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Atefeh “Atti” Riazi says she is a big believer in gut instinct. But when it comes to IT and business alignment, she’s convinced that intuition must give way to decisions based on business intelligence, predictive analytics in particular.

After all, CIOs have not exactly excelled at predicting the future, Riazi noted, judging from the profession’s black eyes over technology spending that failed to deliver an ROI or customer value.

“We are guessing the future based on the knowns that we have,” said Riazi, CIO of the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). “The problem is we don’t know what we don’t know,” she said, channeling former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield.

Corralling IBM’s consulting services (pro bono, due to the vendor’s interest in creating energy-efficient “smart buildings”), Riazi is using business intelligence and predictive analytics to challenge — as she puts it — “urban legends and sacred cows” of public assistance programs. Everything — from how best to reduce operating costs and increase building efficiencies, to which investments will actually improve the quality of life of more than 400,000 NYCHA residents — is being examined with BI and predictive analytics tools.

“IBM announced a major enhancements to its performance management software designed to help CFOs and finance managers accelerate the adoption of business analytics and drive smarter decisions for better business outcomes. The new analytic finance solutions can reduce customer planning cycles in half and reduce reporting cycles from days to minutes. C-level executives today are looking to Finance to provide more accurate data more quickly, to aid in risk management and forecasting decisions, and to help drive the bottom line. As a result, Finance departments are under increased pressures with higher demands for real-time data production and analysis, increased regulation on reporting and compliance, and reduced budgets.”

“Whether you’re a CEO, CFO, CIO, or CTO, the ability to analyze large volumes of data from multiple sources and to improve decision making at all levels is critical to success,” said Bashar Kilani, Business Unit Executive, IBM Middle East, IBM Software Group. “Business intelligence that provides detailed reporting and analysis, made relevant with real-time response, enables forward thinking organizations to better understand and respond to events, enabling them to perform smarter, and ultimately to gain competitive advantage.”

“In our interconnected and always-on world, business lifecycles get shorter and shorter. Companies have always expected to change business models from time to time, but now many keep updating them rapid-fire. Sometimes, when the model continues to meet your organizational goals for revenue, cost and competitive differentiation, you don’t have to change it right away. But you must be ready to update it at any time, and you must know when and how to do so.”