A data journey in the manufacturing space

Episode summary

Joanne is the Head of Data and Analytics at the Omnia Group. She joins us in this episode to discuss data in the chemical manufacturing space.

Joanne has been with Omnia for a number of years and has experience at all levels of the organisation ranging from manufacturing, lab work, field trials and supply chain to finance and sales. This has enabled her to see things from a Managing Director point of view where she could ask herself: if this is the challenge that I am facing, what type of answer am I actually looking for? Being able to anticipate questions and narrow down the scope of projects allows her to nail reporting faster and produce the correct data models.

Joanne believes that data needs to talk to one and be put into a digestible package of information through data visualisation. It’s about building a story using tables and graphs to get one’s head around the complexities of the challenge fast and make decisions as quickly as possible. One doesn’t get six months to respond in a market which is changing on a monthly or even daily basis. Joanne is an avid user of Excel and sees it as a really powerful visualisation tool, particularly for those not in the data space. Information can be broken down into layman’s terms, making it easier to envision.

Joanne says that when one uses data in a customer-facing business such as Omnia, you are collecting both internal and external data around your customers, competitors and global entities within the same space. She advises to be very cautious of what data one collects automatically, versus what is manually captured to determine its validity and relevancy. You don’t want to be building empires of data in a world that sells fertilizer, but not actually convert that knowledge.

Joanne feels that the world and the South African environment are in tune with the fact that they need to understand the data they have access to and its potential. It is a reality that decisions should no longer be made on gut feel alone. She believes that data and analytics will be a part of decision-making processes heading into the foreseeable future.