What happens if you put your data together with…

What happens if you take your own data and put them together with data from some other sources related to your operation? Will weather prognoses have something to say about your sale of ice cream? Will arriving planes influence your staffing in your shop? Will increase of web search on the brand you sell influence your communication and sale? Will data from your business partner help you providing better services?

There are several different drivers in a companies' value chain, but what data sources must be combined with yours to build more value, whether for monitoring or prediction? First, identifying what is important to achieve your business goals and your end-goal will define the data you need from others.

You have lots of data about your own business. Data contained in a variety of systems and databases. But you probably have no real-time, complete overview of your company's status as of today and what to do next week. Which customers are most profitable to you? Where should you focus on increasing profitability? What should your production prioritize?

In some cases, supplemental data collection serves to fill gaps or check assumptions underlying models and analyses. Alternatively, they provide novel insights and can provide the basis for new questions or hypotheses. The amount of information and data has increased dramatically – and it is often free, or you can buy or exchange data to get to them.

In Norway, the Directorate of Digitization, has made a database over a lot of free data provided by various companies, public and private. The data directory is crucial because residents, businesses and the voluntary sector only need to report information once. This is how the data directory makes it possible for public and other businesses to find and reuse information that already exists. Many may also benefit from information from the public in the development of new services and innovation-oriented work.

Look in to data.norge.no, and get an overview of free datasets – or if you want, put your own data in to it. The directory addresses the need to discover, evaluate and access data.

Algorithms – The new business
In Norwegian Cognitive Centers we are turning information into actions with use of algorithms through our 5 days garage method. Our Garage teams help you start your transformation in workshops, where you design and build real working MVPs that meet your business needs and scale those solutions across the company.