We make hundreds of decisions every day. What to wear, what to eat for lunch, and whether we should stop at yellow or hit the gas. These are all decisions that we make without much effort. Whether we know it or not each decision we make is based off of intelligence support that we gather. When choosing what to wear we will likely check the weather. You wouldn't wear a sweater and jeans on a hot, humid afternoon.

Those who manage and operate businesses make decisions about the direction of the company. Most of these decisions are more complicated than figuring out what to wear. The decisions that a manager makes will have long lasting affects on the direction of the business. Without proper support a decision maker may make the wrong decision and lose time and money.

The best way for a decision maker to make the right decision is to have the best intelligence. If I decide to hit the gas at a yellow light but did not see the police officer at the intersection, I made the decision on incomplete intelligence. The wrong intelligence led me to decide to run the light and get a ticket. A corporate decision maker that makes a similar mistake will have much worse consequences than a traffic ticket.

Getting the Right Decision Support

The way for a company to have the best information to base decisions on is to adopt a business intelligence program. Information is powerful when applied correctly--the mountains of data a company generates includes valuable and powerful information. A business intelligence program will turn generated data into information that can be used to support decisions. Without the right intelligence a decision will likely be the wrong one.