Executives are demanding that their organizations acquire Optimization—and fast. What's driving this revolution?
01
Machine Learning
ML ushers in which models automatically improve and adapt as conditions change — and conditions always change.
02
Global Competition
Each business must be smart and agile, make better decisions, and squeeze every ounce of value out of its assets.
03
Big Data
Optimization is the only tool that can leverage all that data to transform asset utilization and core processes.
How We Define Optimization
Do I have it now?
Many software products use the word optimization or terms such as smart systems in their marketing, leading to understandable confusion among business executives. So how do you know if your current IT platform has real optimization? Start by asking two simple questions:
Does your current software make explicit recommendations for action? Does your current software have a concept of "the best possible course of action?"
Optimization software answers yes to both questions–with powerful results.
Optimization is also called operations research, expert systems, decision support, and advanced analytics. By whatever name, great optimization is the key to achieving the triple crown of faster, cheaper and better.
Thought leaders at Gartner, Forrester and IBM Research Institute have all recently agreed that optimization sits at the top of the Business Analytics stack and offers the greatest potential for breakthrough performance.
Areas of Opportunity
We agree. Businesses of all sizes are target-rich environments for optimization.
Where to Pursue Optimization
Optimization starts with assets: things of value that the company has some control over. The most common assets to optimize are:
- people
- raw materials / finished goods
- vehicles / machinery
- land / facilities
- finances / investments
- containers
- digital and other intangibles
Optimization embodies a deep set of techniques to make decision-making about these assets more rigorous. The classic optimization decision types are:
- production / acquisition
- assignment
- scheduling
- network routing
- pricing
- policy creation
Impact
Optimization can be a game changer on three levels:
Operating efficiency
Reach new heights of productivity and service; tighten up operations; do things faster, better and more cheaply.
New-product development
Create new products or services to break away from competitors.
New-business model
Launch a new business; stake out a new frontier, or reinvent your current value proposition.