Latest news with #decisionmaking
Forbes
a day ago
- Business
- Forbes
20 Ways Data Is Transforming Financial Planning & Decision-Making
Data analytics has become a game-changer for companies looking to make smarter, faster and more strategic decisions. By turning raw data into actionable insights, finance teams are improving forecasting, managing real-time risk and aligning resources with evolving priorities. With the right data analytics program, you can streamline your processes, uncover growth opportunities and maintain resilience in uncertain markets. To that end, 20 Forbes Finance Council members discuss how data analytics has shaped financial planning and decision-making in their organizations and how you can apply this to your own operations. Data analysis helps us make informed choices that align with our clients' financial goals and risk tolerance. We apply data analytics to guide our investment decisions, manage risk and personalize client outcomes, prioritizing long-term planning over short-term market trends. It's about thoughtful application, not just chasing big data hype. - Sonya Thadhani Mughal, Bailard, Inc. Data analytics helps us and our clients, especially CFOs and accounting leaders, move from hindsight to foresight. We're using it to spot trends, flag anomalies and run real-time scenario models. That means faster, more confident decisions across budgeting, forecasting and planning—grounded in data, not guesswork. - Helen Mason, Riveron In the early stages of the venture capital space, data analytics is critical in shaping our financial planning and decision-making process by enabling us to leverage financial and operational benchmarks across sectors, such as SaaS multiples, burn multiples and revenue per employee. These insights help us guide founders on realistic fundraising strategies, efficient runway planning and long-term exit potential. - Armine Galstyan, SmartGateVC We rely on data to track and evaluate efforts across the company. We utilize various software to identify trends, simplify current processes and forecast future movements regarding the real estate market. Particularly when it comes to getting the word out about our business through advertising, we use data to understand which efforts have been lucrative and adjust spending accordingly. - Christopher Steward, Legacy Group Capital Our company works with many organizations to close this very gap. By using predictive insights drawn directly from financial statements, our clients can effectively identify risky suppliers and take action to prevent disruption. We've seen time and time again how data analytics drives stronger decision-making and more resilient operations. - John D'Aleo, RapidRatings Forbes Finance Council is an invitation-only organization for executives in successful accounting, financial planning and wealth management firms. Do I qualify? Data analytics has evolved beyond traditional forecasting and budgeting. It has become an active decision validation engine. Not only do we use it to plan for the future, but we now use it to stress-test decisions before they're made. We run predictive models that simulate how a single strategic move will impact cash flow, tax exposure, client churn and operational capacity over time horizons. - Karla Dennis, KDA Inc. At our company, data analytics empowers us to work smarter, not harder. By leveraging real-time data into a financial planning and analysis tool, we're able to forecast more accurately, optimize resource allocation and align financial planning with our long-term growth strategy. Moving forward, the continued integration of AI will only accelerate this process. - Omar Choucair, Trintech It gives us real-time insights into everything from customer trends to operational performance, allowing us to be agile and forward-thinking. It means we're not just reacting to change—we're anticipating it. Having clear, reliable data at our fingertips helps us stay focused on long-term goals while staying responsive to short-term shifts. It's become an essential part of how we run the business. - Andrew Collis, Moneypenny Data is king. At our company, data analytics drives smarter risk assessment, dynamic cash flow forecasting and personalized client solutions, enabling us to make faster, evidence-based financial decisions. It's become integral to everything from loan approvals to strategic planning, helping us optimize performance and fuel sustainable growth. - Joseph Lustberg, Upwise Capital