The success (and survival) of a company depends on the decisions it makes or fails to make. Whether they are the right ones, whether they are made on time, whether they involve the right teams... In just one working day, every business makes hundreds of decisions, and while some of them are not decisive, others can change its course overnight.
The current challenge is not about making fewer decisions, but about making better ones. And for that, there is a key ally: artificial intelligence. In this article we will explain the role and importance of AI for decision-making, exploring the types of decisions it can help you make, its advantages and also its limits.
AI is already part of many decisions in businesses around the world. But its role and reach depend on the type of decisions you need to make. In fact, a misuse of AI for decision-making can cause problems for your business and, above all, affect the quality of what you decide.
The first thing is to understand that there are different types of decisions in the day-to-day life of any digital business. All of them are important, but the degree of AI involvement varies considerably and it is key to know how far its influence can reach:
– Operational decisions: All those day-to-day decisions that, in many cases, we do not even consider decisions. These are common matters we face on a daily basis. In these cases, AI's reach is very high: thanks to its automations and predictive analyses, it can help us make decisions with greater certainty or even make them for us.
– Tactical decisions: These carry more weight but must be made quickly and reactively in order to solve problems or seize opportunities. In these cases AI can serve both as an indicator that decisions need to be made, and as support for knowing which direction to take them based on context and available information.
– Strategic decisions: The high-level ones. They usually involve multiple teams and stakeholders, and the scope of their effects can impact the entire business and its future. AI plays an advisory role thanks to its ability to process large amounts of data and indicate where the environment is heading. In any case, all strategic decisions must be made by real people.
If there is one thing artificial intelligence is designed for, it is solving logical matters. And nothing is more logical than operational decisions. Which option to choose, which element to change, identifying a calculation error... AI is a great ally for handling this type of decision.
Thanks to its analytical vision, AI allows you to automate many operational decisions and minimise the time and resources you invest in evaluating different alternatives. Today there are many ways to implement it in your daily decision-making and optimise the day-to-day matters that you previously had to tackle manually.
Implementing AI for decision-making can also be useful for improving your relationship with your customers and the results you achieve with each one. Especially if you have an ecommerce, a SaaS business or your business model is B2B.
Artificial intelligence, along with its ability to process data more easily, also allows you to better understand your customers. Their behavioural patterns, their preferences and even their future moves. AI's predictive models are useful for making decisions about promotions, user experience or even your own service based on the real needs of your customers.
Every business that wants to make more strategic decisions should consider AI a great ally, not a substitute to which to delegate decision-making without even considering them first. In the case of high-impact decisions, AI is a reliable advisor but the final decision must always be ours.
The great potential of AI in this type of decision-making lies in its ability to identify opportunities and risks that escape us. Data processing and its predictive power are of great use for obtaining relevant insights for the business and focusing each decision in a direction that takes all important factors into account.
Artificial intelligence is no longer just about writing, creating images and holding conversations. The potential of AI for business decision-making goes far beyond (and keeps advancing every day). Its primary objective is to facilitate those decisions. That is: to function as an advisor with key information to help you get it right.
In general, the main advantage highlighted when implementing AI in decision-making is the increase in business agility. Decisions become faster, many of them are automated and this makes simpler processes scale at the pace of the company and its needs.
But in addition to simplifying things, AI also makes human errors decrease dramatically. Calculations, hidden information, incorrectly entered data... All of that which often escapes us never goes unnoticed in the eyes of technology. Furthermore, the accuracy of your predictions and data increases drastically as you are able to process more information in an automated way.
As we all know, AI is not infallible. Good use of any artificial intelligence tool requires human oversight to ensure the result is correct. And the same applies to decision-making. AI assists, but you decide.
Although its data processing capacity, precision and predictive power are very useful, they can sometimes be accompanied by biases in the use of data and algorithms with an imprecise or completely unrealistic result. It is important to keep this in mind, as failing to control it could lead to opaque and even negative decisions for the business (especially in matters such as finance, treasury or Human Resources).
More and more companies are turning to AI in their decision-making. Sometimes without even being aware they are using it for that purpose. Whenever you use AI to ask its opinion, request a data analysis or a comparison between several options, you are relying on it to make a decision.
We at Boost also use it in our daily work. When we help other companies or digital businesses to optimise their website or digital product, we implement artificial intelligence in many of the decisions we make. It helps us define hypotheses that sometimes escape us, allows us to more accurately choose the environment in which to run a test and even helps us decide what variants to design in each one.
A good AI implementation is key to ensuring its effect on your decisions is the right one. To get AI to influence your day-to-day life more strategically, you need to follow a process in which you have clear priorities and business needs.
The first step is to decide which areas or types of decisions you need to prioritise. For example, your company may need to offload the most operational decisions first and then move on to strategic ones. Once that is clear, you will need to choose the truly right tools that allow you to be agile and consult them in time to make each decision.
The integration of AI for decision-making does not end there. It is a continuous process in which you will need to create a data-driven culture throughout the entire company. And we can help you make it happen. Discover how to apply AI across all your decisions with Boost: book an audit session with our team.
You have approved the budget, designed an incredible ad on Meta or Google Ads, and the CTR (click-through rate) is the envy of the industry. But when you...
You have invested thousands of euros in acquisition campaigns. You have made the user fall in love with your product, add it to their cart and... at the...
Artificial intelligence has gone from being a technological promise to becoming a key element in many business decisions. When AI enters the...
