How can data help you make smarter business decisions?

Data is applied in businesses of all shapes and sizes to help them work smarter.

It’s not only business leaders who can benefit from data. Data can help with a lot of day-to-day tasks, routine decision making, business analytics, performance analysis, and a whole lot more. With the right infrastructure in place, data can enable you and your team to do your best work and focus on what really matters.
 
You don’t always need to hire a dedicated data analytics team to perform ongoing data analysis for you. You also don’t need to spend a lot of time doing data analysis to analyse the data yourself. The right hardware and software infrastructure can do a lot of the heavy lifting for you, whether you’re measuring print quality, working with big data, building a business analytics solution, developing an enterprise predictive analytics solution, or working with artificial intelligence and machine learning to protect your IT security. The right solution can change everything and enable you and your team to do your best work. For example, instead of spending hours manually reviewing loan applications, banks now use data and sophisticated technology to process applications and calculate risk, freeing up people to focus on the bigger picture.  

Don’t leave it too late and wait for your boss to ask questions or suggest ideas: predict what you need, analyse what’s available, and propose a solution yourself. Your smartest competitors are already investing in big data and data analytics, and are building for a data-driven future. Working with the right technology will result in many opportunities to improve the way you work.
 
Here is an insight into four ways Konica Minolta is helping businesses and organisations use data to work smarter.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA): put the boring stuff on autopilot

Asking a highly skilled professional to deal with routine and repetitive tasks doesn’t just waste talent, it also wastes time and money.What if more repetitive and mundane tasks were handled by software robots instead of grumpy and frustrated humans?

Konica Minolta’s Robotic Process Automation (RPA) makes this possible across a wide range of roles and industries. RPA studies and learns what humans do for specific tasks so it can replicate each step in the future. Implementing RPA makes it easy for businesses to scale resources up or down to quickly adapt to variations in demand. The increased accuracy can result in less variation in the quality of work as well as helping to feed detailed analytics. RPA helps to free up more time so employees can reach their full potential and focus on the things that drive your business forward.

For example, 70 to 80% of the tasks required to process insurance claims are repetitive and don’t require human expertise. These include things like checking whether claims are genuine and if the people who submit them are already in the system. RPA can automate these tasks, in addition to other processes like monitoring applications, downloading data, creating reports, and issuing invoices. Insurance experts can then process claims faster and more accurately as they only need to focus their attention on the 20 to 30% of claims where their expertise is needed. 

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM): keep IT systems secure without breaking a sweat

Cybercriminals have been using new methods as they capitalise on the Covid-19 pandemic. Businesses are especially vulnerable as more staff work remotely across multiple devices. It’s not unusual for employees to use personal devices to work on sensitive tasks like business analytics or other forms of data analysis. This can present significant security risks. With so many possible vulnerabilities, manually staying on top of everything is a significant challenge. Even the most focused human efforts can result in security vulnerabilities flying under the radar. How can people possibly be expected to manually keep their eyes on thousands of devices?

This is where Konica Minolta’s SIEM software can step in. SIEM helps organisations stay secure by working 24/7 to analyse IT systems to spot vulnerabilities, snuffing out attacks before they can cause any problems. It does this by collecting and analysing vast amounts of data in real time, data like messages, alarms, and log files. SIEM uses methods including machine learning and artificial intelligence to work with big data, feed data analytics, and immediately spot and respond to any unusual patterns. It also uses predictive analytics to prevent any threats that may be just around the corner.

IQ 501: printing technology that automatically takes care of quality

Konica Minolta’s IQ 501 gives printers the power to put quality control on autopilot. This can save a lot of time and free up employees to focus on the bigger picture, reducing the amount of time they need to spend keeping an eye on printing applications.

Pages are scanned and compared with a reference print. It detects any abnormalities like stains, soiling, missing pages and images, or documents printing in the wrong order. IQ 501 delivers real-time corrections and continuously adjusts print runs to keep quality high. It is powerful enough to do all of this at speed. Druckpress, a full-service media company based in Germany, was able to triple its digital print volume within three months of implementing an IQ 501 printing system.

IQ 501 uses data to remove the need for employees to perform ongoing analysis. In addition, it’s also good for the environment because it helps avoid the risk of misprints, and this can significantly reduce wastage.

Body temperature measurement: helping to keep work environments safe throughout the pandemic

Most businesses have been required to adapt the way they work in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic. As not all jobs can be done remotely, some businesses have needed to implement emergency processes to provide a safe working environment. Can you imagine the chaos that would be caused if all warehouses had to close their doors and disrupt the distribution of food?

Konica Minolta’s body temperature measurement solution provides businesses with the tools they need to keep going. Our MOBOTIX thermal cameras automatically identify elevated body temperatures that pass their field of vision, sending a notification if any are above a certain threshold. This safety measure can help to reduce the risk of people infected with Covid-19 entering workplaces and spreading the virus.