Predictive decision-making is one way to be proactive with your business. It means looking beyond the current situation, rather than just looking at what’s happening today. It focuses on eliminating or minimizing problems before they pop up, or acting before symptoms appear, whereas reactive is the opposite – acting after symptoms appear. Prevention is often better than treatment, and that can be said for many areas in life such as healthcare, fire prevention, natural disasters, and yes, even in business. Yet, how does this type of approach apply to business decision-making?
What is Predictive Decision-Making?
Data-driven decisions are gaining popularity among organizations because they understand they can make smarter decisions using predictive models. A report published by Statista Research Department said that in 2020, the respondents they surveyed demonstrated a 12% increase in implementing data-driven decision making within their global organizations when compared to 2018.
Predictive decisions are accurate predictions that enhance and optimize business decisions. When done correctly, it can transform almost any type of organization and significantly lower operating costs while also increasing profit margins. With all this in mind (and because your success = our success), we’re going to explain how incorporating data automation processes into your business is a gamechanger in moving your business from a reactive decision-making organization to more of a predictive decision-making organization.
Deep Real-Time Insights into Your Business
Most companies usually have a spreadsheet junkie combining information from different systems, and as you’re probably familiar with, by the time the report is finished it’s inaccurate and outdated. Erroneous data cause leaders to make blind, “best-guesses” or “going with intuition” decisions, and it definitely doesn’t allow for effective predictive decision-making. Forgoing spreadsheets and embracing automation reduces the chance of errors and provides your organization with deep, real-time data insights into your business. What you couldn’t see before, you can very clearly see with an automated system. Plus, your new reports & dashboards can be as detailed or as high level as you want, and it’s all live so you can easily and quickly access each data point that makes up your business metrics.
Access to real-time data insights empowers you to make predictive decisions based on future insights like detecting market trends or forecasting events that impact your business before they actually happen.
Data Aggregation from Multiple Sources
It’s common to feel overwhelmed with the bucketload of data your organization owns. Knowing how to organize and analyze this ocean of information is paramount to predictive decision-making. Your aggregate data holds a complex story that is difficult to read when it’s all over the place. A complete integrated platform that offers prebuilt API connectors, like DOMO, brings all your data together in one place. This kind of solution increases your data’s value and provides detailed analysis through visualizations, predictive models, and KPI forecasting all from multiple sources.
It’s hard to keep a pulse on your business when its metrics are spread out across multiple systems that don’t talk to each other. The more siloed your data is, the harder it is to get the whole picture. So, bring your data together and get the insights you need to make predictive agile decisions in your organization. To sum it up in a sound byte: predictive analysis brings insight to the unknown.
Automate Complex Calculations, KPIs & Metrics
As mentioned before, automation is key to effective predictive decision-making. Do you remember your spreadsheet junkie? The person who likely spends days combining information from your disconnected systems into a presentable and clear format you can, hopefully, understand? Well, automation is a massive pain relief to them. Automating data processes is a big step toward improving organizational productivity and profitability. As process automation initiatives are implemented across organizations, your ROI can be measured in several ways — through employee time savings (44%), cost savings (26%), and faster operations (26%). Not only is the manual data process time-consuming and expensive, but it’s also an unbelievable waste of valuable resources.
Jacob Specht, VP of Executive Analytics at BT Partners says, “We regularly replace 3-4 days of someone’s job with a little bit of code, and it makes their life so much easier.” Think about the time saved and the better ways in which this team member can spend it. Rather than spend days untangling the data across several systems, they can spend their time and expertise on interpreting the data to uncover those hard-to-find clues that reveal trends and patterns that potentially can unlock huge tangible benefits to your organization.
Predictive decision-making is really a no-brainer. Using its methods is sure to provide your team with actionable data insights that fuels innovation and competitiveness. This is what our DOMO experts do all the time and we’re happy to help your team gain insight, time, and efficiency – we’re just a phone call away.
