For better or worse, we live in an age dominated by data and its analysis. From our online social lives to our medical treatment, our data now influences huge swathes of our lives, both online and off.
For many startups, interoperability (the ability for systems to operate with others) within data has become paramount, sometimes deciding the difference between an average firm and a market leading one.
Although typically thought of primarily in B2C settings, properly collecting and analysing data can have a massive impact on those acting within the manufacturing and industrial sectors too.
Client Director of data Consultancy group, SDG Group, Steve Crosson Smith, has the following to say on the use of data in manufacturing:
“Where data can help here is in creating an end-to-end view showing the true dynamics of the business. It can help with the challenges that all companies face – sales, profitability, cashflow, materials, return on capital expenditure, running costs and so on – and remove the siloed view that results in each department working independently. Leveraging the data means you don’t just spot an issue, for example, but can get down to the root cause and work out why that issue has occurred.”
Manufacturing lends itself extremely well to the collection of data – most modern equipment records all sorts of information on its running efficiency and other related metrics. Collecting and analysing this data in a coordinated way could lead to more efficient processes and – in the longer term – increased levels of automation.
Healthcare is another industry that had large amounts of usable data at its disposal. The problem for many healthtech startups can be in collating and properly using all this data in industry-compliant ways.
The healthcare industry faces masses of regulatory pressure – for good reason – that can often make getting a data-focused healthcare company off the ground very difficult. It is for this reason, then, that interoperability – or your software’s ability to talk others – is so important.
To add to this, patients have begun to expect a more data-integrated approach to healthcare since the start of the pandemic. Online portals for many healthcare service providers offer a wealth of user experiences to patients, while also acting as a wealth of data collection for the providers.
Bearing all this in mind, however, healthtech startups should become closely acquainted with the various legislative requirements around the collection and processing of said data.
Data is the new gold rush. If you own data, you command a lot of potential cash and power. Utilising this data will be the real distinguisher between those businesses who are destined to become market leaders and those who will continue to flag behind as the world progresses towards a data-centric way of operating.
What companies do with this data can, and increasingly will, make the difference between being market-average and market-leading. Becoming a company that doesn’t just collect data, but harnesses it to improve its performance should therefore be a business-critical imperative.
