Today’s terminal operators are facing some hefty challenges. From supply chain shortages and capacity issues to changes in demand, terminal operators are constantly forced to respond quickly in order to keep cargo moving efficiently. The ability to overcome these challenges by making the right decisions greatly depends on a terminal operator’s accessibility to data. This is why an effective data strategy is necessary for quality decision-making.
What is a Data Strategy?
A data strategy should consist of the long-term objectives for using data in an organization and the policies and practices that support those objectives. To succeed, your strategy must also consider the technology, processes, and people required to do the work.
Data is one of the most valuable assets for any organization because of its potential to drive revenue. You can think of it as the foundational strategy that drives all the other strategies related to data, including data management and data governance frameworks.
Let’s discuss how the benefits of having a data strategy can uncover terminal challenges and the best ways for your organization to implement an effective one.
How an Effective Data Strategy Supports Your Entire Operation
Businesses now realize that data is a valuable asset that can offer significant benefits if managed and utilized properly. No longer just entries on a spreadsheet, data plays a critical role in supporting the entire organization. Leveraging historical data can help companies to effectively address issues and make informed decisions that lead to positive outcomes. By recognizing the full potential of data, organizations can harness its power to drive success and achieve their goals.
Identifying New Opportunities
According to a report by McKinsey & Company, organizations that effectively use data and analytics have the potential to increase their profitability by as much as 60%. By analyzing data to identify trends and patterns, operators are better equipped to add more value to the business.
Meeting Short and Long-Term Business Goals
An effective data strategy can help organizations achieve their objectives by providing a clear and coherent approach to data management. It can also help organizations unlock new value from their data by identifying new opportunities and making better use of the resources required to complete projects.
Improving Operational Efficiency
Data platforms and analytics tools can present a lot of numbers. Knowing what information you’re looking for in the first place and that the data is governed is key to gaining meaningful insights. You should collect data from the right sources and focus on use cases relevant to your business and operations.
How Data Strategy Solves Common Terminal Operations Challenges
Constantly evaluating data and determining how to use data to make informed decisions improves operational efficiency. Ultimately, implementing data quality management processes, data governance policies, and data analytics to identify areas for improvement supports the entire organization.
Specifically, data strategy plays a critical role in solving common challenges faced in terminal operations, such as the impact of ultra-large container vessels, congestion, terminal capacity, and more. These challenges add pressure to terminal operations in terms of work productivity and yard utilization. Implementing a data strategy can help mitigate these challenges by evaluating current and future impacts. With data, terminals can make better use of constrained resources such as yard, berth, and gate capacity. Additionally, an effective data strategy can help realize a return on investment from expensive automation initiatives by providing a clear understanding of the operational impact, identifying areas for improvement, and ability to measure results in revenue. In a time of doing more with less, data strategy enables terminals to optimize their operations and make the most of their resources, such as improving the allocation of equipment and personnel.
By collecting, analyzing, and utilizing data from various sources, terminals can gain a comprehensive view of their operations, identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies, and make data-driven decisions to improve productivity, efficiency, and profitability.
How to Create and Implement an Effective Data Strategy
The steps to creating and implementing an effective data strategy are essential for organizations looking to gain a competitive edge and make better use of their data assets. These five steps all work together as building blocks to comprehensively support data management across an organization. Ultimately, Tideworks is here to partner with you as you assess implementing an effective data strategy, but here are the steps to get started:
Step 1: Understand the organization’s business objectives and align the data strategy with those goals. This will ensure that the data strategy is managed, supported, and monetized in tandem with the organization’s overall objectives.
Step 2: Once the business objectives are understood, it is important to assess the organization’s current state of data management. This will help identify any organizational issues that may be hindering the effective use of data, such as data silos and workflow challenges. A study showed that 82% of enterprises are inhibited by data silos, which can make it difficult to gain a comprehensive view of operations and make data-driven decisions.
Step 3: Map out a data strategy framework for the future. This includes identifying a target state, an operating model, and an implementation blueprint. This will help organizations ideate, improve, and evolve their data strategy and empower teams to navigate challenges using a clear data management approach.
Step 4: Prepare a proposal outlining the advantages of having a coherent data strategy for the organization. This will help get buy-in from stakeholders and gain support for the initiative. Once support is obtained, building a team to implement the strategy and optimize the data architecture is important. This includes reviewing the existing data infrastructure, analyzing how different teams currently use data, and identifying any gaps to be resolved. Finally, it is important to monitor and analyze the data strategy to ensure it meets the business objectives and make any necessary adjustments.
Step 5: Assign ownership to each part of the data. You may need to assign owners at different stages in the pipeline. For example, one person or team may own the operational data while another owns the reporting data.
Data Strategy is Invaluable to Terminal Operators
Wherever you fall on the data maturity model, there is always room for improvement with your data strategy.
Tideworks is here to help make sure you have access to critical TOS data and other sources important to your operations. Many terminals have already invested in data management activities, while others are still learning how data can support their terminal performance and empower decision-making.
With Tideworks Data Platform, you will gain insight into complete data sets that help you understand and elevate your business. You will gain governance over your data to ensure it is accurate and complete so that you can optimize your terminal’s performance. Our data platform can be your data strategy or part of your overall data strategy. Contact us today to see how we can help you get prepared.