Leveraging data to make your organization smarter

The power of data

NTT shows how to leverage the power of data to navigate the health crisis and help the world move forward.

Data and analytics enable endless possibilities to help address today’s challenges. With the surge in data created from the IoT revolution though, organizations might find it difficult to decide how to extract value from this information to be shared with decision-makers, employees, and citizens.

What to consider before starting a smart project

Before you begin, it is important to understand the challenges you are trying to solve by keeping end goal in mind and thereby identifying the right functionalities as a guide. You may want to address the shifts in consumption patterns caused by the pandemic or need to monitor compliance to adequately adhere to social distancing mandates. Occupancy and crowd monitoring functionalities is one way to do this. For a retail environment or a train, these solutions can increase citizens and employees’ situational awareness to check current occupancy levels and by leveraging same data gathered over a period, predict occupancy levels. This will empower individuals to efficiently decide the best time to visit a store or travel, providing a better experience and increased satisfaction. Similar functionalities also enable safe distance monitoring, mask detection, contactless screening of visitors’ temperature and queue count.

Scalability and flexibility to learn as you go

For your operational team, these types of functionalities can deliver valuable real-time insights and predictions to drive decisions on how to allocate staff efficiently and how to design and revise communication, operational and safety rules dynamically. You can trial a few of these solutions in a specific location and then evaluate whether to expand and include new locations or perhaps introduce new use cases based on the first results. Vendors must offer flexibility in scaling a project according to your needs.

Platforms that enable smart data

Next, consider all your existing data and explore whether you could leverage it to generate valuable insights. Data is coming from everywhere and while the volumes may seem overwhelming, it also represents a huge opportunity. There are platforms available that can transform your information into ‘Smart Data’. This data could enable better decision making, planning and better services for citizens and employees. Vendors need to provide the ability to ingest existing data and analyze it before looking at installing new devices and sensors to capture additional data.

Safeguarding privacy at the core

Finally, ensure data ownership is clear and the vendor keeps no personal or protected data. While vendors will analyze the data to provide insights and will increasingly offer recommendations on how to monetize this data, you must remain the sole owner of it and have the final say on how to use it. This will also help you drive trust and confidence from your employees and citizens. A truly smart project must safeguard privacy.

These simple steps should help guide your smart initiatives to face some of today’s challenges and help you better prepare to pivot in the case of future disruptions. Discover how NTT Smart Solutions can help you achieve these goals.