This article was developed for the special Business Intelligence section of the newspaper El Mercurio – Chile, published on 3/28/2016.

Let's imagine the following situation: The CEO of a medium-sized company needs to decide whether or not to invest in launching a new product line on the market. He knows full well that this decision will affect the future of his company. Fortunately, the organization recently invested in a state-of-the-art Business Intelligence (BI) tool that, after a few months of projects and dedication from a part of his team, had recently become operational.

BI tools are capable of extracting information from the company's vast databases and compiling useful information for decision-making, as well as analyzing elements from different angles. Using a BI tool, the director was able to identify that the consumer market for similar products was generating better margins for the company and that the products offered had been experiencing a systematic sales decline in recent years. Based on this data, it was easy to decide to invest in the new product line.

There is no doubt that assertive decision-making is fundamental for business, being essential for the success or failure of companies. Organizations are increasingly seeking tools to support them in this process, generating valuable insights, quality information, market competitiveness, innovations, and ultimately, results.

But, what to do from the decision made?

After the decision: next steps

It is important to note that decision-making is part of a larger plan, and by itself, it does not guarantee the outcome, which will only come when the decision is actually implemented. Therefore, we need to follow three steps after the determination: the preparation of the Execution plan from the decision, the development of a monitoring system from the plan, to know if it was actually executed and the Analysis of results generated from the execution of the plan.

The execution plan consists of determining the objectives of a decision and breaking them down into goals, which in turn are broken down into operational actions. Each action has a responsible person, a deadline, and a superior to whom the person responsible for the action reports.

The systematic monitoring of the plan will ensure that actions are executed on time and if they require other complementary actions to achieve the final objective. This measurement is done through performance indicators (KPIs) which are constantly monitored. The indicator helps the manager understand how their business is doing and allows them to identify what efforts are needed to achieve the planned results.

And the analysis of results is done by reviewing what was generated from meeting the goals. Were these the expected results? Do we need to replan?

When a manager verifies through reports that their objectives have not been met, they need to have tools at their disposal that allow them to take action. The ideal approach is to do this within an automated system that controls indicators, goals, processes, and projects in a single place. What few people realize is that BI tools strongly support decision-making, and even with all the company's performance information, managers lack the mechanisms to execute the necessary changes. The good news is that there are other strategic management software solutions that aim to help from this point forward, becoming complementary.

See the article published in the newspaper by clicking here.