Not long ago, I came across a welcome surprise. I kicked the underside of my SUV’s liftgate and watched as the hatch sprang open. After five years of stumbling over my groceries to access this part of my vehicle, a simple but elegant solution emerged right from under my nose.

By Scott Gnau, vice-president: data platforms at InterSystems

The best part about unearthing a lifehack is the value add. They make our lives easier and more effective. They might even help our wallets.

That’s true in enterprise data management, too. The difference is scale: When you find a previously unknown feature in your data platform, the benefits go much further than cracking an egg and seeing two yolks. As data supply and demand skyrocket and enterprise cloud adoption accelerates, every organization could use a welcome surprise.

No one’s better suited to discuss the value tucked inside InterSystems data platforms than the people who use our technology to unlock new benefits every day. That’s the promise of InterSystems Virtual Summit 2021, starting next week — but more on that in a bit.

 

Growing Data Expectations

Data supply is exploding across every industry, to the tune of 2,5-quintillion bytes daily. From financial services to healthcare to supply and logistics, our activities are generating new and more useful information, in larger volumes.

Our data-centric society’s expectations for experience are extremely high. Everyone wants to leverage and monetize all this new data, coming from smart devices and everywhere else.

And, as the cloud becomes pervasive, our ability to store and process information is less expensive and more streamlined. This trend is creating a microservices environment in which any organisation can gather data, build an app, and start deriving insights.

But getting fast tactical wins sometimes comes at the expense of strategic growth. Organisations that zoom from one technology initiative to the next without reconciling their data landscape are at risk of storing the same data in several places, raising costs. Multiple data copies may also fall out of sync, which causes trust issues with analytics and the need to hire more people to synchronize the information. (Even back in 2016, bad data cost the US a stunning $3-trillion annually.)

The seemingly easy option can send everything spiraling out of control.

 

Finding Untapped Value

Despite the challenges, some organisations are making data-driven decisions at scale.

As is the case with every InterSystems customer, many are learning that they already have the technology required to build a smart data fabric, which provides the foundation of all innovation through a consistent, accurate, real-time view across enterprise data assets.

Consider these impressive results.

* Mondial Tissus. By leveraging InterSystems IRIS, France’s largest network of fabric and sewing supply stores digitized 100 stores, equipped its salesforce with 800 smart devices, and took control over its inventory of 50,000 products. All this, by the way, required no administration — a win for the four-person IT department that oversees 98 remote databases.

* Amcare Women’s and Children’s Hospital Group. This Beijing-based healthcare organization achieved deeper operational insights and stronger decision-making through an InterSystems data platform, which delivered real-time, aggregated, normalised, healthy data.

* Financial Center First Credit Union. To integrate data and execute machine-learning based predictive models from more than 30 different behavioral metrics, this Indiana-based cooperative credit union relied on the Customer 360 solution, powered by InterSystems technology. As a result, real-time insights and subsequent customer outreached enabled FCFCU to break three sales records and achieve a 57% increase in loan production compared to the prior year.

These are the kinds of real-world stories that have a way of spreading game-changing knowledge, and that’s precisely what you’ll hear at InterSystems Virtual Summit 2021.

 

A Smart Data Fabric at Your Fingertips

If you’re an InterSystems partner, I’d bet that your data platform contains untapped potential. Over the past few years, we released a flurry of capabilities, from analytics everywhere to new cloud footprints. They’re available to you today, free of charge, to improve your insights.

That’s why I’m thrilled to invite you to register for Virtual Summit. After all, learning from other industry leaders might just inspire you to kick the liftgate and open the hatch to what’s possible.