Better than Data Analytics: Data Insights
Begin with the End in Mind
The saying goes: “Begin with the end in mind”. Its good advice, one of the 7 habits of highly effective people. But it can be difficult to interpret. The implication is that before setting out, we should know where we’re going, but how do you interpret where to go? This question haunts many businesses.
Nowhere is this more apparent than the technology industry, where “Startups” come to life regularly. Many succeed, many fail, all with goals in mind. These goals are vast and numerous. Those who have the right goals and execute upon them find themselves in positions of success. Those who miss the mark, either through incorrect goals or failed execution, fall by the wayside. One such area of technology where many companies have risen, many have fallen, and few have succeeded is the area of building analytics. But why have so many companies tried and so few seen successes? I submit that there is a fundamental miss in the implementations of analytics in the smart building space today. One that has led to low user adoption and satisfaction in recent years. And I think that it is because so many businesses began, without the right end in mind.
The Wrong End
Before we can launch into exactly what I believe the best focus for a business should be, we must first examine what has not been working and why. When we look around the industry at analytics technologies, we see many well designed, feature rich, and powerful technologies. Tools that pull data from buildings, present it in numerous meaningful formats, and allow users to present and interpret data in more ways than can be counted. This data leads to meaningful insights as to what is going on in the buildings, what is likely to happen, and what can be done about it. But there is a huge gap here that many businesses struggle with even using the most powerful of tools. That gap is interpretation.
What I mean by interpretation is similar to the classical meaning of interpreting from one language to another. If I have a book that contains all the answers to my questions, inconveniently written in Latin, I am no better off than not having the answers at all if I cannot read the text. This is the problem many businesses find themselves in, where their analytics tools to them seem like piles of informative books, simply written in the wrong language. Most businesses overcome this hurdle by hiring one or even a few “interpreters”, skilled in the arts of data science and building systems to decipher and decode this data into something useful. But these interpreters end up becoming bottle necks to scalability and action, as they can only interpret so much information at a time. Worse yet, these experts are hard to find. We all know and feel the pain of the skilled trades gap daily. Hard as it is to find good techs that understand how building systems work, try finding one skilled in the art of data analysis. Unicorns indeed.
This is all avoidable of course, because the end with which these technologies were designed is essentially data presentation and interpretation. Data analytics, as it were. This leads to tools that are useful to a rare few, at high costs, often too little impact.
The Right End
So, then what then should be the correct end with which we begin in mind? The answer is multifaceted, but surprisingly simple. The goal for the usage of data is and always has been to make people’s lives easier. Both our clients’ lives and, perhaps most importantly, the lives of our employees. And we can accomplish that with tools that focus not on data analysis but rather data insights. In other words, the interpretation has been done for us, the answers are presented in the language we naturally speak, and we can take action immediately and effectively.
Data Insights
I know what you’re thinking, this isn’t new information. Every analytics platform in existence makes some claim to make things easier and provide value for my business in similar ways. And to an extent, you would be correct. The key difference here is the output of the systems in question and the level of interpretation required. Let me give an example.
When talking with a key client, we asked the question, “With all of this data available to analyze, what are the key messages you want to deliver to clients with regards to building service?” After some discussion we distilled down to only 3 simple messages:
Assurance
To communicate to my client that everything is working well, and no action is required. This can be highly valuable when the systems are mission critical if for nothing more than peace of mind that operations can continue as planned.
Diagnosis
A problem has been detected, but we know what has caused the problem, what steps are required to resolve, and are ready to take action at your approval to resolve the issue quickly.
Confirmation
A previously detected problem has been fixed and we have affirmative evidence to demonstrate that it is resolved and will not recur. This dovetails directly into assurance, where normal operations can resume as planned.
To be clear, these 3 messages can be communicated in infinite combinations and forms, but they are in essence very simple messages to deliver. The goal of a building analytics platform then should not be simple to give me data to interpret, but to provide these clear messages in ways I can present directly to clients. And all of this should be presented in plain text, clearly interpreted by anyone in my business. When done correctly, this can even empower the members of my team to do less work and arrive at better conclusions faster, improving the scalability and doing more with less experienced team members.
People First
What all of this culminates in is a technology that puts people first, instead of data. Here at Key2Act, we’re focused on empowering everyone in your organization with powerful insights into building operations that allow you to get work done. We know the skilled trades gap is one of the greatest pain points in the industry today. Taking on new technologies that require more highly skilled, rare, and expensive resources is sometimes a non-starter. Businesses need tools that let them make use of the resources they have in new ways and more effectively than ever.
To find out more about how BOB, the Building Optimization Broker helps get you to meaningful data insights without having to hire an interpreter, explore now.
About the Author
Tim Cramer | Director of Solution Consulting | Key2Act
10+ years in HVAC/BAS as a Property Manager (22 buildings), and BAS Service Operations Manager (over 1,500 buildings – commercial, retail, residential)