Decision Management 101 Part 2
In Part 1 of our Decision Management 101 series, we ended on how decision management gives organizations more control and agility. In this post, we will go more into how decision management can address business growth challenges.
For several years now, “digital transformation” has been the buzzword and promise of a more efficient, agile, and customer-centric organization. Yet in practice, few have been able to achieve all three. Typically, one or more goals end up being sacrificed in service of the other(s). Lack of clear strategy, legacy systems, and talent shortage are often cited as the main drivers. As a result, organizations are spending a lot of time and resources on fixing problems created by their digital transformation initiatives rather than capitalizing on new opportunities. These problems will only get bigger as the organization grows and decision-making becomes more complex. Decision management is an approach to digital transformation that enables organizes to gain in efficiency, agility, and customer experience simultaneously and in a manner that scales.
Lack of clear strategy
Often “digital transformation” projects fail because the focus is on technology (or shiny new objects) rather than business outcomes. For example, a friend of mine recently went through a major CRM implementation project in her organization only to have user adoption rates at less than 5%. From her perspective, it wasn’t that they picked the wrong vendor, but it was that they didn’t have a strong “why” for implementing a CRM in the first place. With decision management, they why is clear (or at least it should be). You have a specific decision that you want to make both faster and smarter such as processing insurance claims or loan applications.
Legacy systems
Decision management systems (DMS) addresses legacy systems in several ways.
- Automation: First, a DMS can isolate and automate decisions that were previously manual and thus reduce the reliance on legacy systems and custom code.
- Integration: Second, a DMS can (and should) work with your existing infrastructure so that you’re not re-inventing the wheel.
- Modernization: Third, a DMS can augment your legacy systems by providing new capabilities such as machine learning and real-time metrics.
Talent shortage
When it comes to digital transformation, talent shortage usually means software engineering talent shortage. However, many decision management platforms like SMARTS™ offer low-code and no-code tools which allow non-technical users to effectively design intelligent user interactions and manage decisions. The goal of decision management, after all, is to bring decisions away from IT and back into the hands of the subject matter experts and business analysts that are responsible for business outcomes.
By addressing these challenges, decision management offers an path forward for organizations to not only react to market changes but also take advantage of new market opportunities.
Want to learn how SMARTS™ can address your business growth challenges? Contact us today to request a custom demo.
