This article summarises the key takeaways from a presentation by Mahathir bin Said, Head of Cloud & Analytics at Credence during the 2022 TM One Leap Forward Manufacturing event, on how the Malaysian manufacturing sector can digitalise its processes for improved efficiency, quality and cost-savings.

We have heard it before and it never seems to go away – analytics is disrupting the business landscape. We have seen industry practitioners around the world who take charge of their data, gain a competitive edge, and obtain a quicker return on investments.

According to a study carried out by McKinsey and Co, an estimated $1 trillion of additional value each year is to be gained through the introduction of AI technologies in the banking industry. A separate study also carried out by McKinsey and Co shows that $402.7billion of monetary benefits can be introduced into the Energy sector through advanced analytics and AI, demonstrating how its introduction can effectively supercharge an entire industry.

Worldwide, companies are already sold on the benefits of data analytics, with 91% of organisations believing that the right data will put their business in a strong position to compete and succeed in the next few years (Splunk). Beyond just belief, companies are already showing that the adoption of analytics technologies is already the new norm, with 50% of companies surveyed already adopting AI into at least one business function (McKinsey).

Why is analytics becoming so indispensable?

The world of analytics has expanded vastly in the last ten years. What was once a complex exercise with limited resources has now bloomed into an industry with cutting-edge capabilities, resources, and results.

For one, the amount of data is rapidly increasing and becoming voluminous, varied, and valuable. Sensors, relational databases, social media, flat files, and logs are all repositories, generating terabytes of data each month at the disposal of their owners.

Similarly, the advancements and refinements of modern data platforms have also greatly developed over the years. Today’s data platforms have improved drastically at collecting and ingesting data, transforming data for both structured and unstructured formats, automating analytics and modelling, and finally, generating data-backed predictions on future trends while visualising data to simplify data-driven decision-making for organisations. However, arguably the most important outcome for analytics is the ability to derive actionable insights towards value creation. The power of data analytics has shown its capability in producing value across all organisational levels, by:

1. Generating strategic insights, helping businesses make decisions over a large domain and ensuring long-term sustainability
2. Generating tactical insights, providing specific data about a particular problem which allows businesses to make targeted decisions and solve immediate and near-term challenges
3. Generating operational insights, ensuring sound operational processes, and maximising production and efficiency.

Taken together, effective analytics and data-driven insights now provide incredible support for value creation within all facets of business by providing information that helps grow, run, protect, and innovate.

However, the implementation of analytics and AI into Malaysian businesses is not an easy affair

Although AI adoption advances, businesses are still facing foundational challenges when it comes to getting the ball rolling. A global study conducted by McKinsey and Company found that the top three barriers faced by organisations in adopting AI were

1. A lack of clear strategy for AI, at 43%
2. A lack of talent with appropriate skillsets for AI work, at 42%
3. Functional siloes constraining end-to-end AI solutions, at 30%

When looking at our home ground of Malaysia, we see similar themes emerging in terms of challenges faced. According to the Malaysia AI Blueprint 2020 by BIGIT, Malaysian industry practitioners are facing challenges in terms of

1. A lack of talent, at 38%
2. Budget constraints and a lack of business understanding, both at 24%
3. Unable to scale AI into advanced use cases, at 16%.

To address said challenges, organisations should derive their AI strategy from their business strategy. Assessment from business areas where analytics’ potential value can be identified needs to be included in the derivation. To execute AI strategy, businesses need to acquire relevant enablers in terms of technology and skilled resources.

To embark on the analytics journey, organisations need to be positive, be ready to experiment, have clear execution, discipline, and agility. One of the key enablers to empowering the analytics journey is acquiring cloud capabilities. This provides businesses with the ability to focus on analytics as serverless databases allow data projects to be established easily, all while providing support for business flexibility and scalability. A seamless unified experience allows data practitioners to be more productive.

Credence enters the scene to provide the end-to-end services needed for businesses to reap the full benefits of AI and analytics

Organisations across Malaysia are eager to implement analytics into their business with some at various stages of their analytics journey where each stage brings about different challenges. To be an analytics journey partner to organisations and businesses, Credence is investing in data talents and cloud infrastructure while building delivery ecosystems with proven technology partners. This assures Credence’s position as an effective solution provider that can execute end-to-end analytics solutions and development.

Credence’s services and professional capacity portfolio were built with exactly this intention. The portfolio includes consulting, implementation services, managed services, and skills development. These services are meant to come together in creating all-encompassing solutions that cover all aspects required for successful analytics implementations.

While many may say that “data analytics is the future”, we believe that the future is already here. The capabilities of analytics in building business resilience and scaling growth have been proven across many global markets. However, in addressing local challenges, one thing is abundantly clear – our industry practitioners need a reliable analytics partner who can help untangle the thorny challenges faced within each stage of implementation.

With that as our guiding principle, Credence has designed the ideal end-to-end analytics solutions suite to address each challenge at its root. From hosting a range of tools and solutions to providing our customers with relevant talent, to helping encourage better insights and understanding, Credence is ready to accelerate the analytics journey and elevate businesses together.

For more information, get in touch with Credence at www.credence.tech