Data Driven Avanade Issue 3 | Page 10

Data Driven Issue 03

73%

OF COMPANIES HAVE ALREADY LEVERAGED DATA TO CREATE
NEW OR INCREASE EXISTING REVENUE STREAMS

FOCUS IN:
THE NEED FOR SPEED

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DRIVING FASTER DECISION MAKING
WITH BETTER DATA ANALYSIS
A Formula One car generates up to
25 megabytes of data from its more
than 200 sensors every single lap.
Fifteen years ago, the entire race
could be saved on a floppy disk!
While the technology race that F1
teams are committed to might seem
extreme, it’s actually no different to
the data growth found in businesses
everywhere. In 2013 we are
downloading much more data at work
and in our personal lives than we
were a few years ago. More devices,
more channels, more documents,
bigger audiences. Research firm IDC
even predicts the world’s data will
snowball 50 times in the next decade.
If managed intelligently, this explosion
of data has the potential to positively
impact decision-making and improve
a company’s bottom line. For
example, Avanade’s own research
in 2012 showed that 73 percent of
companies have already leveraged

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data to create new or increase
existing revenue streams.

but just in the short gaps between
each Grand Prix; a matter of days.

However, data by itself is of little
use if not easily accessible and the
challenge for businesses across all
industries is to harness it in a way
that drives real business insights. For
F1 teams, the right information at the
right time can mean the difference
between winning and losing. Lotus
F1 Team has to process thousands
of data points to get ready for each
race, measuring minute changes in
how the car responds on the track,
testing new parts and optimizing
performance results. And, they must
do this quickly and efficiently – they
can’t afford to waste valuable time on
data analysis with only days between
each race and hours to tune a car
between sessions. For Avanade
and Lotus F1 Team, it’s as if they’re
revamping their business operations
not in a span of a year-long IT plan,

So how do Lotus F1 Team and
businesses everywhere create the
right data infrastructure to enable
quick data analysis and better
decision-making? To transform this
avalanche of data into a real strategic
advantage, there are a number of
concrete steps that companies
should take:
–  e aware of all the types of data
B
that are available both internally
and externally. This means, for
example, tying weather patterns
expected on race day with testing
new parts in simulated scenarios.
Or, it could mean looking at
structured data like customer
demographics and purchasing
histories with unstructured data
from customers engaging on
social media channels.

–  he second step is to realize not
T
all data is good data. Companies
need to provide tools and data
management processes that
enable staff to effectively filter
data for relevance. Companies
must identify what filters to apply,
how to categorize the data and
then, establish processes so
that data can be processed and
analyzed as quickly as possible.
–  eveloping smart infrastructure
D
and processes that gets the right
information to the right people
is also critical. Avanade made
several improvements to Lotus
F1 Team’s trackside software
to get engineers the data they
need even faster. For instance,
Avanade created a more efficient
way to reprocess post-event data
to improve track performance.
With these improvements, Lotus

F1 Team has seen a 75 percent
reduction in processing time,
which is a seismic shift in the
team’s ability to analyze data
quickly.
–  inally, companies have to
F
empower their employees to act
on the insights that they unlock.
For Lotus F1 Team, this means
ensuring the team’s engineers
are able to apply post-event
information quickly to further
optimize the car’s performance.
This last step is the most important
lesson from Avanade’s big data
research – the companies that
are giving people across their
organizations the power to use
data to drive decision-making are
benefiting the most from big data.
And, for Lotus F1 Team, that is a
winning formula.

“UP TO HOW MANY
MEGABYTES OF DATA
DOES A FORMULA ONE
CAR GENERATE FROM
ITS 200 PLUS SENSORS
EVERY SINGLE LAP?”

WIN
A LOTUS F1 TEAM

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