Productivity
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What exactly is decision Intelligence, and what benefits can it provide in the hybrid work process? Discover the answers to these questions here.
How do you prevent employee burnout? Improve team collaboration? Improve company performance? Measure and benchmark employee deep work time?
The answer: Decision Intelligence
Data-driven technology has revolutionized the way companies make decisions, allowing for faster and more accurate choices. In this article, we will delve into the benefits of decision intelligence and team productivity analytics in maintaining a successful business and boosting profits.
The pandemic introduced a host of new obstacles for organizations, including the shift to a hybrid workplace and a rise in employee disengagement. Can decision intelligence be the answer to overcoming these challenges?
We will explore this question and more in this article.
What is Decision Intelligence?
Decision Intelligence is a data-driven process that enables businesses to make faster, more accurate and fact based decisions, rather than relying on intuition.
When the stakes are high – for example trying to scale a business in a competitive space, strategy alignment underpins success.
The world has evolved rapidly, data collection doesn’t require hiring armies of consultants analyzing data, the rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning now makes connecting multiple data sources scaleable and achieving decision intelligence a realistic possibility for every business.
While business intelligence has proved enormously valuable historically to blue chip enterprises, decision intelligence is fast becoming a wider used term with startups, scaleups and large corporates.
Put simply, decision intelligence is the strategic application of artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning to make better business decisions.
The way we work has shifted dramatically in recent times, and as organisations struggle implement hybrid work strategies and collaborative cultures, the importance for decision intelligence grows.
Challenges With Remote and Hybrid Teams
For remote and hybrid workers, technology has become more important than ever. Sharing documents with colleagues, attending video meetings and communicating and collaborating with team members through office apps and tools has increased 10 fold.
A recent study from Unisys has identified that organisations implementing a hybrid workplace must look beyond simply providing access to the latest technology.
It found that although 55% of business leaders said adopting the latest technology was key to an ideal employee experience, whereas only 43% of employees agreed. In the same study, business leaders showed a greater concern around the practicalities of remote working than employees.
These above points show there is a disconnect in culture and trust, business leaders must overcome these challenges before throwing technology at a problem to solve it.
Where possible, organizations need to use decision intelligence to inform how to make a hybrid workplace successful, and this doesn’t mean constant new technology, it means connecting the technology you have and understanding what the data-driven intelligence is telling you.
The Changing Face of People Analytics
People analytics is a common term used to describe the way organizations identify, attract, develop, and retain talent. However, many organizations still make those decisions based on instinct and intuition.
Although people analytics to date has helped unlock some power of data—the real value creation is yet to be uncovered. When we combine people analytics with decision intelligence, we create ‘Company Analytics’.
As the new era of decision intelligence evolves we must also consider employee productivity, and how decision intelligence can increase organizational transparency and improve information flow between all individuals, teams, departments, clients and partners.
Improving Team Productivity
Output divided by input has traditionally defined productivity. Sounds simple, right?
Although the definition isn’t wrong, it typically doesn’t take into consideration the outcomes of the work being delivered.
Let’s look at it from two sides of the coin…
- Your productivity metric tracks the amount calls your sales team is making. If caller A makes 22 calls and caller B makes 90 calls in the same workday you could assume caller B is more productive.
- Outcome is the caller A had a talk time of 10 minutes and generated 7 qualified leads, whereas caller B had a talk time under 2 minutes and generated 3 qualified leads.
Which caller was more productive? We can conclude activity does not equal outcomes in this example.
Decision intelligence increases your productivity insights, and if you want to truly increase team productivity, you need to look beyond singular outputs and establish connected data sources that provide a complete single view on productivity.
Put bluntly, the lack of productivity among your team impacts your innovation and hiders growth. And while we all have good intentions and make small efforts to improve productivity, it's rarely measured effectively or used as a strategic metric in leadership team meeting and company KPIs.
By adopting decision intelligence to improve team productivity you will in turn improve employee engagement, increase employee deep work time, improve collaboration among employees and reduce employee burnout.
The Benefits of Decision Intelligence
Before we delve into some of the benefits of decision intelligence, it is important to distill the hype. Decision intelligence won’t make every decision for your business automatically, it will have provide you with the right connected data to make better data-informed decision.
Yes the human factor will still be needed in business decision making.
Although the artificial intelligence or machine learning part of decision intelligence can quickly analyse large amounts data from multiple sources and without being prone to cognitive biases, to maximize the benefits of decision intelligence, human validation is still required.
Below are three core benefits of decision intelligence which businesses can expect.…
1. Improved Cross Functional Alignment
Functional alignment is often a struggle for companies, as current methods tend to be too subjective and based on intuition. This despite the belief of 91% of companies that data-driven decision-making can greatly benefit their growth, only 57% actually utilize data in their decision-making process.
To gain a competitive edge, speed up market entry, and enhance customer satisfaction, effectively aligning team communication, collaboration, and information flow is crucial. You can find 10 ways of improving your cross-team collaboration and team alignment from our previous article.
Decision intelligence allows for a thorough examination of various data sources, revealing hidden patterns and potential inconsistencies that can greatly enhance business performance.
2. Hybrid Culture Transformation
A recent McKinsey survey found that only 20% of organizations are satisfied with the speed of their decision-making. That leaves 80% of businesses reporting they are spending too much time on making decisions, only to later realize that their choice was not the best one.
As companies adapt to more remote or hybrid work models, many are also undertaking culture transformation initiatives. However, without the proper data and technology in place, these initiatives often fall short of their goals.
Decision intelligence is a critical aspect of successful hybrid culture transformations, even for smaller organizations. Analyzing data on employee productivity, team collaboration, employee sentiment, and information silos is crucial for making better and faster decisions that improve business performance.
3. Increased Team Efficiency and Effectiveness
It's important to differentiate between efficiency and effectiveness. As the example earlier in the article exemplified, input does not equate output in today's workplace. In our article "3 strategies to improve team efficiency", we discussed how efficiency is about doing things correctly, while effectiveness is about doing the correct things.
Decision intelligence allows organizations to enhance both employee efficiency and team effectiveness. By making better and faster decisions about the right actions to take, and empowering teams to execute them effectively, decision intelligence can significantly benefit your business.
Are You Ready for Decision Intelligence?
When executed well, decision intelligence can start providing high-impact business performance in a matter of weeks.
Here at Flowtrace we can help you navigate the minefield and connect the dots between team productivity, cross functional collaboration and employee engagement.
For more information, why not check out more information about how we connect the dots from our plans page? Alternatively, please feel free to contact us today and book a discovery call. We're more than happy to answer any questions you may have!
