The Fifth Elephant

The Economist Intelligence Unit and Capgemini conducted a survey of executives across the globe and supplemented the data from that survey with a series of interviews of senior business executives and experts on decision making and data.

The results are available to all in a report titled The deciding factor: Big Data and decision-making.

Some of the findings of the report include:

  • Firms that emphasise decision-making based on data and analytics have performed 5 to 6% better—as measured by output and performance—than firms that rely on intuition and experience for decision-making.
  • There is a growing appetite among organisations for data and data-driven decisions, despite their struggles with the enormous volumes being generated.
  • 43% of respondents agree that using social media to make decisions is increasingly important.

Visit the EIU's website to download the full report.