Data drives nearly every strategic decision we make. We track how clients use the tool, what features they return to, where they drop off and how much they generate. By analyzing client behavior, we go beyond forecasting to shape product direction, hiring plans, pricing strategy and customer focus. It ensures our decisions are grounded in real-world usage, not assumptions. - Zehra Soysal, With the help of ever-changing technology, data analytics is improving the time it takes to make decisions. As it helps quickly analyze past data alongside current statistics and various expectations, it illustrates options and stress-tests various scenarios, resulting in quicker decision-making and potentially saving money and time due to improved efficiency. - Letitia Berbaum, Blue Sands Wealth The ability to make the right offer to the right customer at the right time is critical, so predictive analytics is key for high-impact decisions. Teams charged with driving growth and improving financial lives use analytics to determine where our solutions can have the greatest impact. As emerging trends can shift overnight, our data must be as timely and inclusive as possible. - Lindsey Downing, TransUnion To support expansion over the past few years fueled by client growth, we've adopted a data analytics strategy that provides firm leaders and managers with real-time insights into project financials, resource utilization and client profitability. The integration of finance with operations facilitates informed decisions, increased efficiency, better resource allocation and growth. - Paul Peterson, Wiss Leveraging analytics to drive financial and operational efficiency enhances understanding of how departments contribute to overall financial performance and empowers leaders to make smart business decisions. Automation and AI produce data-driven insights, enabling accounting and finance teams to navigate risks and seize new opportunities by aligning short-term execution with long-term strategy. - Razzak Jallow, FloQast Analytics sharpens our strategic focus. By evaluating historical performance and external variables, we identify risks and opportunities faster. This approach helps prioritize investments based on projected ROI rather than guesswork. Analytics also enhances cost efficiency. Anomaly detection flags unexpected expense spikes, while scenario analysis tests how variables might affect cash flow. - Anatoly Iofe, IceBridge Financial Group, LLC Data analytics enables better forecasting, risk assessment and resource allocation. By leveraging predictive modeling and real-time insights, companies can identify trends, personalize client strategies and optimize operations, leading to more informed and proactive financial decisions. - Elie Nour, NOUR PRIVATE WEALTH Data analytics has long been an integral part of our financial planning. It enables us to make data-driven decisions, identify emerging market trends and optimize resource allocation. By analyzing past financial performance and forecasting future trends, we're able to assess potential risks and identify growth opportunities faster and more effectively. - Trixy Castro, TRX Capital It's not just about the numbers anymore. It's about finding patterns, telling stories, relating with clients and actively guiding clients to better outcomes. Data analytics helps us to identify behavior trends, such as when large purchases are typically made or when money is typically requested. Being able to anticipate their needs before they call us. Priceless! - Bob Chitrathorn, Wealth Planning By Bob Chitrathorn of Simplified Wealth Management Data analytics allows financial planning to shift from static to dynamic forecasting and real-time strategy. Financial firms can improve risk model precision, allocate capital efficiently and uncover opportunities faster, enhancing both agility and confidence in decision-making by leveraging behavioral, transactional and operational data. - Tomer Guriel, ezbob Ltd. Data analytics is redefining financial strategy—enabling precision forecasting, dynamic scenario modeling and data-driven capital allocation. It transforms planning into a proactive discipline, where decisions are faster, risks are anticipated and financial agility becomes a competitive advantage. - Swati Deepak Kumar (Nema), Citigroup The information provided here is not investment, tax, or financial advice. You should consult with a licensed professional for advice concerning your specific situation.
