'The supply chain is not the sexiest subject when it comes to important technologies, but like many industries the less sexy the business the more important its relevance.
Speaking of less sexy, David Cameron alluded to the supply chain when he revealed at Davos that the UK presidency of G8 will focus on greater business transparency and the way that open data can boost the UK economy.
Big data and open data are subjects that people take very seriously and many see them as a perfect storm where they are conjoined to create a perfect storm of driving transparency and savings throughout the supply chain.
By connecting data, businesses can see a tangible benefit - reduced costs through energy savings passed down through the supply chain, reduced reputational risk and improved relations due to confidence in business continuity.
At the recent Teradata University conference in Copenhagen, a stream of presenters from Google, eBay, Tesco, Chelsea Football Club, Groupon, LinkedIn and many others outlined this in great detail.
Whether it’s Chelsea FC using the same databases as all their rivals and deciding not to buy 99.9 per cent of the players available or Groupon describing itself as a child of the cloud, big and open data is the future for consumers, companies... and undoubtedly football players. The annual conference is organised by the eponymous Teradata, a data behemoth that focuses on integrated warehousing, big data analytics and business applications that are scaled for big and small companies alike.One of the more interesting, and dare I say it sexy, verticals of their organisation is in energy and how data will create a revolution in its use and efficiency. Economic benefit will be felt by all if resources in this area are utilised optimally and will have a knock-on effect on local economies, health and even corruption. By using smart meters to not only measure consumers’ energy usage, Teradata also using these meters to measure energy data that improves everything along the supply chain. 'Data from smart meters provides a huge opportunity for utilities that is far wider than just more accurate billing and letting the end customer see detailed consumption figures. Smart meters can also provide data about the network that is useful for the engineers that keep the lights on. Critical to making use of this data is integrating it with other data sources that the utility already has access to. Only with this integrated view of data can the utility make sense of all this new information from the smart meter', saysDavid Socha, Utilities Practice Leader at Teradata International ..."