MANAGEMENT ▶▶▶
Future calls for proper data governance
COVID-19 is pushing the poultry industry to adopt ‘Smart Farming’ quickly. Everyone is dreaming of the day when, with a click of a button, they can change the feed allocation of the flock, look at the nutrients fed, check the litter quality and birds’ bodyweights, change ventilation settings, and many other things.
BY SERGIO GUERRA, AVIAGEN O
thers may dream even bigger. They want to have answers from all the data collected from sensors in the hatcheries, feed mills and farms. This infor- mation will help them to understand the impact
in the processing plant through algorithms that alert them to what has happened and how they can improve the flock cur- rently on the ground. The sensors and algorithms to make sense of the data are available right now. However, there are still some hurdles to be overcome. For example: • A reliable internet connection on farms. Even though ad- vances have been made in this area, in practice, not many poultry farms have reliable internet connectivity given that some are in remote locations for biosecurity reasons.
• Good security. You want to avoid, for example, that some- one mistakenly or maliciously shuts down your feeding and watering systems.
• Proper data governance in place to make it all happen.
Foundation Data governance is like the foundation of a house – the nec- essary basis to change the way we run a poultry business. Without proper data governance companies will waste time and money on projects which try to collect all the necessary data to make decisions that will enable them run their opera- tions from the comfort of the office. Or, as we have seen with COVID-19, they may be forced to keep their businesses running while quarantined at home. Many believe that Information Technology (IT) departments
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• Creating algorithms to fill in missing data and predict future data.
• Making data available to: – All decision makers
– Analysts
are equipped with the necessary infrastructure to handle this requirement because, after all, they are the ‘computer guys’. However, the truth is that the skills required to integrate all the relevant internal and external data sources to make them available in one location for analysis, are new to most IT de- partments. Data governance promotes trust and is about ac- quiring, storing and using data securely and effectively so it can be put to good use. Data governance makes it possible to have the right data available at the right time to gain insight. It will help us to make timely and well-informed business de- cisions. To ensure proper data governance is in place you will need people who understand the business and have the skills to be able to clean and organise large quantities of informa- tion. They should also be comfortable speaking the language of the poultry business to be able to translate the results in ways that can easily be understood by everyone.
Connecting the dots A successful data program will discover all the data available in the company, understand how to connect all the different systems and ensure that data quality issues are addressed before implementing prediction algorithms, therefore im- proving decision making. A good data analyst will also be able to tell an excellent story with the data, as decisions are made not just because of numbers but because of the story they reveal. For most companies an internal restructuring may be re- quired to get an effective data governance structure in place. The restructuring will likely involve the IT department be- cause without proper guidance and understanding IT will never be able to meet your business requirements. The IT de- partment would continue to be responsible for the helpdesk and infrastructure, while a new department, let’s call it the Data Analytics department, would handle all other obliga- tions to ensure that existing and new systems have the right
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