Category Analytics

Why the analytics framework for process improvement can translate into substantial benefits around sustainability improvements and energy efficiency. The Coronavirus pandemic has upended social interaction – a new normal, with social distancing and protocols, and so why does sustainability play a crucial role in facilitating a smoother transition into the is new normal.  The reason is sustainability engenders confidence.  Knowing facilities are safe and that indoor air quality monitoring is vital for occupant health and safety builds confidence. Health and safety are also essential in generating the confidence that changes consumer behavior.  Therefore, the process by which you implement a sustainability plan plays an expanding role in orchestrating the activities that adhere to values and performance.

A sustainability framework provides the roadmap to monitor, measure and curate data thus enabling performance benchmarking of conditions and processes.  The analytics framework serves as a roadmap to utilize insight gained from data analysis.  Currently available tools such as data visual analysis, machine learning algorithms and cloud computing architecture enable cost effective approaches to achieve business and sustainability objectives.

A sustainability framework provides the foundation to drive business value across several dimensions and performance metrics.  The use of the sustainability process can drive business value, improve our environment, enhance customer loyalty, and better engage healthier and happier employees while rewarding shareholders and stakeholders with higher business valuations.

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IoT connected devices represent the most important technological wave since the Internet, smartphones, and social media. The value proposition for the Internet of Things (IoT) is compelling because of the economic and financial value created for the built environment. The reason IoT is so important is because it builds and leverages upon the confluence and scale of an array of advanced technologies that continue to push the price-performance horizon including cloud computing, Internet connected mobile phones, semiconductors, distributed computing, machine learning and analytics. Inherent in IoT is that secure context aware connected devices drive improvements in efficiency, productivity, yield, and profitability by reducing costs.

IoT and business intelligence (BI) systems can provide a substantial enhancement to monitoring traditional key performance indicators (KPIs) such as marketing, sales, financial, operational metrics by adding new dimensions of analysis including assets, equipment, environmental conditions, health, safety, and energy. The balanced-scorecard approach to BI provides a more comprehensive understanding of business performance. IoT enables a facet of new metrics and automates the metric recording and analytics process right to your cell phone.

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The value of IoT is its ability to monitor, control, and compile data. Data derived from IoT sensors when combined with analytics can lower operating costs, enable new business models, and improve productivity. Embedded sensors monitor, measure, and manage connected devices with limited human interaction. Less human interaction translates into higher productivity. Sensors that can monitor and control devices can also minimize maintenance costs, reduce energy costs, optimize resources allocation and process flow.

For instance, photo and occupancy sensors that can control lighting typically save 20% of a building’s lighting cost. On average, lighting accounts for 25% of the buildings energy costs or approximately $0.70 per square foot according to the DOE. When lighting controls sensors are connected to the Internet, they enable remote diagnostics, device control, and collect data.

By analyzing data from IoT devices, new business models can be created. Analytics play a crucial role developing these new business models. Uber uses analytics to know user demand by the minute. Palantir Technologies provides visual analysis using disparate transactional activities to detect fraud. IoT devices allow greater detail in data capture and faster timing responses. IoT sensors that enable device control and data capture will engender new business models.

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Advances in technology such as seismic imaging with Dawson Geophysical and horizontal drilling with Schlumberger have dramatically changed the economics of oil and gas extraction. The change in oil economics is so profound that the cost structure of hydrocarbon fuels will reverberate through the global energy market and impact pricing of renewables energies and investment decisions. So profound are these changes that the US has surpassed Saudi Arabia and emerged as the world’s largest oil producer.

With the price of oil falling as a result of large production gains in US oil production. The price of oil is may fall below $40 per barrel according to an article in Barron’s The Case for $35 a barrel Oil suggesting further oil price declines are possible.

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Technology and innovation drive productivity, but transaction costs arising from technology implementation limit gains. Analytics and decision science could provide the means to tame transaction costs and improve productivity. Transaction costs were defined by Ronald Coase in “The Nature of the Firm,” published in 1937 and who earned a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1991.

Access to and sharing of information drives competitive advantage. Businesses often require global sourcing of physical and digital resources and collaborative workgroups often span several nations across the globe. Information flow is an integral aspect of collaborative workflows and global supply chains. Data serves as the foundation for business models where competencies are achieved through analytics. To achieve visibility and granularity into business processes, greater amounts of data are generated.

By reducing transaction costs, advances in technology and innovation can translate into higher productivity; lower operating costs, and a greater supply curve shift. At the same time, the network effect, enhanced consumer utility found with increasing number of users, may push demand.

The takeaways are: 1) analytics provide a process to reduce costs and improve productivity; 2) a process to monitor, measure, and benchmark performance; and 3) enable a firm to assimilate new technologies and manage uncertanties.
How Analytics can Improve Productivity