Most automation programmes stall because they start with solutions instead of the business problem.
DecisionWorks starts with understanding how your business operates and identifying the opportunities
for step change, then uses data and AI to build governed, production ready solutions that deliver
true business growth.
Automation only works when it is grounded in how work actually flows.
Five patterns show up in nearly every organisation that has tried automation and
not seen the return. Recognise any of them, and the fix is rarely another tool.
01
Manual and repetitive work
Skilled people spend their week rekeying, reconciling and chasing. Errors climb with volume, and the process cannot scale without hiring against it.
02
Automation without return
Isolated pilots deliver a demo and a slide, then quietly decay. Nothing compounds, and the case for the next investment gets harder to make.
03
No visibility of the process
Nobody can point to where time, cost and rework actually accumulate, so prioritisation follows whoever argues loudest rather than the evidence.
04
Fragile operations
Processes hold together until volume spikes, a key person leaves or an upstream system changes. Then every workaround surfaces at once.
05
Governance and compliance risk
AI and automation deployed without controls, lineage or an owner. Fine until a regulator, an auditor or a customer asks how the decision was made.
Services
Five capabilities. One outcome: decisions that hold up in production.
Engagements can start anywhere on this list. Most clients begin with a short
diagnostic, then scale into the areas where the evidence says the return is.
Fabian from DecisionWorks designed and built an AI powered content automation system that repurposes my existing YouTube videos into hundreds of short form clips and schedules them for daily posting across social media. The content promotes my YouTube channel and has helped increase my Instagram follower count fourfold. I am very impressed with his knowledge, experience & enthusiasm!!!
Fabian at DecisionWorks built a professional website to promote my live music services to event organisers and venues. He optimised it for Google and AI powered search, helping generate more enquiries and gig bookings. He also automated my social media content, increasing my follower count by 40% in just a few weeks. He was easy to deal with and turned everything around really quickly
Speaking engagements, and trade coverage of the AI powered programmes Fabian
led at HSBC Australia, including the Customer Decision Hub programme presented at PegaWorld
2018 and 2019.
Presented · September 2026
Pegasystems Breakout: From AI Experiments to Customer Outcomes. Building the Foundations for Long Term Success
Marketing Tech Symposium 2026 · Rydges Resort Hunter Valley, Lovedale NSW · 8 and 9 September 2026
Customer expectations keep rising while marketing environments grow more complex. Success is not driven by AI alone. It rests on foundations: customer engagement, governance, operating models, orchestration and measurement. The session looked at how leading organisations use those capabilities to deliver relevant, trusted and measurable customer outcomes at scale, and at how agentic marketing operations are emerging as the next evolution. The technology may change. The foundations for delivering customer outcomes do not.
Co presented with Khachig Kabakjian, Director of Business Excellence APJ at Pegasystems. Fabian appeared in his capacity as Country Head of Client Analytics at HSBC.
Read the article Add assets/fabian-speaking.jpgPresenting the HSBC Customer Decision Hub programme at PegaWorld 2019
The method
Signal to Outcome. Four stages, in order, every time.
Many signals converge into one decision. That idea sits in our mark, and it is
how we run every engagement: understand the work, prioritise on evidence, simplify before you
build, then embed it so it survives contact with the business.
01
Understand how work really happens
We map the end to end process as it is performed, not as it is documented, including
the exceptions, the shadow spreadsheets and the handoffs nobody owns. That is where time,
cost and risk accumulate.
02
Prioritise by value, not by hype
Every candidate is scored on return, feasibility, risk and how far it scales. What
survives is a shortlist you can fund and defend, plus an explicit list of what we
deliberately chose not to automate.
03
Redesign before we automate
Automating a broken process makes it fail faster and at greater volume. We simplify and
remove steps first, so what gets built is smaller, cheaper to run and far less brittle.
04
Implement, govern and embed
We deploy with monitoring, controls and a named owner, then work with the team through
the change. Benefits are tracked after go live, which is the only point at which they are
real.
