Overview

Just as satellite navigation systems guide millions of us daily, so management information systems provide directors hourly with vital business intelligence for decision-making. In a fast-moving, global business world, directors must take decisions in situations they've never encountered before-with each new decision different from the last one. It's like driving an unfamiliar route. If you have sufficient time to learn the route there's no need for a sat-nav-intuition is fine.

But do managers have time to learn given rapid job rotations, the faster pace of more complex decision-making and the consequences of failure? They need timely and relevant information to inform them about changing circumstances. And just as the sat-nav monitors for disruptions in traffic flow and looks for patterns to predict jams, so high-quality business intelligence systems behave similarly by foreseeing issues.