Research from BI software firm QlikTech shows that 42% of global business leaders don’t have confidence in any decisions made, due to a lack of information or easy access to it.

The survey, conducted by Harvard Business Review Analytics Services, also demonstrates that only 13% of respondents strongly agree they are confident about their decisions.

Questioning 442 executives, managers and directors of companies across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific in August this year, the research sought to understand the level of confidence that corporate leaders have in decisions made, based on the data and information available to them.

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Some of the major issues raised in the research include access and availability to data to inform decision-making, as well as the quality of internal and external data, which were all cited as reducing levels of confidence in decision-making.

The survey respondents also claimed that organisational barriers are affecting decision-making, with 45% ranking ‘closed door decision-making’ without having the right people involved, and 43% naming excessive reliance on experience by top management as the top hurdles to overcome.

42% also mentioned a lack of collaboration as another reason.

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Further research conducted specifically in the UK across 280 employees showed that 65% think staff are not familiar enough with statistics or have other sufficient quantitative skills to be able to make successful business decisions.

The same amount think top management relies too much on experience and gut instinct, rather than using actual data.  

'Data is far more widely accessible to help inform decision-making in business nowadays, but this research shows that there is a lack of confidence in how the information is influencing decision-making,' says Sean Farrington, RVP Northern Europe & MD UK at QlikTech.

'At a time where there is widespread pressure to make decisions in real time using realtime data the key takeaways from this research are that decision-makers need access to up-to-date, accurate and relevant data, which needs to be available to them in real time to allow them to make the right decisions. Backed up by data analysis, which can be shared with peers and colleagues to collaborate on the decision-making, more confidence can be had in these decisions.'