How an investigator can help business decision-making

“If only I’d known that, I’d never have made that decision or taken that action, ” Craig S. Fleisher and Babette E. Bensoussan, well known business analysts, often hear such lament from decision-makers, they say.

With objective and accurate information, business investigations can help better business decision-making.

Business and decision-making

“All business is driven by decisions,'' said Fleisher and Bensoussan.

Some decisions are strategic and far-reaching, attending to both immediate and long term issues, setting the course for the foreseeable future, said Fleisher and Bensoussan. For the immediate future, monthly, weekly, and daily decisions set the course. 

 The business can make decisions proactively when imposing its way of doing things on its environment and the market, Fleisher and Bensoussan says. When the business responds to external events, including crises and emergencies, its decision-making can be rather responsive, they added. When crises or market and economic uncertainty hit a business, it may need to make decisions for its immediate survival, said Richard Pettinger, a business professor at the University College London.

Yet, decision-making is based on the best possible information available at the time. 

Particularly, to decide whether to enter into new markets, products, services and activities, obtaining the best possible information is critical, said Pettinger.

Competitive Intelligence

Competitive intelligence, a sort of business investigation, provides decision makers accurate and current information about the business’s competitive environment, and a plan for using that information, Fleisher and Bensoussan said. Competitive intelligence links signals, events, perceptions, and data into discernible patterns and trends concerning the business and competitive environment. 

Competitive intelligence detects opportunities or threats; remove or reduce blind-spots, risks, and/or surprises, helping quicker reaction to competitor and marketplace changes, Fleisher and Bensoussan said. 

Analysis

Analysis is for deriving correlations, evaluating trends and patterns, and identifying performance gaps. Above all, analysis should identify and evaluate opportunities available to organizations.

Successful analysis provides actionable, relevant, and timely insights for creating a more desirable future for the organization, said Fleisher and Bensoussan. 

Data

Effective analysis relies on effective data collection and information gathering, Fleisher and Bensoussan say. 

Yet, not all data is of equal quality. Some data may be excellent, some marginal, and some might even be intended to deceive. Invalid data nearly always produces invalid findings, said Fleisher and Bensoussan. 

Sources often have different reasons for supplying data. Some data sources are notorious for projecting biases onto data sets.

The data for analysis needs to be assessed for its accuracy and reliability.

By William S. Oh