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Your Enterprise Needs the Benefits of Business Intelligence
Insight is the raw fuel that leaders need to handle today’s business world. Each day’s headlines seem to reveal more disruptions and crises. Despite all the talk of a new normal, each new normal gets quickly swept away by the waves of the future.
Material shortages and labor woes persist. Solid shipping routes face snarls and delays. Fraying trade ties force enterprises to reconsider supply and sourcing.
You need business insight into the future, not data from the past. Tomorrow’s business landscape will be a departure from the past, not a continuation of historical data.
That said, continued technological advances allow insightful leaders to use data to develop business intelligence in ways never envisioned before:
- Through the Internet of Things (IoT), which can yield data from virtually every facet of your operations.
- Through artificial intelligence, which helps organize that data in ways that make sense, and
- Through environmental scanning, which combines all that data and analytics with your human experience to guide your enterprise to profitable success.
1. Business Insights with The Internet of Things and Embedded Business Intelligence
The Internet of Things (IoT) uses sensors to connect devices and objects to embed computer power into everything – vehicles, production machinery, buildings, appliances, you name it.
These interconnected devices yield business insights by harnessing volumes of data. RFID tags allow supply chain pros to track inventory across the globe. Sensors track shipments to detect delays, along with monitoring inventory conditions and damage. Finding out that your cold chain is a bit too hot – and fixing the situation – can be salvation. You don’t want to deliver your customer’s cold goods hot.
Everybody in your product’s value chain – suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, retailers and more – can access real-time data to make quicker decisions, resolve issues proactively and coordinate better during the next inevitable supply chain disruption.
2. Business Insights with Artificial Intelligence
Today’s artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions, from warehouses to digital supply networks, help organize all that data in ways that make more sense.
Warehouses that integrate artificial intelligence, machine learning and the IoT have increased picking efficiency by 20% to 40%. Digital twins run simulations and analyze the data in real time to recommend optimized workflows for picking, putaway, cycle counting, crossdock, loading and unloading – every warehouse operation.
Digital supply networks have yielded double-digit improvements in premium freight costs, overall transportation costs, inventory reduction and reduced manual planning, scheduling and execution management overhead.
A real-time single version of truth connects your entire value chain. Removing boundaries between enterprises links all raw materials/components/parts from their entrance into your end-to-end supply chain until their exit as finished goods. AI autonomously resolves many issues, whether the trouble spot is 23 suppliers upstream or 13 suppliers downstream. Only significant problems get escalated for human intervention.
3. Business Insights with Environmental Scanning
Although they are improving daily, even generative artificial intelligence cannot make every business decision. But combining the insights gained through IoT, AI and ML can supercharge your environmental scanning.
Environmental scanning involves knowing your market, knowing what’s happening, researching and learning even beyond your comfort zone, and asking yourself, “What is going to result in my business changing?”
A great example is the Amazon-Kohl’s partnership, where Kohl’s accepts Amazon returns. Amazon’s environmental scanning revealed that easier returns could lure customers who normally would not buy online. Kohl’s needs foot traffic to drive sales. As described with more detail in my latest book Insightful Leadership, both win.
The partnership started pre-pandemic and continues to be applauded by retail analysts years later. Amazon, for its part, is striking similar deals with other retailers.
Business Intelligence for the Future
Want to learn more about combining the IoT with artificial intelligence with environmental scanning for solid business intelligence? I would love to discuss how your enterprise can benefit.
Jim Tompkins, Chairman of Tompkins Ventures, is an international authority on designing and implementing end-to-end supply chains. Over five decades, he has designed countless industrial facilities and supply chain solutions, enhancing the growth of numerous companies. He previously built Tompkins International from a backyard startup into an international consulting and implementation firm. Jim earned his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University.