CIO opinion
CIO OPINION
up with all the related systems to that.
Maintaining the IT landscape is exactly
where I believe a big benefit comes from the
integrated approach and we want to work
hard on getting the integration done on
the S/4 HANA side, so we really have a very
standardised approach connecting your ERP
with all the different applications.
How can CIOs make the most of
their data?
I think this is a US$1 billion question. We all
know that because if you really could use all
the data, and make a business model out of
that, you would probably no longer be a CIO
or you would start your own company.
I think it’s fair that companies start looking
at this in a very systematic way, also
supported with Machine Learning and ideally
also Artificial Intelligence. But you need to
be realistic also on the available use cases,
because everyone talks about machine
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intelligence on the other side but what can
you really get out of it? And very often, you
are still stuck with one problem, you can’t
solve easily. And this is basically the data
quality. If your data is poor, it does not help
you even if you have great ideas and want to
put tools on top of that.
It is not leading you to insights and
therefore I believe on one side you need to
ensure that you use your operational data,
that you use some machine intelligence
available, to basically cluster the data and
derive action insights.
This is exactly also where you need to
combine the ‘experience data’, because
operational data is telling you revenue is
declining. So, for instance, if you were an
umbrella salesman you need to ask ‘OK
what’s the reason we are not selling as
many umbrellas?’ It might be it’s a hot day,
or a day with no rain, so you’re not selling
any umbrellas.
If the entire summer is very, very nice
umbrella revenue will be going down. But
this is only a fact, not an insight.
Another thought could also be: ‘Hey,
probably I don’t have the right umbrellas
that people like anymore.’ The colours might
not be trendy enough. And even if they are
getting sold this is where you need to get as
much data as possible in getting feedback
about why customers like the product. n
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