Companies of the future will share intelligence to achieve goals

In 1855, amid the chaos of the Crimean War, Florence Nightingale wielded an unexpected weapon: data. By meticulously collecting and applying statistics, she reduced soldier deaths by an astounding 99% in just one year. This revolutionary approach not only saved lives, but also earned Nightingale the distinction of becoming the first woman admitted to the Royal Statistical Society.

This remarkable achievement is a powerful testament to data’s transformative potential. For millennia, from ancient censuses to modern digital innovations, data has been the bedrock of human progress. But it’s in our rapidly evolving digital age that its importance has skyrocketed.

In today’s hyper-globalised business landscape, where companies grapple with climate change, supply chain disruptions and fierce competition, this lesson has never been more relevant. Embracing data isn’t just an option, it’s an imperative. It’s your most valuable asset and can tip the scales between success and failure.

Navigating the age of global-scale challenges

From extreme weather events to escalating geopolitical tensions, we’re living in a time of unprecedented world-scale challenges. Just this month, Florida-based residents experienced first-hand the power of nature when Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton unleashed 155 mph winds and flooding. Such events serve as stark reminders of the urgent need for global solutions to widespread challenges.

Adverse climate events are not just limited to a single state or country. Globally, communities are grappling with searing heatwaves, devastating wildfires, prolonged droughts, and widespread flooding. Events like these are jeopardising power supply, impeding supply chains, and displacing millions around the world.

The power of collaboration and data sharing

Amid constant change, industrial companies are seeking solutions that promote flexibility and resilience in the face of volatile supply and demand and impacted production. Smart enterprises have realised that by taking a data-centric approach to insight and partnership, they can gain agility, operational sustainability and economic resilience. This realisation, otherwise known as leveraging industrial intelligence, will transform business models.

Modern enterprises that thrive will be those that build strong bonds throughout their value chains and promote radical collaboration between teams, partners and technology providers

– powered by a robust AI-driven data infrastructure in the cloud. Secure collaboration is an effective way to drive innovation quickly and effectively. When multiple entities combine their unique strengths by securely sharing data in the cloud, tackling looming business challenges, including our collective sustainability goals and resource management, becomes easier.

This kind of visibility and adaptability is invaluable at a time of increasing cross-sector innovation, when developments in one field, such as big data, can support progress in another area.

Almost half (47%) of industrial leaders see enhancing collaboration with partners and customers, as well as across the workforce, as a key goal of their transformational technology investments, according to the AVEVA Industrial Intelligence 2024 report.

Businesses aren’t just connected to each other—they're inter-dependent. In industry and elsewhere, the future of business increasingly relies on a connected data ecosystem.

Radical collaboration ensures better results

Sharing data across an industrial organisation—as well as with external partners — gives every player within the ecosystem a contextual understanding of how to optimise their role in the value chain.

Connecting data across the supply chain enables companies to drive significant disruption, solve critical problems and reshape markets with smarter – and often sustainable – data-driven strategies. Industries from food and energy to pharmaceuticals and power are exploring how they can build intelligent, connected networks that combine data across their value chains and life cycles, replacing silos with trusted applications.

As the barriers are broken down between engineering, operations, IT, partners, and even peer companies, enterprises can empower their teams to make accurate decisions quickly. With integrated intelligence, companies can determine the best way forward for challenges such as farm-to-fork reliable production, resilient energy supply, or the macroeconomic shifts required to tackle climate change.

Wood, a leading global engineering, procurement and construction company, is a good example of this. Wood has taken a data-centric approach to managing construction projects and materials. By integrating capital project engineering and execution data into a central platform on the cloud they were able to improve collaboration between teams to accelerate build time, reduce costs and standardise materials. Wood saved over $1 billion worth of rework of potential data issues by promoting collaboration between teams and third parties.

French tyre giant Michelin built a digital manufacturing and supply chain by converging business, operations, operational technology and IT teams from both its plants and central support organisation. The company saw significant improvements in product quality,

reduced product variability, decreased energy and water usage, and radically sped up decision-making ability. At the regional and state level, organisations are focusing on integrated operations and partnerships to manage scarce resources and promote climate resilience. There's an increased emphasis on collaboration between utilities, academia, tribal communities, and local governments.

Portland General Electric (PG&E) in the US, for example, is leveraging historical weather data and AI models to unlock operational insights from multiple stakeholders, including state agencies and partners. This collaborative model allows PG&E to identify risks such as high heat, heavy rain, flooding or wildfires ahead of time. Once challenges are identified, they can be planned for, mitigated or offset.

The connected opportunity is here

By leveraging integrated AI-driven data networks, companies can determine the best paths for resilient, collaborative and innovative working. The way forward for industry and governments alike will be forged through trusted and secure relationships – cutting across teams, sectors, companies, and even countries. In the face of large-scale challenges, collaborative industrial intelligence enables the global ecosystem to become more than the sum of its parts. And this is how we solve the world’s biggest challenges.