The power of Decision Management in this kind of scenario is threefold.
Firstly it focuses on the decisions themselves - what decisions matter to the customer interaction. This ensures that the data being collected and used is that which will make a difference. Beginning with the decision in mind in this way focuses analytics and data gathering.
Secondly it allows the decision to be made consistently across channels so that customers get the same service from the agent at the gate, the call center, the service center or the kiosk. Operational BI assumes there is a person to make the decision and so cannot deliver this true cross-channel consistency.
Thirdly, Decision Management recognizes that policies and regulations matter as much, sometimes more, than data. Presenting the data and even its analysis to someone who then fails to follow procedure is not helpful. Decision Management combines the policy aspects of a decision with the analytic aspects in a way Operational BI does not.
O. Marjanovic. HICSS '07: Proceedings of the 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, page 215c. Washington, DC, USA, IEEE Computer Society, (2007)