You’re making a decision. An important decision. You gather up your data, stare at it for a while, scratch out some notes.
Let’s add an audience to the scene. Your minions, watching and admiring you. You breathe, they breathe. You frown, they frown. In silence. You consider all the parameters, account for all the variables, make calculations with lightning speed. Your team can practically hear you thinking, it’s so intense.
At last, you sigh. A whoosh of air. Your minions can hear it. They lean in. You’ve made the important decision. You announce it. They shake their heads in wonder. Another highly important decision, and exactly the right one. “It’s an art,” you say modestly.
Maybe it’s not really like that. Maybe you actually doodle and curse alone at your desk and go with your gut, and usually it turns out to be right.
Either way, there’s a complex process going on in your brain. Complex processes in the brain are actually conducted with electricity and chemicals, but let’s imagine that the processes of the brain talk. We imagined admiring minions for you, so we can imagine talking brain parts.
“I need to hire a designer,” you think. Deep in the control room of your brain, a voice comes: “IF we need a designer, THEN look among our current vendors.”
You look through the portfolios of your current designers. The voice comes again: “IF the design is symmetrical, THEN…” “IF the design uses the Golden Ratio…” “IF the designer’s fee is equal to or less than …” “IF the designer’s availability is equal to…” The voice runs through the statements so quickly that they overlap. A new voice cuts through: “Define profile…” The first voice hasn’t stopped, and criteria are growing more diverse. ”IF current vendors do not fit profile as established, THEN…” There are hundreds of IF…THEN statements running through your brain so fast that you’re not even conscious of them.
You might not even know the term “Golden Ratio.” Fortunately, your brain recognizes it as a mathematical feature of design that’s universally pleasing to the eye. If the portfolio you’re examining doesn’t use it, that control room in your brain will probably reject that designer, whether you can do the math or not.
You use so many criteria, in such complex interactions, that it may seem like an art to make that decision. In a way, it is. Your expertise, built up over time, is what makes the decisions possible. Often, you can’t articulate the criteria well enough to allow someone else to make the decision. That’s why you’re the expert.
When computers use a program that whips through multiple decision-making steps on the basis of rules that you’ve defined, it’s called a rules-based system. A rules-based system examines data you give it, in light of rules defined ahead of time, and makes decisions on the basis of that data.
Rules-based systems allow your computer to function like a human expert, running through multiple variables — fast — to make decisions with intelligence. In some ways, the computer is better. Assuming that your computer has a custom database and is therefore a central repository of data, it never has to stop and try to remember where that piece of paper was, or try to reconstruct a half-recalled conversation. Having a rules-based system custom designed for your business is like bringing in another expert, on your schedule and under your control. This type of program is not easy to build, but it’s so powerful that it brings your computer to a whole new level of usefulness.
Look around you. Where are rules-based systems already being used in your business? Clevertech would be glad to work with you to create your own personalized rules-based system to automate those processes. We recently built a system for a client which can evaluate over 50 rules for each of 9 portfolios for each trade he makes. In under 2 seconds. Think of all the areas in your business where rules-based systems are currently being used by humans. Now imagine having your computer making the right decisions in those areas every time, in seconds.
Rules-based systems are not easy to build but they allow you great control over your business. That’s why they are so valuable. Mass-produced spreadsheet programs just look at them admiringly.
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