Part of a series on Business Problem Solving
In today's fast-paced business environment, making quick and accurate decisions is crucial to stay ahead of the competition. However, with the growing complexity of data and processes, decision-making has become a challenging task for organizations. Fortunately, decision automation and augmentation technologies can help companies achieve better decision-making outcomes. In this blog post, we will explore how combining decision automation and decision augmentation can help CTOs, CEOs, marketing directors, operational staff and other business leaders make informed decisions quickly and efficiently.
Let's start with what Decision automation is. Decision automation involves using algorithms, software, and machines to streamline routine and repetitive decisions. It increases efficiency, reduces errors, and frees up your team, time and resources for more complex tasks best handled by humans, where they're best deployed. Go even further with advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and predictive analytics to automate even more complex decision-making processes. By including historical data and machine learning algorithms, Data Automation can make predictions and recommend the best course of action for various business scenarios. By automating decision-making, organizations can reduce errors and costs while improving processing speed and accuracy.
Decision augmentation, on the other hand, involves enhancing human decision-making by providing real-time insights, data visualization, and predictive analytics tools -- bringing your human creative intuition together with the most timely needs in the moment. Decision augmentation tools can provide decision-makers with better understanding and insights into the data and business processes, enabling them to make more informed and confident decisions quickly without wading through less relevant reams of data.
Sooner or later someone else is going to out-compete them by employing these exact techniques, we've seen it happen over and over historically, and that pace is accelerating.
By combining decision automation and decision augmentation, businesses achieve better decision-making outcomes, improve efficiency, and reduce costs. For instance, decision automation can be used to automate repetitive decision-making tasks, while decision augmentation can provide decision-makers with real-time insights, data visualization, and predictions for more complex decision-making scenarios. Repetition of data-compiling jobs like this are classic examples of tasks that humans are notoriously bad that. Especially at scale. In order to grow, scale, and compete, this combination helps businesses build faster and more informed decisions at scale while growing, reducing errors and increasing accuracy.
Strictly speaking, none of this is new. Decision automation and decision augmentation has been increasing its place in business for decades. The difference is now that the next level critical performance truly competitive businesses achieve are more achievable than ever -- and yet so many organizations are stuck in the old-school quagmire of "just good enough" manual processes they've relied on for so long. As a result they aren't scaling or growing nearly at the level they could be. In other words, they're not truly competing. Sooner or later someone else is going to out-compete them by employing these exact techniques, we've seen it happen over and over historically, and that pace is accelerating.
Several industries have already started using decision automation and augmentation solutions to transform their business processes into more dynamic and competitive operations. For example, healthcare providers are using predictive analytics to identify patients at high risk of readmission and provide targeted interventions to prevent them. Retail and Wholesale businesses are using predictive algorithm search and category or landing page results as well as AI-powered chatbots to improve customer experience, service and personalized recommendations. Financial institutions are using AI and machine learning to detect fraud and automate loan decisions. Just a few examples of how decision automation and augmentation is helping businesses across industries to gain a competitive advantage.
When it comes to choosing a decision automation and augmentation technical direction, it's essential to evaluate the needs and goals of your business. Consider factors such as data volume, complexity, and business processes when selecting the right tools and partnering with vendors with proven track records and expertise in your industry. By making informed decisions based on your unique business needs, you can ensure that decision automation and augmentation solutions will help you achieve your desired outcomes.
When these two constructs interact, they create a robust system that enhances both the mechanical and cognitive aspects of decision-making
It's essential to continuously refine and adapt the pairing of decision automation and augmentation to evolving business needs and changing circumstances. It's an ongoing powerful tactic for businesses striving for precision, speed, and accuracy in decision-making, businesses need to make this constant improvement a critical part of their culture. Bring these two constructs together and they create a robust model that enhances both the mechanical and cognitive aspects of decision-making. Decision automation enables rapid processing of vast volumes of data, executing repetitive decisions with unmatched speed and accuracy. Meanwhile, decision augmentation enhances human judgement, equipping decision-makers with in-depth insights and foresight, enabling them to anticipate outcomes and make strategic decisions. It's a very exciting time to be a business-builder when you embrace this kind of cultural evolution and innovation.
The synergy of decision automation and augmentation capitalises on the strengths of AI and human intelligence. While AI excels at handling large data sets and pattern detection, humans shine in areas requiring emotional intelligence, ethics, and context understanding. This combination makes the whole far greater than the sum of its parts, leading to improved decision-making that can adapt to complex and changing business environments.
The pairing approach is also flexible and can be tailored to the specific needs of an organisation. For instance, a business dealing with high volume, routine decisions may lean more heavily on automation. In contrast, a company facing complex, strategic decisions may benefit more from augmentation. In both scenarios, the pairing of decision automation and augmentation holds the potential to supercharge decision-making capabilities, driving competitive advantage and business success.
