Are You Sharing Enough Business Data?
AVEVA Group is a Business Reporter client.
As social media, e-commerce and always-on news are now central to our lives, we live in an age of data oversharing. Many of the things we do, read, buy or say online are likely to be recorded, analyzed and shared in an ever-expanding trove of Big Data that, in theory, helps organizations run more efficiently and profitably.
But in the industrial sector, most businesses are running the opposite risk: Manufacturers, energy companies and other industrial organizations have traditionally been slow to share their data even with other departments, much less other businesses.
Whether this hesitation stems from security concerns, technology gaps or just a focus on other priorities, it’s an expensive choice. It turns out that industrial data is not a conventional resource, such as energy or money, that gets used up. Instead, it’s an accreting asset: The more you use and share it, the more valuable your data becomes.
Building customer value and competitive advantage
To efficiently regulate a consistent supply of power to the electric grid, an energy company began aggregating data from its network of power generation facilities. But company experts realized that they didn’t need to keep this data to themselves. By sharing energy source information, they help customers make more informed choices about using renewable energy.
The company now offers business customers the option to purchase these renewable energy source audits, which they can share with investors and auditors to provide evidence of their own net-zero commitments. By turning internal operational data into a service, the company has created a new revenue stream, increasing customer value and competitive advantage and helping to accelerate America’s transition to low-carbon energy.
The $100 billion data dividend
In a second example, a food manufacturer was struggling to correctly time delivery of key ingredients. If supplies ran out, the company risked having to shut down production. But if there was an oversupply, the company lacked storage capacity and found itself paying suppliers extra for waiting time as workers scrambled to make room. So, the company began proactively sharing its real-time production data with its suppliers. They now know exactly when to deliver, and all parties have reduced food waste, energy use, time expended and costs.
According to the World Economic Forum, this type of data sharing could unlock an estimated $100 billion of growth in the manufacturing sector alone. With so many benefits, what is holding businesses back from breaking down costly data silos?
Dismantling the data silos in your business
It’s good to start the data sharing process by dismantling siloed thinking within your organization. That means people in different functions—industrial plant designers and maintenance engineers, for example—must start comparing notes. Encourage them to discuss the bottlenecks they experience and find opportunities for data-driven collaboration. That’s how the food manufacturer cited above got started, and as a result, its engineers have made design improvements yielding lasting operational, energy and cost efficiencies.
Once you’ve increased comfort levels with sharing data internally, it’s time to look at closer collaboration with trusted partners, suppliers and customers. Could proactive data sharing help you improve customer service or reduce costs and waste for the organization and its supply chain? Start with a single partner and build from there.
At this point, you may be concerned about security, speed and cost—but there is an easy, secure way to share proprietary operational data outside your business, at scale. Cloud-based data management services such as AVEVA Data Hub are designed to securely share real-time industrial data with internal and external partners—and without any coding.
You may find that sharing isn’t just good manners—it’s good business.
Learn more about secure industrial data sharing with AVEVA Data Hub.
This article originally appeared in Business Reporter.
Image: iStock id1321462048
