Corporations create value through decisions.  Trillions of dollars are spent each year on information technology (IT) that supports enterprise value creation.  Clearly, corporate decision-makers realize that information is the key to value creation through decisions.  Yet no methodology or tool currently exists which allows corporate decision-makers to accurately and quantitatively connect their vast information resources to the True Shareholder Value created by decisions.  This capability gap creates lost value, both from suboptimal choices and lost time and resources spent on analyses which, at best, result in poor estimates of the True Shareholder Value of decisions. 

Executives report they want four elements to aid them in their decision-making: objective and alignment, risk and uncertainty, usability (simplicity, speed, flexibility), and communications and transparency.  Decisions need to be made fast while still incorporating thousands, even millions, of pieces of qualitative and quantitative information.  As such, decision-makers are often forced to over-simplify, using single-point forecasting and spreadsheet software such as Excel to make an ROI calculation.  This is hardly a good approximation to True Shareholder Value.  In other cases, decision-makers restrict their focus to short-term factors and even resort to using accounting numbers.

Neither existing software tools nor consultants can achieve the goal of maximizing True Shareholder Value through decision-making, as the task requires the solutions of some very difficult and previously unsolved mathematical problems along with software to make those solutions practically accessible in a corporate environment.  Instead we see a proliferation of valuation methods (ROI, DCF, WACC), analytics software, and niche applications[1].  Spreadsheets are often used as an analytical platform, yet it is well-known that up to 80% of spreadsheets contain errors, and even a “correct” spreadsheet is often impenetrable to all but its author.

A tool that can directly and quantitatively connect information to the True Shareholder Value of any decision will represent a significant usurping technology, providing the ability to unify decision-making processes across functional silos, management levels, and industries.

The papers below describe particular problems faced by corporation decision makers and their desire for improvement.

·         Elements of Corporate Decision-Making – Market research on corporate decision making.

·         Speed and Information – Decision-makers are often forced to choose between using relevant information or speed and agility.

·         Corporate Myopia – Corporations and fund managers often ignore long-term information that has significant impact on value.

·         Enterprise Value Creation Landscape – An overview of tools and services used to create value in the enterprise.