Insights & Analytics at a Crossroads: The Case for Decision Intelligence
Insights & Analytics teams spend billions generating insights that 78% of the time never influence a single business decision. This raises a critical point for I&A leaders: if insights aren't driving decisions, then the function needs to evolve.
Insights & Analytics once owned strategy. Teams were consultants, facilitators, the voice shaping critical business choices. But the function devolved from strategic partner to insight interpreter as strategic thinking was outsourced to vendors, then devolved again to validator and vendor manager with the rise of DIY platforms. Each shift moved I&A further from the decision-making table, turning specialists into generalists.
Now, additional forces are accelerating this shift. AI is automating the analytical work that I&A built its identity around, while other functions (IT, Strategy, RGM) are claiming territory that used to belong to I&A. With automation handling analysis and other functions encroaching on strategic territory, what's left for I&A to do?
The role that took decades to build is now at a crossroads.
I&A leaders face a pivotal choice: move up the value chain, or give way to functions moving faster. The path forward requires a shift from generating insights to shaping decisions. That's where I&A's next chapter lives.
Why Insights & Analytics Must Focus on Decisions
Companies make over 10 million decisions annually. How effectively those decisions are made determines business success: Bain & Company research shows a 95% correlation between decision-making effectiveness and financial performance.
Bain research also shows "Decision Leaders" with structured decision processes outperform peers by 5X in shareholder returns over five years. Conversely, poor decisions cost Fortune 500 companies 3-6% of EBITDA, representing a $700 billion opportunity.
Yet enterprise decision-making remains systematically disconnected from Insights & Analytics capabilities. Sixty percent of I&A work never connects to decisions. When insights do reach decision-makers, 78% fail to influence outcomes. The consequences are measurable: two-thirds of managers make good decisions as frequently as bad ones. This represents a critical gap. Insights that do not influence decisions create no value, regardless of analytical rigor.
For 20+ years, I&A has focused on the early stages of the value chain: generating data, deriving insights, and making recommendations. The next decade requires focusing on what comes after: ensuring recommendations actually drive decisions, actions, and measurable value.
I&A already possesses the foundational capabilities. The function has spent decades understanding human decision behavior, identifying biases, designing choice architectures, and connecting data to action. The expertise exists; it has simply been applied to consumer decisions rather than corporate ones.
The opportunity is to redirect these capabilities toward enterprise decision-making. The question is how.
How Decision Intelligence Transforms Insights & Analytics From Insights to Impact
Decision Intelligence, named by Gartner as a Top Technology Trend for 2025, is the systematic approach that connects data, insights, and human expertise to design, execute, and optimize business decisions.
For Insights & Analytics, it provides the framework to shift from generating insights to driving decisions and creating measurable value.
Decision Intelligence Platforms bring together people, process, and information to create DSights, decision-ready insights that are connected (all relevant data linked), automated (powered by AI), and activated (ready to act on).
DSights fundamentally change the questions I&A asks. Rather than asking, "What insights can I generate from this data?" teams ask, "How can I leverage these insights to develop growth plans for the next five years?"
Instead of stopping at recommendations, they ask, "How do I implement the decision, monitor its impact, and create sustainable improvement?" This is I&A moving up the value chain from generating insights to architecting decisions.
Cloverpop delivers this capability at scale. Our platform synthesizes enterprise data to generate automated decision insights and recommendations, creating a decision system of record that achieves business goals and accelerates organizational learning. Decision agents automate the entire flow from insights to recommendations to decisions.
The impact is substantial. Organizations implementing Cloverpop D-Sight achieve 10X faster time to decision, 30% savings in data and human capital investment, and 50% higher activation rates.
These improvements translate into concrete business outcomes: one pharmaceutical company compressed decision timelines from 50 days to 30 hours while recovering $9 million in revenue, while a CPG brand achieved 15-20% improvements in forecasting accuracy.
Reclaim Your Seat at the Strategy Table
The Insights & Analytics function is at a critical junction, and the next five years will determine which organizations lead the next chapter. Decision Intelligence represents a fundamental expansion of what I&A can be.
While AI automates insight generation, I&A can move up the value chain to design, facilitate, and optimize business decisions.
This is where I&A's expertise in understanding human decision behavior, identifying biases, and connecting data to action becomes most valuable. Not applied to consumer choices, but to the corporate decisions that drive growth.
Leading enterprises are already making this shift. Companies like Estée Lauder, Mondelez, PepsiCo, and Clorox are transforming their I&A functions into decision-intelligent organizations. They're seeing 10X faster decisions, 30% savings in resources, and 50% higher activation rates.
Most importantly, they're reclaiming their seat at the strategy table.
Cloverpop works with I&A leaders across pharmaceuticals, CPG, manufacturing, and high tech to evolve from insight generation to decision architecture. To explore how Decision Intelligence can transform your I&A function, request a demo.