Building business on facts, not feelings

Peter Pugh-Jones at Confluent explains why CEOs need to give up on gut feel

Streaming technologies have redefined the way we consume goods and services. The next episode. The money transfer. The food delivery. It all arrives in an instant (or at worst, later that day).

Today’s customers expect everything in real-time, no matter what product or service your business provides. Faced with these changing expectations, businesses have little choice but to act at lightning speed — or risk being left behind.

As the pace of business increases, so too does the speed of decision making. And that’s a challenge that goes right to the top of today’s organisations.

According to Confluent’s new Quick Thinking report, which surveyed 200 UK business leaders and CEOs, 86% must now make decisions “faster than ever before”, while over half (54%) admit to feeling pressured into making quick decisions. Nine out of 10 (90%) even go as far as to say they must now react “in real time”. 

This increased pace of decision-making leaves today’s business leaders with a difficult question: How can they react in ever shorter timeframes and still ensure they’re making the right decisions?

Slow data and snap decisions

The promise of ‘big data’ was to solve this challenge for businesses, allowing leaders and C-level executives to make informed decisions at lightning speed. 

But there’s a problem: at a time when real-time decision making is essential, many business leaders are finding their data is still playing catch-up. In fact, more than half (52%) say data is already out of date by the time it reaches the C-suite, while 51% don’t have any access to ‘real-time’ data. Nearly half (43%) also say they can’t make decisions quickly enough due to this lack of real-time insight into their businesses. 

Faced with this lack of meaningful, real-time insight, today’s business leaders are returning to what they know — gut feel and intuition. Of those surveyed, over half (58%) now rely on ‘gut feel’ to make important business decisions, simply because it’s too difficult to access the data required to make properly informed judgements. Almost two-thirds (61%) also frequently make snap decisions without reviewing any data! 

According to the Quick Thinking report, these uninformed decisions are today impacting everything from which products to produce, to which markets to enter, right down to who gets hired and who gets fired. While for many years entrepreneurs celebrated the idea of ‘going with your gut’, the problem with intuition is that it relies on predictable patterns and biases that don’t tally with today’s complex and changeable business environment. 

In making ‘gut feel’ decisions, we risk recycling old solutions based on what worked before instead of what works now. Leaders need a way to use data to contextualise and support every judgement call – without that data slowing them down. They need to be able to act fast, but also analytically. And that’s where real-time data is proving so valuable.

The rise of data streaming

To escape any dependency on ‘gut feel’, we need access to the best quality data, in real-time. 

Unfortunately for many business leaders, their current IT infrastructure is standing in the way. The mess of data across apps, data stores, and systems — and the inability to access real-time data — are quickly becoming front of mind issues.

Accessing data in real-time requires an entirely new approach. Traditionally, business data is processed in batches; large volumes of data are collected, stored and only then analysed. This batch processing takes time, something today’s decision makers simply don’t have.

Instead, business leaders are now pushing their IT teams to invest in data streaming — the continuous flow and real-time processing of data. Rather than analysing data in batches, data streaming technologies mean that insights can be accessed and used as soon as they appear. 

In fact, data shows that 77% of UK business leaders are now starting to invest in data streaming to aid their decision-making, while 96% say real-time data streaming will be an important part of their organisation’s decision-making strategy in the year ahead.

Real-time data for real-time decisions

As customer expectations evolve, and the speed of business actions increase, today’s leaders must find new ways to keep up with the pace of change. Gut feel isn’t enough. They need fast and informed decision making.

But implementing a real-time data solution requires more than just technology. Business leaders must collaborate closely with IT teams to integrate data streaming technologies into their existing infrastructures.

It’s only through this collaboration, that CEOs —  and the C-suite — can start to make informed, data-driven decisions at the pace required.  Those that achieve this balance will benefit from more efficient business processes, faster innovation, and — ultimately — a significant competitive edge. 

Peter Pugh-Jones is Financial Services Director at Confluent

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com and cofotoisme