Is the information you use for decisions good enough?

Are you still using the same information to make decisions as you did last year?

Should you?

How much more value would be obtained if that information was delivered to decision-makers:

- Faster?
- On their mobile device instead of a laptop or in a paper report?
- In a way that lets them quickly drill down into the data to see what lies beneath?
- In a way that more effectively highlights what they need to see, the answers to the questions they are asking, without asking them to pore through the reports to detect visually the trends and anomalies?

How about if the quality of the information was improved so that it was:

- More complete, such as tapping into other sources of data (such as social media) to detect employee morale issues; vendor problems; potential reputation risk issues?
- Current, rather than as of last quarter or even last week?
- Forward looking, rather than historical?
- More easily shared with others, including the ability for the decision-maker to take items from a report and route it (perhaps by email) to a colleague to answer questions?
- Combined with related data for a more complete view? For example, what would the value be if risk and performance data were combined in reports for each strategy, objective, project, etc?
- More reliable?

Just because it was good enough last year doesn’t mean it is good enough this year, when technology has moved on.

Is your organization at risk of making sub-optimal decisions, while your competitors are getting better information and taking advantage?

It can be expensive to deploy new toys. It can be even more expensive not to.

Norman Marks, CPA, is vice president, governance, risk, and compliance for SAP's BusinessObjects division, and has been a chief audit executive of major global corporations for more than 15 years. He is the contributing editor to Internal Auditor’s “Governance Perspectives” column.
normanmarks.wordpress.com/