Using financial data in strategic decision-making

Abstract

Amount of internal and external data available for companies is increasing constantly. The data has the opportunity at best to influence and guide companies in to more justified decision-making. By accepting that the amount of data and information as well as ways to analyze it will become more common and efficient in the future, companies have the opportunity to understand their businesses more profoundly and leverage the existing resources to another level. Essentially, increased amount of data and analyze capabilities will decrease the amount of uncertainty from decision making.

This research examines the use of financial data in the strategic decision-making process. The research itself is conducted as a case study within a single large stock exchange listed company. The key questions of this research are the role of available financial data for strategic decision-making as well as the role of business intelligence in the context of the strategic decision-making. The research has five main categories that are linked to each other: Management control systems, objectives and goals, business intelligence, data sources and strategic decision-making. Strategic decision-making is the controlling theme, which is impacted by the rest of the topics in this research. The main findings reveal that there is no formal process in place at the case company for strategic decision-making but different type of internal and external data is utilized to a large extent.