The Information Age, also commonly known as the Computer Age or Information Era, is an idea that the current age will be characterised by the ability of individuals to transfer information freely, and to have instant access to knowledge that would have been difficult or impossible to find previously. However in today’s fast-paced business environment it is critical organisations discriminate between information and intelligence. Any piece of knowledge, no matter how insignificant or unrelated, is information:
Intelligence, on the other hand, is the subset of information valued for its relevance rather than merely its detail.
More often than not standard tools that aggregate and organise a company’s information, such as sales history or stock levels, provide information rather than intelligence. In order to outperform the opposition, a company needs more than a well-organised and well-structured view of its data and history. Decision makers at all levels need something more when making decisions in uncertain and changing times. They need what we call:
Predictive Intelligence, or PI - The ability to narrow down the relevant variables for analysis and precisely measure their impact on the probability of a range of different outcomes.