: Executive Decision-Making in the Age of AI:
360-degree AI-based Performance Management for Functions and Markets

As our latest survey among over 1,000 international CxOs about their management priorities and transformation progress shows, companies demonstrate the highest AI maturity in operational processes, with tangible benefits in automation and efficiency. Administrative functions increasingly leverage AI to streamline workflows, while customer services are still experimenting with personalization and governance challenges. Yet in areas that truly define the future - strategic innovation, product development, and above all managerial decision-making - AI adoption is lagging behind. 

In other words: executives are not yet fully harnessing AI where it matters most—at the steering wheel of the company. 

Tomorrow’s leaders will not only rely on charisma, experience, or intuition. They will be augmented by AI- and data-driven decision support systems that operate silently in the background. Think of AI as a “silent business partner”: constantly scanning the horizon for risks, mapping opportunities, forecasting turning points, and providing in-depth root cause analysis before issues become visible in quarterly reports. 

In today’s environment, executives face an unprecedented set of challenges. They must contend with disruptive technologies and new business models, shifting client expectations, volatile geopolitical landscapes, trade tensions, regulatory pressures and sustainability requirements, and ever-intensifying global competition. 

Thus, entrepreneurial intuition, enhanced by AI-powered foresight, is becoming a decisive competitive advantage. 

Our performance Intelligence model helps to address these challenges. This approach integrates AI and data accelerators and is designed to embed intelligent solutions into every step of executive decision-making. Performance Intelligence empowers leadership teams to act with clarity and agility by providing predictive insights, prescriptive recommendations, and continuous learning loops. The result is an agile, targeted management system. 

Here’s how it works across the executive cycle: 

1. Strategic Assessment – Full Transparency of Risks and Opportunities 
GenAI-driven market intelligence transforms vast global data into actionable insights. Heatmaps of sentiment, early-warning signals, and disruption alerts enable leaders to detect shifts long before they appear in conventional reporting. 

2. Strategic Planning – Evaluate Scenarios with Confidence
AI-powered scenarios replace “gut-driven” ambitions, premises and assumptions with transparent, data-based context information. Executives can explore multiple futures, put their strategies to the test, and confidently identify resilient options grounded in market realities. 

3. Strategic Implementation – Simulating Complexity with Digital Twins
With AI-enabled digital twins of value chains, leaders can simulate cost, lead times, emissions, and risks in real time. This provides a cockpit-like view for trade-off decisions, whether optimizing supplier networks or managing sustainability impacts. 

4. Forecasting – Predicting Turning Points Before They Happen 
Predictive analytics connect lagging and leading indicators, turning noise into foresight. Executives gain visibility into what might happen, why, and when—enabling proactive, rather than reactive, leadership. 

5. Performance Improvement – Driving Measurable Impact 
AI continuously fine-tunes operations: recommending price adjustments, optimizing capacity utilization, reducing working capital, or refining sourcing strategies. Leaders remain focused on outcomes, while AI acts as the invisible engine of performance. 

6. Performance Review – Closing the Loop with Insight 
AI synthesizes KPIs across silos and links them to broader business context. Reviews move beyond static reporting, embedding learning into the next planning cycle and ensuring organizations evolve continuously. 

The essence of Performance Intelligence is not to replace human judgment. It is to elevate leadership intuition with data-driven foresight, ensuring that every executive decision is faster, better informed, and more resilient. 

By embedding AI as “silent executive support,” companies gain a comprehensive 360-degree view across functions and markets. They are able to anticipate disruptions through predictive and prescriptive insights, while optimizing value creation in real time. At the same time, AI ensures that organizations continuously learn from each decision cycle and systematically improve their performance. 

This is how leaders transform AI from an efficiency tool into a true strategic copilot - enabling not just survival, but sustainable competitive advantage in a disrupted world. 

And this is only the beginning. The next wave of disruption will not ask whether companies use AI, but how intelligently they embed it into the very fabric of leadership and performance management. Those who master Performance Intelligence today will define the benchmarks of tomorrow.