Shifting from Outputs to Outcomes – Insights from Gartner ITxpo 2010

There was a lot of talk about cloud computing last week at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo 2010 in Orlando, and we made our own announcement about support for Microsoft Azure, but Gartner also had a clear message to the CIOs in attendance that they need to change their focus from just thinking about how to improve cost savings to thinking about how they can improve the performance of their business. 

In the kickoff presentation Hung LeHong, research vice president at Gartner put it this way, “This new type of CIO won’t ask first what the implementation cost is, or whether something complies with the architecture, but whether it’s good for the enterprise.” Gartner analysts listed “A shift from outputs to outcomes” as one of the three new realities that will shape the coming era.  Mark McDonald, group vice president for Executive Programs at Gartner explained further that “Outcomes are about the results, the things that are tangibly different in your organization. Outcomes are about delightful customer experiences. Outcomes are in your operations, and how you engage your employees. Outcomes that drive top and bottom line growth, and create future potential for you and your enterprise,”.  

It was great to see this shift in emphasis.  FICO followers are well aware that focusing on business outcomes is a central theme of Decision Management.  FICO has been using decision modeling for many years to analyze how decision actions link to business outcomes in order to leverage optimization techniques to mathematically find the set of actions that are most likely to achieve the desired business goals.  This was a central theme of our session “Optimize Pattern-Based Strategies through Decision Improvement” where we spoke about how Decision Management techniques can help companies implement Pattern-Based strategies so that they can react faster to changing market conditions and continuously improve decisions to better achieve the desired business goals.

Additional information on this topic can be found in our white paper “Four Essentials for Enabling Pattern Based Strategies”.  We also invite you to join our online community at decisions.fico.com, where you can join your peers in an online discussion about best practices in decision management.

Blog post by : Don Griest, Sr. Director, FICO Product Management