Why DecisionWorks
Governed by design, because production is where AI gets audited.
Plenty of people can build you an AI system. The harder part is standing behind
it eighteen months later when a regulator, an auditor or a customer asks how the decision was
made. That constraint shapes how we build from the first workshop.
Value driven outcomes
Every engagement is tied to a commercial metric agreed up front: cost to serve, revenue per
customer, cycle time, error rate. If we cannot name the metric, we do not start the build.
Production ready, not proof of concept
Built to be run: monitoring, alerting, documented lineage, a rollback path and a named
owner. The handover is the deliverable, not an afterthought.
Governance from the first line
Ethics, transparency, bias testing and audit trails are designed in, not retrofitted,
shaped by more than two decades delivering AI and analytics inside regulated environments.
Frameworks that scale
What we build with you is reusable: patterns, standards and an operating model that take
you from isolated experiments to enterprise adoption without starting over each time.
About
20+ years of experience building and commercialising data and AI capabilities.
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DecisionWorks was founded by Fabian Abacum in 2026. Fabian brings more than 20 years of
experience commercialising data, analytics, AI and technology investments. His work spans
AI powered customer decisioning, personalised customer engagement, MarTech & marketing
automation, workflow automation, machine learning, advanced analytics, cloud data platforms,
and operating models & governance; delivering growth while maintaining customer trust and
responsible oversight.
Australia specific one pagers on governing AI, choosing a platform and
automating real work. No email required.
Infographic · Governance
The decisioning iceberg
What gets funded sits above the waterline. What decides whether it pays back sits below: decision arbitration, eligibility and suitability controls, the operating model, experimental design, governance forums and closed loop measurement. The implementation was never the hardest part.
APRA's April 2026 letter put AI governance and board AI literacy on the supervisory agenda. Ten questions worth asking before the next board pack arrives, from where AI is actually in use to whether you could switch it off tomorrow.
From 10 December 2026, Privacy Act reforms require APP entities to update privacy policies where automated systems make, or substantially assist in making, decisions that may significantly affect people. A six step readiness check.
With a short, fixed scope diagnostic, typically two to four weeks. We map the process end to end, quantify where time and cost accumulate, and come back with a prioritised shortlist and a business case per candidate. You can act on that with us or without us. There is no obligation to continue.
Do you build, or only advise?
Both, and we prefer to do both. Advice that never gets implemented is expensive. We deliver working solutions, including models, automations, data platforms, CRM and marketing capability, with the monitoring and documentation needed to run them, and we hand them to a named owner in your team.
Which platforms do you work with?
We are deliberately platform agnostic and work across the major cloud, data, CRM, marketing automation and AI stacks. Tool selection comes after the process and use case work, never before it. Choosing the platform first is the most common reason these programmes fail to return.
Is DecisionWorks ISO 42001 certified?
DecisionWorks is currently undergoing the required ISO 42001 work with the aim of being certified by end of 2026. All solutions delivered by DecisionWorks are aligned to ISO 42001 standards and will always ensure adherence to relevant regulatory regulations and guidance.
What does governed actually mean in practice?
Documented data lineage, a written decision record for model choices, bias and fairness testing wherever decisions affect people, monitoring with alert thresholds, an escalation path, a rollback plan and a named accountable owner. If any of those are missing, the work is not finished.
Are you too small for an enterprise programme?
For strategy, diagnostics, architecture and governance design, small is an advantage, because you get senior judgement directly. For large build phases we scope realistically and assemble a delivery team around the engagement. We will tell you plainly when a piece of work is better placed elsewhere.
Do you work outside New South Wales?
Yes. We are based in Penrith, NSW and work with clients Australia wide, remotely and on site. Discovery workshops are usually most productive in person. The rest of the delivery generally is not.
Let's explore what's next for your business.
Bring a process that frustrates you, a decision you cannot evidence, or an AI idea you are
not sure is real. Thirty minutes, no pitch deck. You will leave with a straight read on whether
it is worth doing.
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