A large amount of data is seen as valuable for many organizations, and for good reason. For example, data is used to provide insights for informing decision-making and strategy development.

However, having too much data can have negative effects. Just think of the daunting task of sifting through all that data to identify what is most important. Almost everyone has been there, and they know this can lead to procrastination or avoidance.

And the amount of data coming from various sources is not slowing down. In fact, according to a new study by Oracle and author Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, 74% of people say the number of decisions they make every day has increased 10 times over the last three years and as they try to make these decisions, 78% are getting bombarded with more data from more sources than ever before.

Naturally, most people say that the volume of data is more of a headache than anything else to where they are unable to come to a decision. Well, according to the study, 85% of people say the inability to make decisions is having a negative impact on their quality of life. This unfortunately makes sense. When people are stressed, anxiety tends to spike, opportunities are missed because the wrong decision might be made in the end, and unnecessary spending can happens (likely to alleviate some of that stress with something they find joy in).

The business world is no different. Most business leaders harbor regret over a decision they have made in the past that might’ve affected their business in a negative way. In fact, 93% of business leaders in the study believe having the right type of decision intelligence can make or break the success of an organization.

Those business leaders are right. But that data needs to be relevant to the decisions being made. If not, the decision makers generate that headache (as previously mentioned) and end up going with a gut feeling instead. Not a wise move in the end.

“People are tempted to throw out the confusing, and sometimes conflicting, data and just do what feels right,” said Stephens-Davidowitz. “But this can be a big mistake. It has been proven over and over again that our instincts can lead us astray and the best decision-making is done with a proper understanding of the relevant data.”

So, with that challenging situation, the study revealed that almost two-thirds of people and 70% of business leaders would prefer to have robots make decisions. That kind of thinking is not as farfetched as some would think.

The study didn’t dive deep into the benefits of robots making decisions, but robots (in general) are able to analyze large amounts of data at a faster rate than a human mind could. Also, with that data, robots can make predictions, optimize processes, assess risk and provide decision support.

With these possible capabilities, one can see why robots would be preferred with this task; they provide organizations with valuable information and insights to make informed and effective decisions that has a chance to otherwise result in a headache and gut feeling decision.

Oracle Cloud meets these needs – helping organizations gain the decision intelligence they need. The Oracle Analytics Cloud, for example, provides a single place to define and share the key business terms decision makers need through a semantic model.

In combination with OAC, OCI Data Science capabilities support decision augmentation through built-in ML and AI models that are trained to find patterns in data that humans simply can’t. Additionally, Oracle Integration captures and automates decisions through decision modeling and processing.

“What people really need is to be able to connect data to insight to decision to action,” said T.K. Anand, Executive Vice President, Oracle Analytics. “With our span of connected cloud capabilities, ranging from foundational data management to augmented and applied analytics, to our suite of operational applications, we are uniquely positioned to meet this need."