Government’s digitalisation endorsement: There’s no better time than now!

Government’s digitalisation endorsement: There’s no better time than now!

Apr 8, 2022 | Article, Hosting, News, Solutions

Data Foundation

The government has recently announced a digitalisation endorsement to help small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) accelerate economic recovery by embracing a digital data strategy. Investments in cloud computing, e-invoicing, cyber security, and web design will have a $120 tax deduction for every $100 spent. There has never been a better time to invest in your data strategy!

According to MYOB, businesses with an advanced level of digitisation are:

  • 50% more likely to increase revenue
  • Eight times more likely to create jobs 
  • Seven times more likely to scale

The cloud provides the foundation needed to accelerate your operation’s data strategy and achieve exponential growth. Toustone has what it takes to set up an effective data strategy for your organisation.

How your business benefits from the cloud

Why do you need the cloud? Manual reporting costs time and money and leaves the door open for errors. Plus, your data is at risk of being compromised, either by human error or a system crash. Manual reporting is a relic of the past.

Cloud hosting places all of your data in one centralized location, creating a single source of truth for the entire organisation to base decisions on. This is the building blocks of a solid data foundation that will enable your business to access accurate, real-time data for the best decision-making.

Let’s take a deeper look into the benefits of investing in a cloud-based data strategy now.

  • Single source of truth

One location for your data allows for easy, fast access to reports and deeper analysis between data sets. Your staff can easily compare and identify how various functions like marketing campaigns affect your P&L reports. 

  • Scale on demand

The cloud gives you greater flexibility. If you need more resources, you have access in minutes. This removes the pressure of planning – and means your business can grow even faster.

  • Worry-free backup

Your data backs up automatically. Data in the cloud isn’t susceptible to damage by flood or fire or if your system crashes. Never worry about losing your data again.

  • Save time and money

A network of servers hosted in the cloud replaces your server or hard drive. This makes it possible to store and access data much faster and more efficiently while eliminating the need to maintain a server. A single subscription fee replaces maintenance costs – and your staff have more time to focus on business goals. 

  • Security

You no longer worry about your server’s integrity. Toustone takes care of it all. We monitor your systems 24/7 so you are automatically alerted about outages and see issues resolved quickly. And you have complete control over who can access which reports. 

All of this means you have a centralized reporting model with easy access and 24/7 support that is flexible to your technical needs.

Government's digitalisation endorsement

Toustone makes data management easy

The governments digitalisation endorsement is putting its money where its mouth is by pushing incentives to accelerate Australia’s global leadership in digital and data strategy. SMEs can receive tax deductions for deploying cloud solutions that will benefit businesses. 

Real-time information at your fingertips means your organisation can act with agility. You – and your staff – can make data-driven decisions based on clear, accurate insights without searching through manual reports and spreadsheets. Your data is accessible from anywhere, at any time.

So what are you waiting for? Our team can’t wait to build the perfect data strategy for you. Get in touch today. 

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What if Santa partnered with a DI company?

What if Santa partnered with a DI company?

Dec 1, 2021 | Article, Data, Decision Intelligence (DI), News

Smart Farm: What you need to know

Santa’s a busy guy – the whole year rests on getting one night right.

Santa has a lot on his plate. He has to manage the production of millions of different gifts every year! Analysing the ever-expanding naughty and nice list, wish list and delivery locations whilst ensuring his elves are maintaining an efficient work environment.

What if Santa decided to level up his operations by becoming more data-driven to create a more productive work environment – where would he start?

1. Define and identify

If we were working with Santa on this project, we’d begin by defining with him his operations data-driven objectives and identify the relevant data sources required to achieve these. This is the beginning of shaping Santa’s data-driven culture so it can be adopted within his operations. Here, Santa has to lead by example. For the elves to effectively adopt this new approach within their manufacturing process, Santa has to be clear and precise on what he wants to achieve.

2. Build a solid foundation

Once we know what reporting Santa needs to keep his operation in check, we go about extracting, transforming and loading his data into a secure data warehouse. This is the most crucial part of the process – setting a solid data foundation that is aligned to his operations. This step is crucial to streamlining the reporting process to make those meaningful decisions, getting this part right means the success of the project!

This foundation has to be secure too, we don’t want anyone from the naughty list changing their category so by utilising the cloud we can give Santa complete governance over who can access what list and also allows him to access reports where ever he may be in the world.

