Improving decision-making in business will be the focus of a series of half-day seminars starting in Galway this Wednesday. The seminars, organised by the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA), will examine the challenges to making informed management decisions.

According to a report by CIMA, information overload, excessive bureaucracy and lack of trust were all cited as contributors to poor decision making in businesses globally. More than three-quarters (80 per cent) of the 300 board-level executives interviewed for the report said flawed information has been used to make strategic decisions, while 42 per cent admitted their organisation had lost a competitive advantage because of slow decision-making.

Some 36 per cent said their organisation is not coping with information overload, and 32 per cent said big data has actually made things worse. Nearly a third, 29 per cent, said the single biggest barrier to more effective decision-making is co-ordination problems caused by organisational silos and bureaucracy. Roger Acton, the head of CIMA Ireland, said organisations need to treat decision-making as a business-critical process to be professionalised then continually improved.

“We are in the age of big data, and the common wisdom has been that the more, the better,” he said. “However, our research found that big data is actually making life harder for those charged with decision-making in many organisations because they are unable to extract relevant information and turn it into insight.

“With a deep understanding of the financial and non-financial value drivers of the business, the accounting and finance function plays a critical role in connecting the right information with the right people to achieve a competitive advantage for business.”

Speakers at the Galway event, which is taking place in the G Hotel, will include Nortel Networks financial controller Gerry Staunton, Ingersoll Rand head of finance (Galway operations) Michael Stratford and supply chain finance lead at Boston Scientific Dermot Bohan. The second event in the series will take place in Belfast on May 18th.