The information revolution has brought access to data to the masses. “Knowledge is power” is not specific enough anymore – the true challenge is in making sure the information used in decision making processes is reliable.
If you want to purchase a product, you spend time scouring the web, learning about the product’s characteristics, comparing it to its competitors, finding different suppliers and their pricing, etc. In order to make an informed decision you know that you must become a mini expert on that specific product. Businesses make this process more efficient by building information harvesting systems which automate a portion of the research, but these still require employees to invest their most valuable asset – time. Time to make sense of the information, to make sure that it is relevant to specific business needs, etc.
First, every piece of information has a finite lifespan. When you check the weather, you know that the information you just gathered is good for today only. The value of a commercial real estate property fluctuates as market conditions change, and a year-old credit score may not reflect the current financial status of a borrower. Therefore, it is important to identify the age, rate of accuracy degradation and expected expiration of each piece of data that you harvest.
“A successful information harvesting and processing system is characterized by the user spending little to no time gathering and processing information and most of their time making decisions.“
Next, you need to identify the credibility of the source of the data. Did you get the borrower’s net worth valuation from the borrower or a third party impartial source? Try reading about the same event at two different news outlets. The same story looks totally different if you experience it through different sources. You may have to read multiple sources and find the truth yourself somewhere in between them. This is fine when objective truth is not so important, but when information needs to be consumed in a path that leads to the success of the person or business entity, truthful data is crucial.
The situation gets even more complex when we consider the concept of infobesity. Information obesity is just what it sounds like – an epidemic that exposes humans to an overload of information, leading to a situation where we can’t see the forest for the trees. When an underwriter is onboarding a loan, they put a lot of effort into harvesting huge amounts of information, and at some point they need to make a decision based on a forest of data points. It’s like telling your doctor that you are not feeling well and explaining your symptoms, and in response he or she simply gives you a list of the hundreds of possible causes for those symptoms rather than telling you their qualified diagnosis. That’s the experience we are used to today when we use search engines, and it’s very similar to what decision makers face when they need to decide based on thousands of data points around a loan.
So, in our era, rather than saying “knowledge is power,” it is more precise to say that “curated and consolidated information is power.” The most valuable information must be curated by an expert (human or AI) to fit the needs of the business, automatically harvested by a computer system, and continuously checked for its lifespan, credibility and accuracy. And when all of that is done, the business must take the next step of consolidating the information in a form that will still deliver the powerful insights without causing an outbreak of infobesity.
Today, decision makers spend most of their time preparing and processing information and only a small fraction of it making business crucial decisions. A successful information harvesting and processing system is characterized by the user spending little to no time gathering and processing information and most of their time making decisions. Such users can conduct much more business in the same amount of time, which leads to a higher chance of business success and a lower “cost of doing business.” Such a system allows its users to look at information like a judge on “America’s Got Talent” might look at a contestant. They can watch just a few minutes of a performance and make an informed final judgment without further investment.
Now that’s power.