James Taylor's Decision Management

Well as my blog is linked to the Business Intelligence page I thought today's posting should be about decision management and business intelligence.In honor of this I have added a Business Intelligence category to the blog. This is the first posting in the new section, although I also edited a couple of others to add them to this category as they seemed relevant to BI.

So, what to write about....

Perhaps I should start by describing the difference between traditional BI, something most people understand, and what I call "Enterprise Decision Management" or decision management. I often use this graphic

Strategic decisions, in this model, are typically low-volume decisions taken by knowledge workers. Operational decisions, in contrast, are those taken in large volume typically by front-line staff or in a completely automated way. Tactical decisions are in the middle, typically about how to handle customers or processes.

The intent here is to show that the desire to run a more intelligence business (small-b business small-i intelligence) includes using analytic insight to drive strategic, tactical and operational decisions but BI (Business Intelligence in terms of software products) tends to focus on strategic and tactical decisions. Gartner calls the two approaches analyst-driven (more like traditional BI) and process-driven (newer analytic process automation techniques). This blog, you will find, is generally concerned with decision management and decision management technologies. Often what I do is comment on BI-topics from an operational perspective - what kind of technologies, approaches, mindset do you need to apply BI-like approaches in operational processes.

So, as you read the new BI section on ebizQ, think about the kind of decision you are trying to improve and be aware that different technologies might be suitable for each type. BI tools for some, rules and predictive analytics in an SOA environment in others.

There's a fair bit on BI and decisioning over on my other blog in the BI section.

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