Data Analytics & Business Intelligence: Business Saviours in COVID-19

The COVID-19 Pandemic has put the business world in a situation of turmoil and uncertainty all across. It has disrupted manufacturing, productivity, supply and service chains globally. The pandemic has added a question mark over:

• how to do business during the pandemic
• how to conduct business in its aftermath

Business intelligence & Data Analytics in COVID-19

Business intelligence and data analytics are the tools that businesses and organizations need to adopt to be protected and move forward. Analytics is the one scientific response available to organizations to tackle the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic in an agile and relevant manner.

Effective use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems and data analytics capabilities within the agile dimension’s components will help expand and sustain an organization and its service supply chain network as we go through such extraordinary times. Analytics is the one scientific response available to organizations to tackle the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic in an agile and relevant manner.

Key metrics that need to be monitored for analysis:

• Multi channel traffic such as website visits, social media interactions, and so on.
• Cart abandonment
• Marketing metrics
• Transactions record
• Inventory management
• Customer service

Agility Dimensions, Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics Capabilities

• Consciousness: Using descriptive analytics, managers within the service supply chain network can gather historical and current market data to gain insights on what to expect.
• Accessibility: By applying business intelligence systems and predictive analytics, management will gain insights from data and information shared across the organization and its service supply chain networks to predict the most likely outcomes or future scenarios and their implications on business operations.
• Decisiveness: Through the application of prescriptive analytics, businesses will be better positioned to eliminate all hurdles in the decision-making processes through problem-solving and collaboration in mitigating disruptions and risk.
• Speed: Using AI systems offers cognitive analytics or analytical depth and speed response for both organizational planning and response cycle.
• Flexibility: The use of AI tools enables managers to manage business processes on a priority basis, be more proactive with predictive analytics, bench-mark against current industry standards, and practice using data.

Administrative Strategies

• With the right business attitude, organizations can turn the pandemic challenges into business opportunities by using the ongoing crisis to revamp their business process, train, retain, and recruit key talents.
• Companies need to keep stakeholders’ and customers’ loyalty and trust; this can be achieved by offering updates on business performance and offering incentives to frontline employees and customers. It is also essential for businesses to focus on internal strength, abilities, and strategies to effectively handle the ongoing challenges.
• Businesses should be proactive by recruiting talents and use these downtimes to develop their existing pool of talent.

Effective use of agility dimensions, AI, and data analytics capabilities continues to be an excellent survival strategy for businesses during these times of COVID-19. To better leverage these technologies, managers within the supply chain network should use mining methods and data aggregation to gather historical and current data to help recognize data patterns and relationships to make informed decisions.