Data-driven decision-making in practice
In the modern business landscape, companies are leveraging advanced analytics technologies to gain competitive advantages tailored to their specific industries. Here's a glimpse into how three diverse entities - Otto Group, Andrews Sykes, and Leicester Tigers - are harnessing the power of data to drive growth and success.
Otto Group is revolutionising its procurement strategy with AI-powered analytics. By partnering with startups, they are developing AI tools that enhance supplier market data collection and analysis, resulting in strategies with up to 10 times more insights and a 50% reduction in development time. This empowers category managers to focus on driving engagement and value creation beyond cost savings, including sustainability priorities [4].
Andrews Sykes, a specialist in equipment hire and services, is using advanced AI-driven bookkeeping and financial analytics platforms. These tools automate transaction categorization and generate real-time financial reports, enabling the company to monitor financial health promptly, make informed decisions faster, and optimise inventory and resource utilization, leading to improved profitability and operational efficiency [5].
Leicester Tigers, the renowned rugby club, applies advanced analytics and AI technology to player performance management. By analysing player data, they receive personalised, actionable insights that help athletes understand their performance patterns and receive targeted practice recommendations, improving skills and competitive performance over time [1][3].
Ecclesiastical Insurance is also embracing the data revolution, implementing a new data management platform from DataFlux to integrate unstructured data into its calculations while maintaining quality control [2]. Meanwhile, Andrews Sykes is using advanced analytics to plan delivery routes for thousands of items across the UK [6].
The predictive analytics system from Blue Yonder is proving invaluable for both Otto and Andrews Sykes. For Otto, it enables accurate demand forecasting, with predictions now up to 40% more accurate [7]. Thomas Friese, senior project manager for forecasting at Otto, emphasises the importance of predicting sales volumes to drive down shipping costs [8]. For Andrews Sykes, the system allows historical demand analysis to predict future demand [9].
Otto's forecasting team extracts over 100 million records per day from various sources, including historical and real-time sales data and supply chain information [10]. Andrews Sykes builds its advanced analytics capabilities on IBM's Cognos business intelligence platform [11].
Leicester Tigers use predictive analytics technology to help minimise the number of injuries that their star players pick up, with the system built by specialist technology supplier Edge 10 using statistical analytics package SPSS [12]. The real-time link between Andrews Sykes' ERP system and Cognos was established, allowing for real-time analysis of data instead of relying on overnight batch processing [13]. The system pulls in inventory data from the company's applications, combines it with postcode data and geo-location information from Google Maps, and helps determine the optimum delivery route for equipment [14].
Looking ahead, Ecclesiastical Insurance is considering integrating geographical information systems to inform its risk assessment of buildings and is contemplating the use of in-memory computing to improve the speed of its analysis [2]. As businesses continue to embrace advanced analytics, we can expect to see even more innovative applications of these technologies in the future.
- Finance and technology are integrated in the strategy of Leicester Tigers, as they use AI-driven analytics to gain valuable insights into player performance, helping them optimize skills and improve competitive performance.
- Data-and-cloud-computing platforms, such as IBM's Cognos business intelligence, are crucial for businesses like Andrews Sykes, enabling them to automate transaction categorization, generate real-time financial reports, and optimize resource utilization, leading to enhanced profitability and operational efficiency.
