Will Decision Management Systems Revolutionize Marketing?

The ever-increasing volume of available business data and the wide range of rising intelligent software solutions that capitalize on up-to-the-minute information technology have proven to be, from a knowledge worker's perspective, a curse and a blessing all at once. The biggest challenge created by the increasing complexity of the business environment is the intricacy of decision-making and exception handling. The fact that more and more data sources and technologies have become accessible often leads to analysis paralysis.Enterprise decision management belongs to a novel philosophy aiming to transform a company's information systems from an obstacle in the way of change to a real aid in implementing business adjustments. This approach promotes flexible information-driven processes and the conversion of data into intelligence able to guide, if not automatically make, decisions. A decision management system brings a set of major advantages: the possibility to test a decision's compliance with existing regulation and its compatibility with previous decisions; a method to forecast the effects of a proposed decision before adopting it; predictive analytics and optimization technology.The current paper aims to analyze emerging trends in the area of organizational decision management, with the purpose of providing an outlook on possible implications for the field of marketing. The research was performed exploring the offers of major providers of decision management software and analyzing case studies and scientific literature regarding decision management systems. The result of the research is a personal standpoint on the most significant applications of decision management systems in marketing, accompanied by a set of conclusions and recommendations addressed to marketing professionals interested in taking advantage of an enormous potential that, so far, has been only faintly recognized.