Putting numbers at the heart of intelligent business

Data is central to businesses today, from driving efficiencies to understanding and even creating new markets, but many organisations have struggled to integrate it into their operations.

Indeed, according to one 2023 survey in the United States, 24 per cent of companies use analytics in their day-to-day operations. If anything, this number is lower than might be expected, though variation across industry is part of the explanation.

In addition, this figure is actually a drop on 2020, when the same survey found that 37.8 per cent of executives said they believe their companies were “data-driven”. However, this too can be explained by the difficulties businesses have encountered in their attempts to incorporate data-driven decision-making into company cultures.

But what about closer to home in Ireland? The picture is a mixed one, said John Tallon, modern applications practice director at Storm Technology. Some industries and individual organisations are racing ahead, while others lag. The lagging sectors are in catch-up mode, though.

“When it comes to analytics, manufacturing and life science are probably the ones that have been left behind – but they’re catching up. Construction also seems to be relying more on data, whereas before it would have had a more subjective approach,” Tallon said.

Indeed, industries like construction have shown an interest in understanding how builds went in order to drive efficiency on-site and in materials. One difficulty, however, is that many businesses struggle to integrate the data that they collect.

“It’s largely siloed data: the quantity surveyor comes in and does their thing, but that doesn’t automatically flow into the purchasing and delivering of goods, or to checks on site when they get delivered.”

A business intelligence tool can be used to do that, though, as long as the relevant data flows into it, Tallon said.

Focusing on the data

Today, in every industry, businesses typically have more than one solution running their business, from enterprise resource planning (ERP) to customer relationship management (CRM). As a result, many are starting to put a lot of focus on the data, Tallon said.

The reason for this is twofold, he said: a generational shift as well as a technological one.

“The leadership is changing and also there is no [need for] capital outlay,” he said.

“Previously, capital investment was required. That is no longer the case. Also, it’s fast to get up and running. You’re not doing heart surgery on your business.”

The key development here is cloud computing, notably cloud-based business intelligence applications such as Microsoft Power BI.

“Data has been under-utilised, and if you put it into some sort of analytics process, before cloud that wouldn’t have been possible,” said Tallon.

Being able to centralise data in the cloud not only allows for analytics, it also simplifies processes.

“Data management is essential. This means asking things like, how does an organisation know what data it has? You have people working across different teams who could use it, so how do we put in a central system that can manage it?”

When data is centralised, changes automatically populate across the system, so that if, for instance, a supplier changes an address or status, it does not need to be updated on multiple systems. Beyond that, it also helps with understanding the business by becoming a catalogue of, for instance, machine assets.

“That curation of data is an important thing for a lot of manufacturing facilities,” said Tallon.

These assets also produce data that has real-world applications for the business. Production data, for example, can tell you about the future output of a process.

“There’s a lot of life science in Ireland, a lot of machine data; vast amounts of data coming out of these machines, producing whatever they’re producing.

“There is value in understanding that. If you take data from a production line that says there has been a one-degree increase in temperature, that could have a downstream effect on line number four, and someone could see the plastic is warping,” he said.

In the end, Tallon said, analytics need not be a giant leap into the dark. Instead, it can be seen as a natural outgrowth of ongoing business processes.

“If you’re already on the road with BI and thinking about solving problems, on the journey to get a solution, then it’s a case of putting analytics on top of that. There’s not a big jump there,” he said.