How to Use BI and Analytics to Win Your Next Tender
Tenders demanding efficient reporting? Here is your USP: copy what is saving other industries; use data and visualisations.
An example from the oil industry – How big data and BI analytics is being used to save billions of Dollars in a price-squeezed market
“We started using data analytics in our Eagle Ford business, and everywhere we look there are applications for this” Matt Fox, Executive Vice President, Conoco Phillips
Let us not pretend that the printing industry is anywhere close to the nation-building oil industry. That goes for size, sophistication, global influence, and economic welfare of entire countries (unless you read all the hopeful PR; then we pretty much run the planet and print is immortal.) But there are similarities in that oil prices have dropped to around $43 from over $100 a Barrel and reports suggest new wells being drilled cannot break even. Yet firms like Conoco Phillips are drilling, using data and BI to gain a competitive advantage and save billions of Dollars.
Tenders; you generate data; use it
Using a BI dashboard for a tender reporting requirement would be a vital USP for a tender process. The reporting will be productive, effective, impressive, and will increase the success rates to close future tenders.
Three dealers involved in three separate tenders. The three groups offering business were a local government procurement group, a major media group, and a financial services group. They all stipulated the same competitive requirement; efficient reporting. They wanted a feedback mechanism that was easy to use, to provide the end user with performance data of the service provider. A few examples of what they were looking for:
- SLA performance
- Uptime
- Response times
- First-time fix rates
- Other key metrics
This is a genuine challenge to the dealers consuming time and resources. Dealers would have to collate various sources of information into a static report. Worse even than that, the report would have to be a regular task and in a format to present or email to a customer.
The superior solution would be to:
- Set up the required datasets
- Ensure the data is current
- Publish the data to any stakeholder required
How the oil industry is being saved using data
Major oil company Conoco Phillips reports data from sensors scattered over their oil wells have halved the drilling time for new wells at their South Texas sites. Their drilling sensors alone adjust the weight placed on drill bits and drilling speed. Just like MPS, their visualised data is used to:
- Avoid outages
- Manage supplies
- Identify safety hazards and bottlenecks
Major oil firms are using data and connected devices for exploration, reporting, surveys, and every other area of operation.
The hiring cycle has moved to people with computer programming and data science backgrounds. The market is huge, General Electric reports only 3 to 5% of oil and gas equipment is connected digitally. Connected devices will produce data and reports. Ernst & Young reported out of 75 major oil companies surveyed, 68% had invested more than US$100 million in data analytics during the last two years.
Customer experience; using data transforms a market back to individual customers; data science predicts what they want and when they want it
Many industries are helping us point the way forward for the print industry. Those with the most to lose are acting fastest. Take retail for example which sits at the top of the potential business default list. Retail has embraced data and predictive analytics. Firms like Amazon react to data analytics quickly and win in the marketplace by pushing demand to individuals.
Our adoption of dashboards for efficient MPS reporting and data analytics offers dealers a USP for their customers and a methodology to generate genuine operational efficiencies. MPS now has a visual tool that gives it real utility and an entrance to all other areas of the operations of a business. The chance to make the customer the focus again and offer them real value is here.
Read more here:
Conoco Phillips Company, first accessed June 27th, 2017
Reuters, Technology News, Big oil turns to big data to save big money on drilling, first accessed June 27th, 2017
Curious how this could work for you? Drop us a line to arrange your product demo today.