3. Maintain the data-driven culture

Adopting a new process takes time so maintaining motivation is key for successful adoption. Remember the elves have been doing the same process for years now so a new way of doing things may come as a shock! Santa needs to be ready to listen and respond to the team if they have any issues.

4. Make informed decisions

Presentation is everything, especially for tracking presents! We’d create a clear, automated visual reporting dashboard to make Santa’s data come to life. It would seem like magic, even to Santa. This removes the manual handling of data that took days to produce reports – which were outdated by the time they were produced – allowing for more reliable and accurate information to inform his decisions.

Outcome?

Santa is now working off a real-time dashboard that displays the information that is relevant to him. He can now make more informed decisions that yield the best outcome for his operations. The elves have moved from manually producing reports to working of automated reports that assist them in refining their manufacturing process to produce more gifts and make more time to look after the reindeer. 

Santa has a lot of data but these-days, managing large volumes of data is easy when you have a foundation in place to support your data-driven goals. So Santa, if you reading this – contact us today if you’re interested in discussing how your organisation can benefit from being data-driven.

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Top 5 Data & Analytic Gartner Trends

Top 5 Data & Analytic Gartner Trends

Oct 8, 2020 | Article, Data, Decision Intelligence (DI), News, Technology

Smart Farm: What you need to know

Data and artificial intelligence (AI) have taken on massive roles in managing the aftermath of the Covid-19 crisis. What does this mean for data and analytics as we prepare to face a post-pandemic reset? To help you get ready for what’s coming next, we’ve selected five of Gartner’s Top Trends for 2020 to identify areas to focus on:

  1. Smarter, faster, more responsible AI
  2. The decline of the dashboard
  3. Decision Intelligence
  4. The Cloud is a given
  5. Data marketplaces and exchanges

1. Smarter, faster, more responsible AI

Gartner predicts that by the end of 2024, 75% of enterprises will have made the move to operationalising AI. No more development and control – it’s time to rely on the technology.

Machine learning and natural language processing deliver vital insights and predictions, so increasing investment in these aspects of AI technology is key. Human-machine collaboration and trust will be enhanced by model transparency – if you see it, you can believe it – driving efficient decisions.

AI technology is available to you now. Yellowfin Signals monitors and analyzes your data and notifies you of significant events. The relationship created between user and technology allows for faster and more effective decisions. Steering toward a reliance on AI now will help you make better decisions in a post-pandemic world.

Implementing AI on top of a foundation of reliable data is the next step to keeping pace with rapid and informed insights. Are you ready?

2. The decline of the dashboard

The second trend we pulled from the Gartner report to help you prepare for the unprecedented shift we are experiencing in the wake of Covid-19 is the decline of the dashboard.

If you just got used to dashboard reporting, don’t worry. It’s not going away, it’s just getting better.

While dashboards revolutionised the way we view data, the standard point-and-click exploration of predefined dashboards will shift to the next level – automated delivery of insights in an easy-to-understand format.

Data reports will be replaced with data stories. It goes a step beyond reporting as the insights are generated for you. And you don’t have to be a data scientist to understand a story. This saves an incredible amount of time that would have been spent on analysis.

So who sees the stories? A few weeks ago I mentioned sharing your data with the right people was a key step in getting the most out of your data. Automated insights builds on that as relevant data stories stream to each user based on their context, role or use.

The right people get the right data pre-packaged as insights. Their job then becomes acting on those insights, instead of developing them – and more time spent on action yields faster results.

3. Decision Intelligence

The third trend has to do with Decision Intelligence. Gartner predicts that 33% of larger organisations will be practising a higher level of decision intelligence by 2023.

What does this mean? Faster, better decisions based on data, including automated decision management and modelling technology.

Decision Intelligence brings together several disciplines to give a framework for making high-level decisions using multiple logical and mathematical techniques. Automating this process – or at the least, documenting and auditing – allows for faster execution, monitoring and analysis of AI and ML supported decisions.

In this way, data-based decision-making swiftly drives the business processes and the processes are monitored to keep in line with the business strategy. The result? Better outcomes for the business.

While machine learning drives better decisions, it still requires a human aspect to be the decision-maker by initiating the actions based on decisions. By exploring Decision Intelligence now your team can remain ahead of the game in the uncertain days ahead.

