Today I was thinking – actually, I’ve thought so for awhile – that what we’ve been doing since some time at Factory Data is crazy!
But this week, after reading an interview where it was said that to be an entrepreneur, you have to ignore the established order and do it opposite direction from the rest to find original solutions (La Vanguardia, September 25th 2020), I realized that in some cases, craziness is a good sign!
In this article I want to explain, in a very simplified way, one of the processes we go through to make our clients’ business work more effectively and optimize the way they manage data complexity in automotive. It’ll sound crazy to you, but we do it every month…
1) We collect up to 40 million searches of reference numbers performed in the past four years until now and randomly select a statistically big enough representative set.
All these selected searches are identified as reference numbers among the millions of references number that exists in the market to know what they are, and we check whether the client have the solution in his product range or not.
=> [First important information for the client] We calculate what percentage of the searched reference numbers are covered by his product range. This tells him what percentage of coverage his product range offers in relation to market demand.
2) All the searched reference numbers in the selected set are grouped either into client products, because the client has the product solution, or to missing products (gaps) because he doesn’t have it.
=> [Second important information for the client] We organize all the products (both the products in the client’s product range and the gaps) in descending order according to the number of searches performed in the last 12 months; products can now be analyzed by priority of importance!
3) If he has a website, we check to make sure the site brings up a result of their products for the most-searched reference numbers; otherwise, his customers won’t be able to find them neither!
=> [Third important information for the client] We alert him to the most important cross-references missing from his DB.
4) We make all this information accessible through a very user friendly graphical interface. In addition, the data can be combined and filtered with information on suppliers, application segments, country specific demand, catalog data, etc…
… but most importantly: what has the customer had to do in order to receive and access all this strategic information done from million of data and billions of calculations? NOTHING.
The whole system is fed all the necessary data in an independent way, and all the information shown is automatically generated.
So, if you want, welcome to the madness, welcome to the future!
