¨Accurately Visualize The Current State Of Your Operation.¨

Decision Support is that business function specifically charged with the question, ´What do we know about our operation, and how do we know it?" The deliverable is Metrics and Measures. In this view, financial data is a specific instance in this broader category.

In a business of any size, a ´complete and clear picture´ of the current state of the business is a collection of summaries. This is true from operations and accounting to marketing. For example, you might see reports that contrast: east versus west coast sales, plant versus plant profitability, shift versus shift utilization, and manufacturing lot versus lot quality.

Now, ´east versus west coast´ may not be the crucial distinction, and that is the point.   We want our data, reports and statistics to become  actionable ideas that positively impact decisions and behavior. Identifying which distinctions are critical is one of the secrets of successful business metrics.

If such distinctions were intrinsic, any honest person could simply ¨look¨ and determine how to organize data into information.But, proper organization of data into information is work that requires knowledge and skill. If improperly done, honest and accurate data (badly summarized) will send the organization marching off in exactly the wrong direction. (I have multiple ´actually happened´examples that I have shared with clients in classes and consultation.)

Decision Support is not "in" your technology, quality or accounting departments, and should not be confused with software packages (Decision Support Systems) that you might buy. It is a crucial and on-going  capability that must be developed by management, and it requires an integration with  accounting, information technology and quality.

Decision Support is Information Architecture at its highest level, where information truly is about the business ideas within the data, and not the numbers, calculations and graphs. It is key to simplification, to maximizing your ´ease of doing business´, and to rapidity and accuracy in decision-making.

A ´complete and clear picture´ is the cause of confident action, and our  Management Philosophy´s #1 principle demands it.