Social Business Discovery: Optimizing Decision Making

People Are at the Heart of All Decisions

BI (business intelligence) software has long been touted as the route to insight and better business decisions. But powerful business insight comes not just from data, and not just from what one person sees and thinks. It comes from the combination of varied viewp

Traditional BI doesn’t account for two important realities:

• Decisions are social events. We make decisions large and small by combining the data available to us (everything from movie times to sales results to stock prices) with the opinions, advice, experiences, expertise, and recommendations of people we trust. For example, a search engine can help you find hundreds of hotels in Beijing, but you need social input — such as reviews or recommendations — to decide on a hotel that suits your preferences, needs, and budget. At work, people arrive at pretty much all important decisions through discussion and collaboration.
• Empowered consumers are bringing social sensibilities into the workplace. Several consumer trends are driving a tectonic shift that’s taking place in the BI software market: search, apps, mobility, and social networking.1 Social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are enabling hundreds of millions of people to share information, connect with each other, and develop robust relationships — with no technology background or training required. In their personal lives, people are using intuitive software to ask questions and share expertise, insights, and experiences with people in their networks—and they want the same opportunities at work.2

To read more, download this white paper below.