Forbes
2 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
The Zen Entrepreneur: How To Stay Calm When Everything Goes Wrong
The zen entrepreneur: how to stay calm when everything goes wrong When you panic, you fail twice. First in the moment of overwhelm, and then again with every bad decision that follows. Entrepreneurs who lose composure when problems arise create a cascade of problems throughout their business. Teams scramble. Resources drain. Solutions become impossible to see. Everything gets harder when your emotions run wild and your judgment clouds. But the ability to stay centered when chaos erupts is the competitive advantage nobody talks about. I discovered this the hard way during my first major business crisis. After building my social media agency, when covid hit we shrank by 25% in one week. While my instincts told me to panic, I forced myself to step back rather than rush forward. That pause revealed a service model pivot that not only replaced the lost clients but increased our margins. The breakthrough came from stillness, not frantic action. Most entrepreneurs respond to problems with increased speed and urgency. They work longer hours, hold emergency meetings, and make rapid decisions to regain control. This reactive approach feels productive but actually compounds the problem. Business chaos resolves with better thinking. The quality of your decisions determines your outcomes. Your response to crisis gets determined long before the crisis arrives. The entrepreneurs who maintain composure during chaos have built that ability systematically through daily habits and practices. Your calm presence becomes a business asset you can rely on when everything else fails. Physical training forms the foundation. Exercise isn't just for your body. Regular movement stabilizes your mood and strengthens your resilience. Make some form of physical activity non-negotiable, even on your busiest days. Sleep deprivation and good decisions rarely coexist. When you sacrifice sleep for work, you sacrifice the quality of that work. Most entrepreneurs push through exhaustion during difficult periods, believing the tradeoff makes sense. It never does. Create strict sleep boundaries. Turn devices off at least one hour before bed. Keep your bedroom cool and dark. Wake at the same time daily. Your brain solves problems during quality sleep that your conscious mind can't crack while awake. Constant input creates mental fog. Emails, notifications, news feeds, and social media train your brain for distraction, not focus. When crisis hits, this scattered attention becomes your biggest liability. Schedule daily periods of complete quiet. Start with just 10 minutes and gradually increase. No phone. No computer. No input of any kind. Just sit with your thoughts. Meditate. Visualize. This practice seems trivial until you try it. Most entrepreneurs can't last five minutes without reaching for their device. Master this skill and you gain immediate advantage. Business problems trigger your nervous system long before they reach your conscious mind. Your body prepares for danger through ancient survival pathways. Blood diverts from your thinking brain to your limbs. Heart rate increases. Muscles tense. This biological response worked great for escaping predators. It's terrible for making strategic business decisions. Address your physical state before attempting to solve anything. Five deep breaths can reset your nervous system. Place one hand on your chest and one on your stomach. Breathe slowly, making your stomach hand rise more than your chest hand. This activates your parasympathetic system, downshifting from fight-or-flight to rest-and-digest. Physical relocation changes mental perspective. When facing a business crisis, the worst place to solve it is likely where you first discovered it. Your mind forms strong location associations that can trap your thinking. Take your problem for a walk around the block. Drive to a park. Sit in a coffee shop. The change of scenery brings solutions that you couldn't see in your usual environment. Start with making space for perspective. When markets shift, technologies fail, or plans collapse, most people rush to action. They react to surface problems rather than understanding root causes. Do the opposite. Stay calm to gain time. Spot the patterns beneath the chaos. When everything goes wrong, your response determines your outcome. Fight the urge to immediately fix everything. Create space between stimulus and response. Train your calm, protect your sleep, create silence, respond with your body, and shift your location. Turn apparent disasters into unexpected opportunities.
The Independent
2 days ago
- Health
- The Independent
Feeling negative or impulsive? You might be sleep deprived
Neuroscientist Russell Foster says a lack of sleep can reduce empathy and increase focus on negative experiences. Dr Foster spoke at the Hay Festival of Literature and Arts, which has partnered with The Independent. He explained that sleep deprivation can cause the brain to remember negative experiences while forgetting positive ones, biasing one's worldview. He added that tiredness leads to impulsivity, potentially causing people to make poor and unreflective decisions. Dr Foster suggested that political leaders' sleep deprivation could impact their ability to make sensible decisions. The results of a pilot study on the topic will be released soon.