Smart Farm: What you need to know

4. The Cloud is a given

Remember dial-up internet? It’s hard to imagine where the world would be if we hadn’t progressed from those days.

Soon we’ll be saying, “Remember life before the cloud?”

By 2022, the cloud will be essential for 90% of data and analytics innovation, according to Gartner’s latest trends. As data and AI take on more of a role in the unprecedented times we are living in, the speed of cloud services will be necessary to stay competitive.

We currently see companies benefit from cloud services with increased efficiency, security and clarity. Data can be automated and scalable. Increasing data storage with manual housing can take 6-9 months, while with the cloud it takes mere seconds. Building your data foundation in the cloud drives efficiency in reporting, so you can spend more time acting on insights instead of building them.

The good news is that you can shift to the cloud in seconds with Toustone proven technology partnered with AWS. We’re experts at getting the most out of your #data, so we can guide you from step one to get your organisation up to speed. We make the transition easy so you can focus on what’s ahead while the pre-cloud days become a hazy memory.

Have you adopted the cloud? Check out our Hosting Solution!

5. Data Marketplaces and Exchanges

Picture a marketplace – a collection of stalls selling everything from food to clothing to handmade goods. It’s convenient for both buyers and sellers, bringing goods to one location keeps costs low and makes it easy for buyers to see what’s available.

A data marketplace has similar advantages – bringing together multiple buyers and sellers of data in one cloud-based location reduces costs and showcases everything available.

Number five in our Top 5 Gartner Trends is a shift toward data marketplaces. In two years, 35% of large organisations will be either sellers or buyers of data from online data marketplaces. As more businesses monetise their data, the amount of available data grows exponentially.

The availability of third-party datasets can be a boon to businesses by providing centralised access to multiple providers on one platform and reducing costs. The improved insights drive real results.

But before you dive in, make sure you know how to combine your internal data warehouse with these outside data sources. It’s a powerful force for driving insights but you have to maintain your focus and not get distracted by extra data – there’s a lot of it out there.

Are you ready to take advantage of third-party data to improve your insights? 

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“The Way We Do Things Around Here”

“The Way We Do Things Around Here”

Jun 4, 2020 | Article, Decision Intelligence (DI), News, Technology

Smart Farm: What you need to know

Are we making decisions based on facts or habits? Using data to make better decisions drives better outcomes.

We’ve heard it before – the same old thinking gets the same old results. But sometimes our business practices become so subtly ingrained that we forget to step back and ask ourselves why we’re doing what we’re doing. Is it because it’s the best way, or because it’s the way we’ve always done it? Are we making decisions based on facts or habits? It’s easy to get caught up in day-to-day activity, relying on the tried-and-true approaches. After all, if it’s not broken don’t fix it – but how do you know it isn’t broken?

Taking a step back and looking at how we operate is especially apt in these times. The Covid-19 crisis dealt a serious blow to the way we do things. How can we take this opportunity to step back and see things from a new perspective?

Start with the facts

An objective look at factual data allows us to make better decisions. Too often we rely on our gut feelings without acknowledging all of the data available. It might be that the data is in different locations and collating it is a labor-intensive job. Add to that the hassle of generating meaningful reports and it’s easy to see how important information could be overlooked. We simply don’t know that there could be a better way.

At Toustone, we are passionate about data. As a team, we have decades of experience seeing what an impact intelligent use of data can make and we want to help other businesses to harness their data to innovate and grow. The information you need is there – we make it accessible, understandable, and effortless. No need to shuffle through multiple reports or clunky Excel spreadsheets. Stop wasting time generating reports that could be automated. From financial reports to rostering and payroll, real-time reporting on a single dashboard is a reality.

Smart Farm: What you need to know

Decision Intelligence offers objective insights

Our job is to make it easy for you to make better data-driven decisions. Imagine all of the data from every aspect of your business gathered into easy-to-read charts and reports, automatically updated for you every day. With a glance, you can recognise trends, spot inconsistencies, and compare data in ways you perhaps hadn’t considered before.

We challenge industry norms to see beyond ‘the way things are done’ to a forward-thinking approach staying a step (or two) ahead of the pack. Get in touch with us today to see what a difference your data can make with a Decision Intelligence solution.

 

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