Issue 4 Summer 008
BW» What do you see as the trends in other SB» Information overload is a big problem because the
industries in decisioning services? tools that we have for dealing with the information have
not advanced at the same rate as the volume of data that
SB» I think the trends are very similar to those in we’re working with. In the last three years, more data has
financial services. Consumer expectations are increasing been created than in the previous forty thousand years of
dramatically and consumers are no longer willing to be human history but the tools have not evolved at the same
a part of mass treatment plans – they want individual pace. We’re buried under piles of reports.
attention, they want individual products, and they want
individual services. Competition is also increasing and My dream is no more reports. Instead of giving me a
the role of data is becoming much more important. report, give me the exceptions – tell me what’s important
instead of making me look for it. I want much more focus
BW» There is another trend that many of us on automated alerting, on the ability to have software
suffer from – and that’s information overload. In event detectives trawling for the data and suggesting
your experience, how are organisations coping those areas where I can make better decisions.
with that?
I also think that humans are much better at visualisation
than looking at rows and columns of numbers. Too
LITTLE DECISIONS ADD UP
many of the reports that land on people’s desks and in
“We judge leaders by how well they make big,
their email boxes are rows and columns of numbers.
strategic decisions. But corporate success also
Humans can reasonably understand and make sense
depends on how well rank-and-file employees make
out of a limited set of numbers in this format. With simple
thousands of small decisions.
visualisations such as charts, plots and graphs we can
Do I give this client a special price? handle hundreds of numbers. With more advanced
How do I handle this customer’s complaint?
visualisations – techniques like self-organising maps,
Should I offer a seat upgrade to this passenger?
heat maps and more innovative ways of presenting data
which are still largely in the research stages – then you
By themselves, such daily calls - increasingly made
can start looking at thousands of data items.
with the help of enterprise decision-management
technology – have little impact on business
BW» What do you see organisations doing to get
performance. Taken together, they influence
the right culture in place?
everything from profitability to reputation.”
Frank Rohde, “Little Decisions Add Up”,
SB» The biggest cultural change is a shift from what
Harvard Business Review, June 2005
I call gut feel decision making to quantitatively driven
decision making.
18 | Perspectives on technology
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