(11 March 2014, Johannesburg) –  A unique force in Business Intelligence – Decision Inc. – was officially launched in Johannesburg today. Decision Inc. is a newly-formed merger between three leaders in the Business Intelligence (BI) space: ASYST Intelligence, BusinessIntelligent and the Microsoft division of DigiQuill (a Cyest company). The venture has been established to provide clients with an enhanced capability to make informed decisions.

Decision Inc. is headed up by CEO Nick Bell, who started the highly successful Qlikview company, BusinessIntelligent in 2008. Together with his colleagues, Bell has already built a substantial customer base.

According to Bell, there was a concerted effort in 2013 to establish a sustainable, efficient and well-organised entity to build on BusinessIntelligent’s recognised value to the market.

“Leadership at BusinessIntelligent embarked on a journey to identify similar-minded companies that could provide clients with a technology and business experienced partner to assist in improving decision making processes and requirements.”

The first deal was for Cyest Corporation to sell its division, DigiQuill Productivity, a Microsoft Partner, to Decision Inc. At the same time, BusinessIntelligent was sold to Decision Inc., with the respective leaders becoming equal partners in the new venture.

A second deal was then completed with SAP partner, ASYST Intelligence, to also trade in their shares and join the new group.

“The merger means that the company has 70 highly skilled staff and over 200 clients, making it one of the few companies in South Africa that can offer assistance to any business, irrespective of the level of their requirements. Not only do we have a pool of skilled business and process analysts, but we have experienced technical consultants competent in building and supporting market-leading BI platforms and tools,” explains Bell.

According to Bell, the service-delivery model is represented by four key pillars: Decision Architecture; Data Engineering; Insight Generation and Presentation; as well as Enablement & Support. These pillars provide the following services:

Decision Architecture: Experienced business analysts and consultants provide expertise to help clients determine organisational strategy, perform decision audits, design decision rights workflows and set and monitor organisational and individual Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Architects also assist in design or auditing enterprise-wide architecture and infrastructure – both technical and non-technical.

Data Engineering:  Robust, quality data is instrumental to delivering trusted information to decision makers. Data specialists assist with data audits, data warehousing, data cleansing and data stewardship, as well as development.

Insight Generation and Presentation: Best-of-breed platforms are used to deliver data in highly visual, contextualised ways to drive the decision-making process. This service incorporates analytics, reporting, mobile and financial intelligence as well as portals.

Enablement and Support: The best solutions, once successfully implemented, must be deeply embedded in the organisation to effect adoption and change. The same solutions must also be continually supported to ensure longevity and continual improvement. This service includes change management, classroom and workshop training, project management, remote support and call centre assistance.

Significance to the market

Executive leadership behind Decision Inc. believe the venture demonstrates a radical shift in the application of BI within the African market.

“In addition to our unique understanding of decision-making processes and related solutions,” says Bell, “our value proposition is based on the provision of both technical skills and relevant business knowledge across the BI value chain. This will help clients to realise maximum value from their investment in decision support technology and enable them to make better decisions, faster.”

He says Decision Inc.’s vision is to add real value to clients by providing business and process knowledge, and then leveraging the power of information through robust data and best-of-breed platform technologies.

Decision Inc. represents global software vendors QlikView, SAP, Microsoft, Roambi, MicroStrategy and IsoMetrix.

“Our unique combination of business and technical competence will help business leaders make better and smarter decisions, gaining critical insight from their data,” he adds. “Clients are no longer focused on reporting for the sake of reporting: they see and understand the competitive advantage of being able to make better business decisions faster. They need actionable intelligence provided to them efficiently and through a platform that enables them to answer important questions about their business.”

Bell has already set his sights on aggressively growing the company’s existing client base. The company plans to continue to grow significantly in the coming months, both from a revenue and skills perspective.