Monday, June 27, 2016

Using Good Decision Making to Drive Value



EY - The Future of Decision Making


Making the right decision is hard. Companies have to frame the questions properly, find the right data to support the analysis, and do all this in a way that is transparent and repeatable. In 2012, Ernst & Young LLP (EY) commissioned a survey of 285 senior executives globally from across the consumer products sector. 81% of participants indicated that they needed to improve their decision-making speed and level of insight.

Survey respondents suggested that their people spent too much time making decisions based on intuition, working on mechanical tasks and focusing on unnecessary detail. Instead, they wanted their people to be adding more value through better use of leading indicators, conducting root cause analysis of issues, and linking strategy with resource allocation, planning and reporting.

To improve their performance management capabilities and drive profitable growth, companies need to take a more encompassing approach that not only implements driver analytics, but also uses the analytics to mathematically link business strategies with the market, competitor, operational and financial forces that drive value and, by extension, good decision making. Learn more from the EY guidance, The future of decision making: 5 Insights for Executives.



PwC - Using Data and Analytics to Re-Imagine Forecasting


According to PwC (United States), we are always forecasting - thinking about what will happen, assessing its likelihood, and contemplating the implications. But for CFOs, the stakes are much higher. The cost of being off the mark can be huge, not just in perception but also in dollars. A company’s cost of capital can be impacted by their assumptions and forecasts, and failure to accurately forecast demand fluctuations can result in too much, or not enough, inventory. In each of these situations, the cost of being wrong today can become extremely costly in the future.


This paper talks about the steps and factors a CFO may consider as they re-imagine forecasting in a way that allows themselves and their counterparts in the C-Suite to tease out signals that matter and deliver more value to their organizations in the short and long term. Learn more from the 2016 PwC guidance, Reimagine forecasting: High stakes decision making for CFOs.