A well-known fact is that businesses today are confronted with the explosion of data. What many decision makers don’t know, however, is the value of location data and the intelligence that geospatial analysis can offer. We show some opportunities to exploit the potential that location data can bring.
Location data is already and will continue to be a growing component of all business data. Location infrastructure (for example based on beacons) is proliferating, and the Internet of Things is on everyone’s lips.
Using that data offers great chances to create competitive advantage and make better, more actionable business decisions. It enables visualizing and analyzing the relationship between corporate data and location-specific data. By delivering important facts and relevant information about movement in a facility, the data can help to speed up logistics and operation and streamline key processes. Used in the right way, location analytics can bring significant advantages to a company, which manifest themselves in the increase of efficiency, effectiveness and/or quality and in the realization of cost savings.
But what possibilities do organizations have to leverage location data? The best way to identify valuable initiatives is usually to look at the underlying conditions. For example, many industrial companies already have networked machines and software that (partially) consolidates the data (e.g. ERP solutions). Looking at the starting conditions is an important step in order to derive reasonable use cases and develop an analytics strategy that is tailored to superordinate business goals.
When making use of location analytics, a distinction can be made between descriptive and predictive analytics.
DESCRIPTIVE ANALYTICS
The use of analytics enables the monitoring of processes based on the evaluation of current and historical data. By creating transparency on on-going and past processes, information on the current status and possible faults can be derived, for example. Since the data is available in real time, the supply chain can be mapped continuously.
EXAMPLE:
An industrial company is struggling with production problems, delays and disruptions. The cause of the problem cannot be identified directly.
SOLUTION:
The company starts tracking the movements of material, goods and means of transport. The evaluation and visualization of the data of the production process enables identifying and sustainably eliminating the cause of the problem. Delivery deadlines can be met again.
PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS
Predictive analytics allows forecasting future events or conditions. It enables automated evaluation of current and future processes and events in the supply chain. Historical data is searched for patterns, forecast models are derived and applied to current data in order to classify processes, display problems or predict a demand. The big advantage of predictive analytics is that necessary measures can be taken preventively – before the problem even occurs.
EXAMPLE:
A company does not track their containers. Frequently, there is a surplus or shortage of material, which leads to searching and waiting times and prevents an optimal and efficient workflow.
SOLUTION:
The company deploys container tracking. By evaluating the tracking data and comparing it with the demand for production equipment, samples can be identified and implications can be generated for the future. A forecast of the future demand can be used to distribute the containers accordingly.
Predictive analytics can also be used to forecast stock levels and supply bottlenecks.
No matter whether it is a higher operating efficiency, a more targeted personnel deployment, an improvement of products, portfolio or customer experience – location-based data and analytics can be used in a number of ways.
The growing awareness of the value of location-based data is driving both acceptance of and demand for location analytics solutions. infsoft’s technology enables businesses to evaluate processes and movement in their facility, gain a better understanding of their data and make more informed business decisions. Don’t hesitate to contact us and discuss potential use cases with us.