Irish Times
3 days ago
- Business
- Irish Times
The Unaccountability Machine by Dan Davies: an excellent diagnosis but a depressing prognosis
The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions – and How the World Lost its Mind. Author : Dan Davies ISBN-13 : 978-1788169547 Publisher : Profile Books Guideline Price : £22 In this informative and ambitious book, Dan Davies looks at contemporary systems. He looks at economics, airlines, banks and corporations and posits that recent fiascos (the 2008 financial crash; Brexit; the rise of populism) are not the result of 'conspiracy or cock-up' but of the growing complexity of these systems. Within these systems the idea of individual decision-making is redundant because the decisions are inscribed within the system itself, which produces its own results, independent of the individuals within the systems. This may initially seem like a plea bargain and excuse for those involved in nefarious activities, but ultimately the book is an indictment of the organisation and management of these systems within a neo-liberal environment. He introduces the term 'accountability sinks' where no person has agency therefore no one is responsible. He examines specific examples: Fox News reporting of voter fraud; airline flight experiences; squirrels getting shredded at Schiphol airport. READ MORE We all know the Ryanair experience where we have a problem but the person we engage with offers the interaction of a recorded message machine. For the system to function, 'it has to prevent the feedback of the person affected by the decision from affecting the operation of the system.' This last point he sees as a primary reason why many have abandoned mainstream politics and embraced Trump and populist politics. He identifies three main revolutions that have got us here: the managerial revolution, where control was passed over from owners and capitalists to professional administrators; the 1970s neo-liberal revolution which has shaped our current society; and the aborted cybernetic revolution. [ The Irish Times view on the Ryanair wheelie case controversy: making a bags of it Opens in new window ] He explores cybernetics ('the study of decision-making systems') through the eccentric, leftist Stafford Beer. Beer held meetings that were 'unstructured, informal connections between staff at different levels and performing different functions'. He wanted to create systems that were open, as opposed to closed systems – such as banking, where a limited focus on profit ended up with an implosion that led to them being bailed out by governments: the socialisation of private debt. Cybernetically speaking, there was not enough variety in the controlling system that would have provided feedback that the system was unstable and needed readjustment. There was no feedback channel beyond the closed system with regard to wider society. This is in keeping with Milton Friedman and the Chicago school of economics (the home of neo-liberal economics), which rejected a consideration of society. This was best expressed in Margaret Thatcher 's famous claim that there is no such thing as society. She, along with Ronald Reagan , was one of the two main political enforcers of this ideology. The closed neo-liberal system has led to the insanity where people still chase profit at the expense of planetary destruction. In cybernetic terms, it's the problem of emphasising one outcome of maximisation to the detriment of others. 'Every decision-making system set up as a maximiser needs to have a higher-level system watching over it.' Davis looks at the technical aspects and details of cybernetics, which are well explained yet require an extra level of concentration if, like me, you are not familiar with it. He claims that cybernetics could have changed the way economics developed in the 1950s and 1960s, instead of creating a system that supported the neo-liberal agenda. This agenda produced models of the world which neglected so many variables that they became self-fulfilling prophecies in their results: they were models of wish fulfilment posing as science. As Stafford Beer has it: 'Where analysis fails, ideology steps in.' That ideology was neo-liberalism. The strength of this book is its ability to provide an overarching theory of why the world is in crisis and how economic and societal development has lead to this. The book wraps up by reiterating that nobody in a corporation was or is responsible. This seems to me to let too many people off the hook. What about whistleblowers? There are always people doing the right thing. Davis, though, would argue that the systems were set up without the channels for this information to reach the ears of those in power. The profit motive is amplified as information within the system to the detriment of all other information/inputs. He ends by saying that, as systems get more complicated, we need to become use to more accountability sinks: '...we cannot afford the luxury of explainability; we can't keep on demanding that an identifiable human being is available to blame when things go wrong.' So morality is out the window. Our human status declines as he sees 'the death of responsibility' coming, and that 'I blame the system is something we will have to get used to saying, and meaning it literally'. An excellent diagnosis but a depressing prognosis. Highly recommended.
