A report out in December from the Economist Intelligence Unit says, “Only 3% of [C-suite executives] describe their companies as ‘experts’ in using business data to drive better decisions, and only 27% agree that their company makes better, faster business decisions than their main competitors.”
According to The intelligent enterprise: Creating a culture of speedy and efficient decision-making:
- Decision-making is accelerating, and becoming centralised in the C-suite, rather than being pushed
out to regions or business units.
- Despite the wide recognition that accurate and timely decision-making is crucial, most firms’ ability to
make good decisions needs improvement.
- Customer service is a significant trouble spot. Information from customer service and support is ranked
among the most critical to a company’s business strategy, yet it ranks poorly as a source of good
business insight.
- Although data-driven decision-making is espoused by the C-suite, formal governance policies
or procedures to ensure the consistency, integrity and accuracy of the data are rare. Even fewer
companies dedicate resources to information governance, which is key to ensuring that information is
properly analysed and transformed into actionable intelligence.
Fascinating that only 3% of executives would describe their own companies as being the best at using timely, relevant and accurate information for descision-making.
There’s one graph, in particular, that should grab the attention of any savvy knowledge and information professional out there. It speaks to many potential opportunities out there for you.
About the survey
This survey included 208 respondents, 21% of whom were CEOs, presidents or managing directors, 45% held other C-level titles, and 23% were senior vicepresidents, vice-presidents or directors. Thirty-eight percent of respondents were located in North America, 27% in Western Europe and 23% in Asia-Pacifi c, while 29% worked at companies with annual revenue of US$10bn or more and 31% of respondents worked at companies with annual revenue of US$500m or less.
