Data insights in times of crisis

Provide the correct information on time

Many countries are announcing economic aid packages. Companies that need this help, for example for their liquidity, want to complete their application as quickly as possible. This can be difficult without relevant and up-to-date insights. How many FTE (Full Time Employees) do you have exactly? How do today's earnings compare to a year ago? And what will your numbers look like if the lockdown, however intelligent, continues for two months or more?

Without data insights, it will take days to produce the correct reports and figures and it will be even more difficult to predict different future scenarios (predictive analytics).

Evaluate and take action

Once the situation has returned to normal, having insight into data can also help you evaluate how the company has responded to this crisis.

Was it really prepared for a pandemic? Did the company adapt and respond quickly enough? Did enough people have access to the information they needed? Or should you invest more in data management, analytics and AI, so that you are better prepared for unexpected events in the future?

How does this work in practice?

These are exactly the questions that Nedap, a Dutch company that focuses on developing and supplying Technology for Life, technological products that enable people to work more pleasantly and successfully. Although the company develops intelligent systems itself, Nedap was aware that steps could still be taken within its own organization for better reporting and analyses. With their data spread across multiple Navision systems, it was possible to compile accurate reports about what was going on in, for example, Spain, Hong Kong or Germany, but there was no insight into the performance of the entire company together. Nedap therefore opted for the technology of TimeXtender and the Data Discovery Hub to help them organize and build a better data model that provides quality, validation and transparency while visualizing, reporting and analyzing this data with software from Qlik. This enables the company to report, analyze and take action quickly, including during the COVID-19 pandemic.

So let's use these unprecedented times to take unprecedented steps to democratize access to corporate data by automating the complex and time-consuming tasks surrounding data access, data modeling and data management. This way, you will be better prepared for rapid changes and can also address business challenges unrelated to COVID-19. This way you are better prepared for the future, whatever the future holds for us.