Data and Analytics Drive the Post-COVID-19 World

Data management and analytics in times of disruption, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic, are essential to managing both the current disruption and the move to a “new normal.” In my first blog in this three-part series, I covered how enterprises need data management simplicity and agility to maximize the benefits they can get from their data. In this blog, I’ll focus on the need to double down on your data and analytics during these turbulent times to be successful today and drive competitive advantage in the future.

Changing Times Requires Changing Strategies

No matter where you live and work in the world, you are impacted by these unprecedented and challenging events. But it’s important to remember that this pandemic will pass, and how you prepare now will determine how well you thrive in the future.

While predictions vary from day to day, health experts have indicated that they don’t expect the spread of the virus to diminish at least until later this year. Some economists are predicting that the economy will have two bad quarters before it begins to recover.  But whatever the timeframe, one thing is sure: This pandemic eventually will end.

Now is the time to prepare for a post-COVID-19 world. You should anticipate that some of the societal changes we are experiencing will remain permanent or at least have a permanent impact on how we live and work. For example, your customers today are housebound and travel wary. You need new ways to reach and engage them, and it could mean moving to contactless operations. It may also mean that on-premises visits to service products will eventually disappear or be replaced by remote services.

So, how do you prepare for this accelerated digital future, or what I like to call, the “Next Normal?” With data. You have more data than ever before — and you have the ability to analyze and use that data in new and effective ways.

For example, data is publicly available about the status of COVID-19 from country to country, region to region and down to the local level. This data can be correlated with supply chain information to identify areas of risk, and to forecast which regions will be coming back quickly and which regions may warrant a longer grace period. For financial institutions, data can be used to minimize risk by analyzing the liquidity position of client companies for a real-time cash liquidity view. In the energy industry, companies can implement remote monitoring of equipment with IoT to deliver analytics for preventative and predictive maintenance, eliminating the need to send employees to remote locations.

Hitachi Vantara has the digital solutions and the global experience to help you maneuver through this phase and into the Next Normal. Recognizing that future outbreaks of the virus are possible, we are providing solutions that assist in containing, tracking and preventing outbreaks. And we are using these solutions at Hitachi. For example, we are preparing to reopen facilities while protecting workers by using our video analytics and 3D LiDAR thermal sensing to ensure social distancing and perform temperature checks, and to identify and prevent compliance issues associated with wearing masks and handwashing.

In addition, our solutions can help with integrating data with tools for a remote workforce, activating software as a service, and building remote work capabilities into the tools themselves — all while protecting sensitive data. We can also help you prepare for a future that involves correlating more data, such as health data from governments, that will need to be integrated with your organization’s data, such as supply chain data for predictions and forecasting demand.

DataOps Is the Path Forward

Having the latest information on DataOps and how to use your data to answer the current challenges will help your organization now and set you up with a competitive advantage for the future. Hitachi Vantara is hosting DataOps.NEXT virtual conference on May 14, 2020 to help you discover ways to solve your complex data management issues across your entire data lifecycle. This includes data onboarding and preparation, governance and agility, analytics and machine learning, and data fabric optimization. You’ll have the opportunity to learn from over 30 industry experts as they share fresh and practical insights that will help you grow your business.

Through our customers — your peers — you’ll learn how to successfully tackle some of the most difficult data management challenges today. Discover how to apply DataOps to real-world data environments with sessions covering:

• Recent DataOps successes by your peers.
• Best practices for DataOps implementations.
• How to build DataOps solutions in virtual labs.
• 1:1 mentoring sessions with our experts.

We’ll start the conference with a keynote on what’s happening in the industry and what it means for your organization’s data and analytics and your strategies. In this interactive environment, we’ll help you forge a new way of interacting and sharing during a virtual conference.

Succeeding in the Next Normal

While we are navigating uncharted waters, we must look beyond the challenges of today to the opportunity to come from this Next Normal. In my next blog, you’ll discover the DataOps solutions that are powering the top organizations in the world. These solutions can help you solve some of your biggest data management issues and position your company to lead in an accelerated digital future.