Have you heard that “Data is the new oil”?

This means that in the current century, for those who know it and take advantage of it, data is a powerful tool. It means knowledge. It means progress. It means power.

Many companies still see their data infrastructure as a cost. As expensive as it might be, we believe that it’s not as expensive as not knowing what’s happening in your company.

If you treat your data like another corporate asset which you manage carefully, chances are you will soon have new business opportunities. If you share data about your customers, it can provide you an upselling opportunity or maybe it will sign you a retention problem before it’s too late. If you share data about your shop floor, you will be able to save on raw materials or even plan your production ahead and fully maximize your capacity.

The data you have and the management decisions you make upon it will most likely be good and support decisions and if it’s measured you probably will also be able to improve it.

Real-time access to data is also a key issue. You need to know which KPI are influencing your results and what can you improve right now. The most data you have

 

Differences between data and oil

Although there are similarities, data and oil are not the same: Data travels around the world fast and cheap. While oil is finite, data is durable, reusable and infinite. We don’t need to hold it or store it because data is not rare or scarce and the more we use it, the more useful it becomes. Data collected from a shop floor, once processed, can help the production manager identify a bottleneck in a production process and solve it. After that, it can generate, together with other information, further insights about processes.

Data is also increasingly available and easier to collect as digitization of companies, institutions and the society in general occurs.

 

Conclusion
Data is power and those who control it are establishing themselves as masters in their own fields. Just think about Google. Or Amazon. Or Facebook. And that’s why one can say that data is the new oil, the new source of power (and money). But the similarities end there. We can’t treat data like oil and although both need processing, oil drilling is not like data mining.  

If you want to collect data and have access to it in real time, sign up and start having access to all your information right now.