Often we find that any concerns around data validity and usefulness get swept into this idea of GIGO. After all, if your data input is bad, you can’t expect a better output. But is your starting data really that bad? Or is it a matter of not knowing what you don’t know?
One reason that you might feel like you have difficulty with your data input is that you don’t have any data specialists in your team. While you or someone on your team might be quite data savvy, it doesn’t quite compare to having someone on hand who lives and breathes data.
This means that your supply chain is missing out on the effective ways that data experts would approach problems. In other words, your business is missing out on the ability to understand useful data that you already have.
This in turn, could lead to you missing useful data that you already have, but can’t use the way it is now.
Another reason you may feel like all of your data input is garbage is that it’s coming from third parties and providers. This means you don’t have any control over the data that comes into your network. When this happens, you can frequently be given data that doesn’t suit your needs or is in a unhelpful format.
For example, different providers often have different words for similar services. Or they have services that are called the same thing but have slightly different deliverables. They might also use different formats or file types, making it that much harder to compare each of them. Especially if you have to gather that data yourself.
Supply chain leaders like you are frequently called on to fight fires and react to changes quickly. While this can be extremely helpful in your role, it does sometimes mean you don’t have time to sit back and consider things like what you need out of your data. And, often, even if you know what you want to get out of it, you don’t have clarity on what data points you would need in order to achieve those goals.
All of these issues can lead you to feel like all you have is useless, data-heavy garbage instead of the goldmine of opportunities you really do have.
Sometimes suppliers don’t provide you with the data you need. Hard stop.
Often, it’s not even that they are being deliberately opaque. It’s much more likely that they don’t know what you need and provide only the same types of data to all of their customers.
This can make it difficult for you to know what you could have better access to. (This is one area where a platform like 7bridges can help - we can sometimes go to them directly to get the data that’s needed.)
As much as any of us wish otherwise, human errors do happen. Whether it’s a misplaced decimal or an incorrect address number, these small mishaps can add up over time. Because of that, relying solely on human input for your supply chain data can mean you have a growing amount of inaccurate data sitting on your servers. This is especially problematic if you’re also missing the next part…
Standardised data is a crucial part of making your data work for you. If it isn’t standardised, you end up with fifty different formats that almost (but don’t quite) align. Which is how your data ends up messy and unusable. Paired with the human errors from above, it’s no wonder it feels like garbage.
Find out how the 7bridges' platform can help optimise your supply chain.
