Decision Process Improvement (DPI) is an idea that I think goes hand in hand with the development of linked data. The very realities of the Semantic Web, the feasibility of totally integrated data across the enterprise must necessarily be a paradigm shift for the way decisions are made in business. The assembly of knowledge assets and the business intelligence that will be derived will cause us to rethink and improve those processes that lead to how we make many decisions throughout a business day.

Decision Support Systems (DSS) have been around a long time, as have data warehousing & mining, OLAP, executive decision support systems and enterprise resource planning applications to name a few to help us get through a day in business. DSSs are a class of information systems that in many ways are processes toward decision making. And, if there is any universally accepted taxonomy of a DSS, I would like to hear about it. The basic classifications are passive, active and cooperative systems. Then, there are the different modes of assistance that are required:

1. A model-driven DSS emphasizes access to and manipulation of a statistical, financial, optimization, or simulation model.

2. A communication-driven DSS supports more than one person working on a shared task.

3. A data-driven DSS or data-oriented DSS emphasizes access to and manipulation of a time series of internal company data and, sometimes, external data.

4. A document-driven DSS manages, retrieves, and manipulates unstructured information in a variety of electronic formats.

5. A knowledge-driven DSS provides specialized problem-solving expertise stored as facts, rules, procedures, or in similar structures.

Other means of supporting decision processes include reports, dashboards and scorecards.

Now a new factor comes into play, that of structured data. All the previous aforementioned support systems pull information resources from distributed repositories or silos. The trouble though is no business has ever achieved the holy grail of IS and that is a complete integration of data across the enterprise in terms of interoperability. Consequently, while each has its purpose they all have drawbacks as a result. Most of the data lacks structure and semantics.

As more firms take initiatives to structure their data internally, machine to machine processing and search for knowledge across this integration will be offering up this shift putting pressure on the way we think about DSS. This thought process is Decision Process Improvement in the form of new tools that may cause the marriage between some of the existing assistant models.

8:00 AM - Business Intelligence Brief

The Daily Intelligence Brief sounds more like a CIA or FBI confidential document prepared for the President of the United States or Secretary of Defense on the state of our nations security. The “Right Hand Man” for a busy executive or owner is the John Wubbel Consultancy’s Business Intelligence Brief. Executive Briefs are abbreviated summaries that sift out extraneous information and provides the reader with the most pressing details on a particular topic. The 8:00 AM Business Intelligence Brief (BIB) differs from Executive Briefs that read like news in that a BIB is actionable intelligence on a cross section of events, issues or strategic initiatives that may impact business operations. Consequently, it empowers the executive decision maker with a criticality factor and linked data to the originating source if more in depth details are immediately required. A criticality value in context gives the sense of priority, potential risk, or urgency while the action part suggests or infers which direction a decision should take. And this ability to make a more precise decision is the pay off in terms of productivity, operational resiliency and continuity.

The underlying mechanism is a proprietary platform with an automation engine that supports BIB push, pull or emergency notifications delivered to exactly the right executive or senior management person in a position to act upon the intelligence. This is crucial in realizing the savings BIB can bring to an organization.

Decision Process Improvement (DPI) is greatly enhanced through the automation capability to compensate for each reported item over the life cycle of an event from day to day BIB deliveries. The factors of the key items reported in BIB are continually reanalyzed for items that may go hot requiring immediate awareness by management for minimizing impact on operations. Otherwise, they are updated in the next day 8:00 AM BIB release reflected by the criticality value and its priority relevance.

The intelligence brief is not just for top executives. A wide variety of applications are finding practical use for BIB in business process improvements as for example between different departments or organizations within a firm. As a knowledge communications device, one department might maintain dynamic information yet, another is solely dependent upon that intelligence to execute its mission. The BIB can take Intel from the many and report direct to the few eliminating shotgun distributions. Everyone from Deputy Directors, Directors, Senior Directors & Management staff to Vice President levels become proactive in their operation management activities.