Business leaders seem to pick for themselves one of two styles of decision making: decisions based on data or decisions based on gut-feel. Both have their place, but only the former can seem to be enhanced through the use of technology. When measuring work inside business processes, gaps in data are assumed to be a failure of the analysis, rather than an underlying indicator of something worse.

If you take a read of ZDNet's Is BI ready to meet the real world? article today, it should reinforce the fact that leaders pick their own style, though the article pushes the belief that logic trumps intuition, even if the data it is based on is only 70% complete. The article suggests that intuition and the gut can be all too easily influenced by such 'evils' as marketing and branding, things that are designed to generate a reaction at a subconscious level. The problem is that a leader making a decision based on data is also being manipulated - by the often blinkered assumption that the data shows all the facts, or is even relevant to the decision he or she is trying to make. Numbers, charts, and 'lies, damned lies and statistics' present a view that one can not argue with.

My experience working with business process management (BPM) tools and the statistics they show are that rarely, if ever, is the performance information they present at all truly valuable to a business leader attempting to make high level decisions. "OK, so BPM and process intelligence don't give me that information. I'll just use the information I do get from it.". The problem here is that the data will lull you into a false sense of security - you will believe that you have everything you need, and will force fit decisions into what the data shows you. It is hard to get the gut and logic to work fairly, side-by-side, when both know that they are right.

So instead, it becomes important that you gain a better view of what is really going on inside your business processes, while actually running them better. If BPM can't provide the data for what your people are doing, its probably because the tool or implementation can't actually influence or assist them in what they are doing. That is what the data is really telling you: there is a gap in your data because there is a gap in your processes.

If you want your business to run better, don't try and fill the data with gut-instinct. Instead follow what your gut is really trying to tell you: the BPM implementation you currently have is not delivering all it should. Work to improve it, or replace it with something more appropriate.

See the full article on the blog Improving It blog

To implement workflow and process automation in your business today, visit www.consected.com

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