Market research firm Aera Technology finds 75% of enterprises expect to gain significant benefits from AI-enabled decision intelligence

The new IDC white paper and global survey of Fortune 1000 companies found decision velocity and AI-enabled decision making are key factors in value generation, revealing 75% of executive, VP, and director-level respondents expect to gain significant or very significant improvements if investments in Decision Intelligence initiatives are made. The IDC research also revealed Decision Intelligence drove up to 20% improvement across product and service innovation, employee productivity, customer and employee retention, and more, since last fiscal year.

In “What Every Executive Needs to Know About AI-Powered Decision Intelligence,” IDC examines how enterprise decisions are made and the challenges and opportunities involved in achieving better decision making. The research identifies common characteristics of enterprises with decision velocity — defined by IDC as the speed at which a decision-making process can be executed within a set of enterprise controls — and the connection to business value and competitive differentiation.

“While today’s headlines speculate about potential benefits and the future of AI, our research indicates that leading organizations are using AI, analytics, and data to generate value for their customers, employees, partners, investors, and communities,” said Dan Vesset, Group Vice President, Analytics and Information Management, IDC. “What unites these organizations are clear goals and KPIs to measure them, investments to accelerate decision velocity, and pragmatic use of enabling AI, analytics and data technologies and skills.”

The IDC research highlights responses from those that have connected or integrated IDC’s six steps of a decision-making process (deemed “leaders”) — and those that have not (“followers”), uncovering the value of Decision Intelligence in enterprise AI initiatives. IDC cuts through the hype associated with AI, revealing findings that support Decision Intelligence and its ability to deliver return on investment in AI, analytics, and data.

Challenges and Opportunities

Citing key factors contributing to decision-making challenges — including the number of variables to consider when making decisions, lack of access to the required data, difficulties integrating the necessary technology, and more — IDC revealed that 33% of decisions are made primarily based on intuition and experience and 25% of decisions that should be made are not.

There was also a disconnect found between executives’ understanding of lower-level, in-the-field decision making practices of employees — respondents sharing that only 55% of executives mostly, or fully, know how these decisions are made.

However, enterprises see the potential in AI-enabled decision making and characteristics of the leaders support the value:

• Nearly double the number of leaders vs followers (33% vs 17%) indicated that they have a program for ongoing monitoring, review, and transformation of decision-making processes
• An estimated 11%-30% of leaders vs followers experienced improvements over the previous fiscal year across business metrics that include:
  • Product or service innovation: 86% of leaders vs 53% of followers
  • Employee retention: 65% of leaders vs 34% of followers
  • Customer retention: 73% of leaders vs 59% of followers
  • Risk management: 70% of leaders vs 57% of followers

“IDC’s research clearly shows the value creation divide among enterprises operationalizing decision intelligence and those that are not,” said Fred Laluyaux, CEO, Aera Technology. “The next wave of enterprise digital transformation can no longer be another data lake or planning tool. People must be empowered with innovative, intuitive technology that accelerates accurate decision making at scale and enables companies to be self-driving, self-learning, and ready to compete in a digital world.”

Survey Methodology

IDC, commissioned by Aera Technology, conducted a survey from April to May 2023 of global Fortune 1000 companies, business and IT decision makers, with $1Bn+ annual revenue ($500M+ and above for Nordics and DACH enterprises) in eight countries across six industries in order to understand their knowledge and deployment of Decision Intelligence. Potential respondents were selected in compliance with GDPR and ESOMAR standards and then qualified by a rigorous screening process to ensure they have the proper knowledge, experience and title required to provide valuable feedback regarding the survey topic. 75% of respondents worked in organizations with at least 5,000 employees. Countries include U.S., UK, France, Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, Australia, and South Korea. Industries included Consumer Packaged Goods, Pharmaceuticals, Industrial Manufacturing, Chemicals, Oil and Gas, and Technology. The survey was fielded in English, French, German, Dutch, and Korean.