Existent analytics software can be customised to extract insights from data. Converting so much data to digital formats means that you instantly have access to raw information about every part of your organisation from any place in real time. At this stage, you are probably asking how are you going to analyse and interpret all that data because it is one thing to have data, and it is an entirely different matter to gain actionable insights from those data.
Probably you already have analysts specialised in processing data coming from specific data sources, such as sales, financial information, or marketing data. It might seem that their expertise is all lost in the scenario where all the data is centralised. Nothing could be further from the truth. If your information is all in one place, then your analysts and data scientists have access to the same data in real time. They share the data, and therefore it will be easier for them to create more comprehensive models. Furthermore, the tool they built over the years does not need to change. If anything, they will evolve to accommodate new data sources that are now readily available, thus gaining more insights about your business.
Irrespective of the state of digitalisation, any company can take advantage of analytics in a few steps. First, you transform your analogue assets into digital ones. Next, you build or extend your data collection and organisation capacity to store all the relevant raw data into the cloud. Once you are there, there is no limit to what your team can achieve. Now that everyone in your organisation has access to the same data in real time, you can capitalise on the insights you get. For example, you can build predictive algorithms that use all the data as opposed to being limited to information coming from one or two sources. Furthermore, you can start ingesting external data, such as market trends, weather information, or consumer reports and incorporate that into the models you build giving the algorithms even more information about the world they are trying to model and anticipate.
In conclusion, any plant can benefit from analytics, irrespective of the age of the equipment and systems in operation. We now have a plethora of methods to choose from to transform analogue assets into digital ones and to collect, organise, understand, and explain the data they produce.