AI is commoditizing analysis.
Judgment is the new scarce resource.

About Eric

I'm Eric Brafford. At every stop in my career inside multi-unit operators, I've been in the room where executive decisions get made — restaurant operations and operations support at Steak n Shake, corporate strategy at Choice Hotels International, and most recently Senior Director of Commercial Analytics at Extended Stay America. I now work as a fractional advisor to executive teams at multi-unit operators. Through the Decision Signals™ Method, I help leadership teams turn analytics into better decisions: the scorecards they see, the rhythm of operating reviews, and how AI fits into the way decisions actually get made. Every engagement opens with a Decision Signals™ diagnostic call.

Industry experience

• Restaurants — Steak n Shake (restaurant management, operations support)
• Lodging — Choice Hotels International (corporate strategy), Extended Stay America (commercial analytics)
• Events — Optica, formerly OSA (analytics for meetings, conventions, and global events)

What I focus on

• Metrics Architecture — what gets measured, how it's defined, who owns the definition
• Decision Cadence — the rhythm of reviews, who attends, what each review is built to decide
• Reporting Surfaces — the artifacts leadership actually sees, and whether they're built for decisions or display
• Human-AI Integration — where AI fits in the analytics pipeline and how AI outputs land in executive decisions
• Action Linkage — whether what shows up in reporting reliably changes what gets done