Analyzing the business-case approach Perdue Farms takes to derive value from data

What’s a real example of an early business case?

One would be with our chicken deboning machines. We wanted to know if the line was optimized. If we run it faster, will we have enough people at the end of the line to keep up with the machine, or if we run the machine too slow, will we have too many people? We got some real savings from moving operational data about the deboning machines into the data lake.

What’s the benefit of populating your data lake this way?

The big benefit is senior manager acceptance of the value of the data. They can see the dashboards they automatically populate, and can realize they’re no longer using paper or waiting to get reports. And because this is their business case, they see this data on their terms. Their experience with the data then gets more people excited and involved.

Describe some other challenges of working with operational data as opposed to enterprise data.

Working with financial data isn’t as complex as working with operational data. For the most part, ERPs are built a certain way to be configured for most processes. We understand that data and how to put it in a data lake. But operational data can be more challenging because we mix financial data with operational data. For the first time, we need to think about how much sensor data should go into the data lake, how it should it be structured, what the standards are for operational technology data, and should the data that shows our production error rates stay at the plant or move into the data lake. Figuring all of that out is difficult work, and we’re still not through it as much as sitting on so much OT data.

What advice do you have for CIOs building a new data capability?

Start small, define your ecosystem, simplify your tech stack, and involve people who have credibility in the business. Yes, you need the right technology to become a data-driven business, but that’s just table stakes. The real drivers are your business partners and the business cases they create. In IT, we sometimes make data too complicated because we start talking bits and bytes, and ones and zeros, and cloud and platforms, but that’s not the point. Use your governance structures to pick a business case that’s very important to the business, nail it, and then go get the next two or three. It will mushroom from there.