From Decision Support to Analytics

Since the 1960s, information technology (IT)/information systems (IS) professionals, data practitioners, and senior managers have focused on developing decision support capabilities to enhance organizational decision making. Initially, this quest was mostly driven by successive generations of technological advances. However, in the last decade, the pace at which large volumes of diverse data can be collected and processed, new algorithmic advances, and the development of computational infrastructure such as graphics processing units (GPUs) and tensor processing units (TPUs) have created new opportunities for global businesses in areas such as financial services, manufacturing, retail, sports, and healthcare. At this point, it seems that most industries and public services could potentially be revolutionized by these new techniques. The word analytics has replaced the previous individual components of computerized decision support technologies that have been developed under various labels in the past (). Much of the traditional researcher and practitioner communities who were concerned with decision support, decision support systems (DSSs), and business intelligence (BI) have reoriented their attention to innovative tools and technologies to derive value from new data streams through artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics. Identifying the main areas of focus for decision support and analytics provides a stimulus for new ideas for researchers, managers, and IS/IT and data professionals. These stakeholders need to undertake new empirical studies that explain how analytics can be used to develop and enhance new forms of decision support while considering the dilemmas that may arise due to the data capture and analyses of new digital data streams.