Not even every second industrial company has a professional data strategy. The reason: there is a lack of know-how and personnel capacities. Yet the strategic handling of data has long been the basis for its economic success. This is confirmed by the results of a survey conducted by the technology company XPLM among 126 decision-makers from industry.
"The results of the study are disturbing and show: Despite all the transformation efforts, many industrial companies are still not making much progress with their digitalisation. As a result, they are giving away enormous economic potential," says Charly Wachtel, CEO of the technology company XPLM. When asked if their company had a data strategy, only 47 per cent of the survey participants answered with a clear yes. "This means: more than half of the companies are flying blind through their valuable pool of data. They are not making optimal use of the available information to optimise processes and products and bring innovations to market faster," says industry expert Wachtel, who is also responsible for the data networking tool XSPHERE.
More than nine out of ten companies that have already developed a data strategy see the consistent use of data as the key to success. The statements of these study participants show how broadly diversified the benefits of a data strategy can be with the aim of using their engineering and project data throughout the company. The most frequently cited benefit is improved collaboration within the organisation (55 per cent). However, increased customer orientation (47 per cent), relief from routine activities (45 per cent), compliance with legal requirements (45 per cent), increased cost transparency (44 per cent) and increased innovative strength (43 per cent) are also cited alongside general reasons for growth.
"A data strategy opens up new horizons for many companies. Because digitised business processes with continuous data flows not only enable faster, fact-based decisions, they also allow processes to be managed in an agile manner to increase their performance and resilience," says XPLM Managing Director Wachtel. The study participants also see it that way.
Many companies lack the resources to implement a data strategy. Of the study participants who have not yet implemented a data strategy, 79 percent admit that they lack the personnel capacities. 63 per cent have too little technical know-how. XPLM Managing Director Wachtel therefore advises easy-to-implement digitisation solutions that - depending on the application - either integrate data from different systems as well as processes from different company divisions or intelligently link data from different sources: "Modern data federation tools such as XSPHERE enable targeted data retrieval from all existing systems so that all participants along the value chain can access and process valid and up-to-date information. Users remain in their familiar system environment and receive the information where they need it, without having to copy, synchronise or migrate it. Data stays where it originates. This convenient data retrieval via self-service is becoming increasingly important in view of the increasingly diverse IT landscapes," says industry expert Wachtel.
126 executives from the industry were surveyed for the “Industry Study 2023, Success Factor Data” conducted at the end of 2022. The survey participants work in companies with a minimum turnover of 40 million euros in the mechanical engineering, automotive, electrical industry, chemical, pharmaceutical, food, medical technology and energy sectors.
With XSPHERE web services, companies in industry and other sectors can conveniently share technical data. All relevant information can be linked across locations and systems from the familiar working environment. The linked data updates automatically without any synchronization. Data models remain unchanged. Since XSPHERE does not require any implementation, integration or migration, there are only low installation costs without any project risk.
XSPHERE is a product of XPLM, a global solution provider. Founded in 2005, the company's core competence is to connect people, systems and processes. XPLM is headquartered in Dresden, Germany, with offices in the USA and Japan.