to audio and video thus kicking off the link to semiotic and in context meaning. Because of this embedding of some decisions, DMN is evolving to a first class standard linked to process (BPMN) and events.

Decisions Everywhere:

Decisions are used in many ways and will become much more important as processes can now include work that is not totally defined and structured. Decisions are used to recognize conditions that need attention and more analysis. Decisions are used to advise people what actions might be taken with statistical certainty. Decisions are used to act automatically when given the freedom, parameters and constraints. As people and machine assistance collaborate to solve emerging work issues and decide to produce the best results under the evolving circumstance, decisions will become essential for work assignment and completion.

Decisions Enable Actions:

Decisions can help in deciding the types and combination of analytic approaches to help solve emerging patterns. Decisions are key when to apply and adjust constraints to free flowing and parallel processes. Decisions are essential in formulating parameters, rules, goals and tolerances. Decisions are the back bone for recognizing new events, opportunistic patterns, threats and better practices.


Net; Net:

As work becomes less structured the role of decisions become much more important. As work get delegated to cognitive computing (smart agents), the role of decisions become more important. As action and work management become more goal directed, decisions become more important. The more complexity and freedom introduced into work management, the more important decisions become. As processes and decisions interact dynamically, the smarter processes become and the more unstructured work can be completed in line with desired business outcomes.