Forbes
4 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Win Or Learn: The Entrepreneur's Mindset
Daniel is an entrepreneur, founder & CEO of MyOutDesk devoted to providing growing companies with proven, reliable virtual assistants. The common framing around failure in entrepreneurship—of things being win or lose—doesn't work for me. You're either winning or you're learning, and learning is iterative and 'the entrepreneur's mindset.' I've been establishing, growing and selling businesses for almost 20 years, and that's the mindset I decide to approach every entrepreneurial endeavor with. I know 18% of small businesses fail within their first year (and 50% within the first five), but I also know there are a lot of people like me out there who also decide every day to pursue a passion or idea that's as likely to fail as it is to succeed. That decision is the first of a million-plus decisions entrepreneurs have to make. And there are just as many different routes that could get them where they want to go. As someone who's faced the inevitable decision paralysis countless times and worked with thousands of entrepreneurs who've experienced the same, I've learned a few tricks for turning decision paralysis into progress—because action, even if in the wrong direction, is better than stagnancy. Is taking the initial leap the hardest part … or everything that comes after it? Well, that's for each founder to decide. What isn't up for debate is that the decisions made during the ideation and planning phases of the entrepreneur have the power to significantly impact future business success. Product-market fit is paramount. Find a clear path to customer demand, and offer customers a value proposition that no other company can. While your business idea must be unique, the elevator pitch for it can be formulaic: I provide this (product/service) for people (describe the person/customer/business) that want (outcome). In its simplest form, business is humans helping other humans; if you're good, then the business will grow. To be good, you must commit to a pursuit of mastery. A dedication to your business's growth and development is a dedication to your own personal growth and development as well. Ongoing education and improvement in marketing, operations and delivery are critical, but sales mastery is nonnegotiable as founders are constantly selling their vision to customers, investors and employees. Consider whether a blended workforce is the right choice for you. It can be a good idea to hire internal staff for the most technical and high-value tasks, and hire outsourced staff for the process-based tasks. (Disclosure: My company helps with outsourcing, as do others.) But for many entrepreneurs, the first 'hire' should be a technology system like a CRM or ERP platform that supports those team members and you in every business decision from customer acquisition to product or service distribution. This kind of blended model that employs physical, virtual and digital team members takes advantage of the strength of AI in its current era and gives humans the ability to leverage that technology to help better the business. Some of the most common entrepreneurial decisions are the most difficult to make because there's no right or wrong answer or one answer that fits every entrepreneur. The good news is, in my experience, it's less about what you decide and more about how. Separate CEO from self. It's your business, but the business is not you. It should be treated as its own entity, and decision-making should be based on what's best for the company, not the individual(s) running it, because those are not always one and the same. Founder compensation is a good example. While taking a salary is typically preferred from a personal perspective, it may not be best for a new business that still has entry-level revenue and weak financial stability. As the business grows and scales, so can the market value (and salary) of the CEO. Focus on the long term. I've learned that effective leaders prioritize the long-term health and mission of the business above personal gain or convenience. They lead 'from the front,' never asking employees to do something they wouldn't be willing to do themselves. This approach can foster trust, build credibility and effectively motivate teams to stay the course in the short term for better results in the long run—results that everyone on the team will professionally and personally benefit from. Do the due diligence to turn curiosity into context. Ask questions. Understand the 'what' and the 'why' of every situation, be it managing employee performance or evaluating pitches promising grandiose visions. As a founder, you'll inevitably possess a broader context than individual contributors and must tailor your communications and operations decisions to reflect that big-picture view. Be okay with saying no—strategically. It's a necessary skill for leaders to protect their business, their time, the team doing the work and the customers they serve. Establishing guardrails early on and sticking to a disciplined evaluation process when determining things like whether or not to hire friends and family or take on investors can prevent biased decision-making based on familiarity or immediate appeal instead of true business and customer needs. Often, situations are less about the decision and more about how you approach making it—less about a founder's checklist and more about a founder's willingness to take risks. While market opportunity and product-market fit are paramount, successful entrepreneurship often stems from an innate drive and passion for pursuing a vision. It takes courage, commitment and an inner self-assuredness to turn a gut feeling into a foundation for a profitable venture, not another failure statistic. Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?
