I recently took part in an interview with The Digital Bulletin about all of the upcoming trends on the rise in 2022 below is my contribution.
Decision Intelligence, Gartner is predicting that this is a buzzword that’s going to be big in 2022.
But what is it?
Simply put, it’s all about business choices. Decision Intelligence (DI) is the discipline which aims to improve an organisation’s decision-making by applying machine learning at scale. Today, DI unlocks value in an organisation’s data, putting Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the hands of commercial decision makers for the first time. This allows organisations to go beyond human limitations to analyse huge amounts of data, quickly use it for insight that will inform decisions, and be able to monitor the impact. The use of AI allows decision making to be faster, more consistent and higher quality, as machines don’t need to rest or have off days.
There are exciting case studies of businesses using DI to help manage their inventory, demand planning and some forecasting tasks.
You may already have seen an element of technology informing behaviour, if you’ve made a film choice using Netflix’s suggestions or chosen a book based on Amazon’s steer. These recommendation engines are powered by huge amounts of data and use analytics to make suggestions. This is truly DI in action as people are being helped to make better decisions.
You can imagine how frontline employees are keen to have appropriate information to help them do their jobs better. There’s a raft of new approaches to information design
being created to help people synthesise complex information quickly and reach an informed decision. It goes beyond internal data and done well includes customer sentiment i.e. social listening to incorporate into near real-time analysis of data on which to optimise decisions.
There are some potential pitfalls to be mindful of. We’re talking about data, so as ever the quality of data that gets fed into the AI system is paramount. You get out what you put in, so you’re probably going to have to spend some time getting the data in shape. There’s a real move to remove bias from datasets and to ensure that you’re being as equitable as possible in your AI endeavours. This is obviously the morally correct thing to do. It’s also going to lead to competitive advantage if you’re analysing data that others aren’t!
As ever with a new technology coming into being, it can be an anxiety provoking time for employees. However, the general consensus is that AI will lead to more, and better-quality jobs, as humans and machines work together and the AI picks up the boring, repetitive work that people aren’t very good at (in comparison to machines).
While you’re probably going to see a lot more articles written about DI, practical adoption of the technology is likely to be a case of phased evolution rather than a paradigm shift in the next year.
You can read what the other experts had to say here