Successfully operating a terminal requires not only bold leadership but also the wise decision-making that comes with it. With Tideworks Insight and its industry-leading data platform, you can be sure that all your decisions are well informed by holistic, accurate, and complete data sets. By combining both historical and real-time data and adding change analysis between the two, Tideworks Insight can help answer any questions you may have about how your terminal is performing. When data informs your strategy, everyone wins.

The Importance of Historical and Real-Time Data

To be useful in your decision-making, data analysis requires two things — historical information and real-time events. The real-time data tells you what is happening right now: are you meeting KPIs? How many moves were made today? Are you ahead or behind schedule? 

Real-time data has a purpose, but it is most powerful when you have something to measure the data against. Are you meeting more KPIs this month than last? What months are the busiest and why? Based on last year’s performance, are this year’s KPIs reasonable? That’s where historical data comes in. By having access to terminal data that goes back months, or even years, you can establish the context required to give your real-time data significance. Historical data gives you the context, trends, and bigger picture.

If data is a book, then real-time stats are the current chapter and historical information is the whole story up to that chapter. You need both to understand what happens next.

Data is the difference between a gut feeling and an informed, confident decision. Good data can answer a question. Great data can quash uncertainties, provide objective evidence in the midst of human bias, and allow for the type of analysis that leads to improved performance through carefully curated hypotheses. By looking at historical data, combining it with real-time data, and providing answers on what changed between the two points, you can rest assured that Tideworks Insight provides the best data out there — and it does so both quickly and easily.

Download our Manzanillo International Terminal (MIT) Case Study  to explore how Tideworks implemented Insight at MIT to increase productivity and minimize downtime.

The Tideworks Insight Advantage

Not all data platforms are created the same. Data can be a daunting thing to manage and a difficult tool to use in decision making — and when a tool is difficult to use, it often goes untouched while you try to work without it. Tideworks Insight makes data management and access easy, removing both headaches and barriers to the answers you need.

In general, the more data you have, the better you can identify trends and patterns. The problem is that data uses up space. A lot of space. Most industry data platforms can use over 600 gigabytes for three years’ worth of data. That’s a significant amount of cost, space, and infrastructure dedicated just to data management.

This is where Tideworks Insight shines. It uses a proprietary, high-efficiency, file-based storage system that can get that three years’ worth of data from 600 gigabytes down to just 50. The impact of this is more than just reduced space. It also means faster access and less time waiting for the system to search through massive repositories to crunch the numbers you need. The Tideworks Insight system embodies the goals of any terminal — speed, efficiency, and accuracy.

An additional advantage is how Tideworks Insight manages historical and real-time data simultaneously. While most systems give you both types of datasets, Tideworks Insight is the only platform that combines them into a single, integrated database. This cuts back on both redundancy and processing time and lets the system compile a third dataset — change information. Not only can Tideworks Insight tell you what happened in the past and what is happening now, but it can also tell you what the differences are between the two. All of these features work towards making your data easier to access and analyze.

Data for Everyone

Tideworks Insight isn’t just for the data analyst. Anyone on the terminal operations team can utilize Tideworks Insight. All it takes is a data-driven mindset and the willingness to ask questions.

Everyone on the team can benefit from the data Tideworks Insight provides. Whether it’s getting a picture of seasonal flows to plan out next year’s strategy and metrics or taking a more intimate look at day-to-day processes so operations can identify best practices, Tideworks Insight can inform decision-making at every level. Tideworks Insight lets each member of your team execute, analyze results, improve, and execute again on a continuous cycle of increased performance.

Tideworks Insight and Instinct

An experienced terminal operator or manager will notice trends and patterns. A terminal operator can see and feel how their workload fluctuates day-to-day, season-to-season. For example, a manager may instinctively know from experience that a surge in certain types of cargo will occur in the winter months as opposed to summer. But, without knowing the exact numbers, how are you supposed to act on those instincts and feelings to plan ahead? Tideworks Insight’s data can provide objective truth to help refine those gut feelings that come from experience. 

When your instinct and intuition start asking the questions, let Tideworks Insight provide the answers.

Data-Driven Decision Making Webinar

The Data-Backed Keys to Unlocking Innovative Improvements in Your Terminal

Struggling with complex data challenges that don’t align with your business and leave you wondering where you can really improve your operations? Having a robust data platform will empower your operations team to make innovative enhancements to your terminal you can observe in real-time.

In this webinar we will explore the following:

• Why and how leveraging data analytics promotes and sustains the virtuous cycle of innovation
• How to implement a data analytics solution successfully