Developer Blog

Data-driven Decisions

Published January 19, 2015 by Cate

The opening line of a 2006 book called "Why Collect Data?" states the obvious: "The need for accurate information is critical." This sentiment is complemented by the opening line of an article from the Harvard Business Review (2012): "You can't manage what you don't measure." Blend them together, and you get the essence of Business Activity Monitoring (BAM): Accurately measuring and collecting data to support management decisions and priorities.

Visibility and decisions
A 2014 research report from the Aberdeen Group notes that:

"If decision-makers do not have ongoing visibility into operations, as well as the ability to measure processes' effectiveness, any changes that are made may not be truly effective. At the same time, lack of visibility into processes excludes managers from understanding what is going on at any given time and reacting in an agile manner to promote efficiency and better serve customers."

In short, in order to innovate and update, you need visibility. McKinsey agree: "[S]ophisticated analytics can substantially improve decision-making."

Appway BAM provides you with this visibility. When processes and activities are executed in the workspace, Appway BAM measures and saves all the processes and activities previously marked. Measurement includes all runtime information about when a process/activity was started, who worked on it, when it was completed and so on.

Additional key performance indicators for a specific process type and/or domain can also be created.

Visualizing data
Effective visualization helps make complex data more accessible, understandable and usable. Appway BAM Dashboards visualize the data collected, providing a rich interface for monitoring and analyzing critical information. Rather than relying on intuition or opinion-based decisions, you can identify bottlenecks and optimization points in the process, and start a new design iteration towards optimal process efficiency.

Read the BAM documentation for more information, or attend the next BAM training.

The closing line goes to the Harvard Business Review:
"The evidence is clear: Data-driven decisions tend to be better decisions."

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Image courtesy Kevin Dooley / Flickr

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