Beancounters at Anvizent have done a survey and discovered that senior managers in mid-sized manufacturing firms value their data more than tangible assets.
The survey of 100 companies showed that the managers looked after £120 million worth of data. This figure was calculated using the average value of business assets in manufacturing (£599 million) and the percentage of respondents who identified data as being the most valuable business asset in the company (20 percent).
In addition, 37 percent believed that monetising their data would increase the company value of their company and a further third thought it would make them more attractive to potential buyers.
Monetising data generally takes one of two forms – cost reduction or revenue growth and data can be used in both scenarios. In cost reduction data can be used to increase productivity and reduce consumption and waste of items such as raw materials. To grow revenue, data can be used to improve sales performance or reduce customer attrition as well as analysing trends and seeing where the business needs to focus its efforts.
Mike Beason, distribution director of Anvizent said: “There is so much data sitting in most manufacturing businesses that harnessing it and understanding how to give this data a value is crucial if a business wants to succeed in the 21st century. Data can do so much for a business, from gaining historical information, to predicting future trends and then transforming this into prescriptive details to enable a board to make decisions about the future of the business grounded in fact based on the data.”
