James Taylor, who is part of our ebizQ community, just co-authored a book (with Neil Raden) entitled "Smart (Enough) Systems," which is a great work on systematizing and managing the decision support process. I had the honor of contributing a testimonial to the work, which I'm reprinting here:
While growing up, the big rhetorical question I often heard asked was, “If we can send people all the way to the Moon and back, why can’t we…. ? (Fill in the blank with a frustration – predict tomorrow’s weather, design a car that runs on something besides oil, make a good omelet…)
The same kind of question might be asked of today’s businesses: With all the vast amounts of information technology and data that is abundant in today’s corporations, why can’t companies still comprehend want their customers want, what their employees know, and what the future directions they should take?
In Smart Enough Systems, James Taylor and Neil Raden – who have been leading the charge for more engaging business intelligence for a number of years now – attempt to finally answer this question, by looking at the current state of technology and how it is employed – or underemployed – within today’s organizations.
In fact, James and Neil point out that most organizations already have the technology in place from which they can make better decisions. It’s not technology that’s holding things back, it’s the way that decision making is managed and measured – which, in many cases, is no management or measurement at all.
Instead, too many managers throw more hardware and software at a problem, thinking that by buying and installing the latest and greatest tools and systems, they will suddenly gain wisdom and insights that will elevate their companies to the tops of their markets. However, once these systems are installed and the money is spent, managers and end users on the front lines -- the ones that are supposed to make it all happen -- receive little training and direction, and are left clueless as how to use these systems to their advantage. All too often, these expensive systems end up sitting unused, collecting dust. As James and Neil point out, "enterprise applications tend to be pretty dumb. They collect data, store it and produce reports on it.”
The way to add greater intelligence to technology-enabled decision-making is through Enterprise Decision Management, or EDM. Why is EDM so important now? As James and Neil point out, “taking control of decisions is increasingly a source of competitive advantage.” The world is flatter and much more competitive, and the more a company can automate decision making, and capture the knowledge of the most effective decision-makers, the better it can stay ahead of the curve.
Another challenge James and Neil bring up is the fact that many companies don’t know how to measure the success of their decision-making processes. In this work, James and Neil offer a methodology (“Decision Yield”) to measure decisioning success, and thus provide guidance on which technology approaches that are benefiting the business, and which aren’t.
This book is a must-read for any manager or professional that seeks to understand how human-machine interaction can be better leveraged to make sense of all that data now flowing through organizations – and make smarter decisions. And, ultimately, the lesson learned is the same with any other major technology change that has swept today's organizations -- it's not technology that means the difference between failure and success -- it's adroit and informed management that makes the difference.
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