Photos & Videos are very important Data that need to be cared for like any other vital enterprise data such as Purchase Order, Sales Order, Item Master etc.

Data is the new oil of the Digital economy. It has been said that data in the twenty-first century is like oil in the eighteenth century. I don’t agree with this 100%. Like oil, data has to be refined before it is used, and it’s only as valuable as the insights that are drawn from it. Further, oil is a limited commodity, and we all know that the deluge of data is getting bigger every day. And with the proliferation of sensors everywhere, especially in mobile devices, it is much easier to gather data from business operations and also get much better insights from it.

We are data rich, but information poor, this is changing with the rise of AI, ML and the cost of computing power going down significantly experts are able to run several analytics models and cull out some deep insights from the data that is available.

According to a McKinsey Report [1]

Companies have managed to generate 20% of their revenue from Data and Analytics products and services
Data experts are getting a seat in the C suite
Companies are incorporating something called “Data Culture”, adapting a Data and Analytics basis for all the functions in the organization, not just for decision making, but making data and analytics an integral part of everything of an organization,
Above all, the high performers indicate that their leaders are creating both data and analytics strategies for the long haul. Meaning these organizations are making data a core part of employees’ workflows and mind-sets by educating them as part of a broader effort to build a strong data-driven culture. All the while, they are ensuring that high- quality data and modern technological foundations are in place to support these efforts at scale.

The Power of Photo and Video data

Now let us revisit the power of data in the current context, which is adding this Centralized Enterprise Class Photo & Video Documentation System for your Supply Chain. There are a lot of things that can be done with this data in the form of photos and videos.

One important application is this capability called Smart Contracts in the Block Chain arena, where ownership and payments to the service providers are automatically triggered based on receipt of the merchandise at a certain point in its journey. In a Supply Chain when a load is shipped, it could get transported by multiple parties (for example let us take an international multimodal shipment, where a container full of manufactured and assembled goods is shipped from a distribution center, then it gets transported from the DC to the departing port by a truck, then it gets transported from the departing port to the destination port in a Ship, then from the destination port to a hub near the destination through rail and finally from that destination hub to the final destination distribution center through another truck) that own the product based on the points where the hand off happens. During this journey different parties owned the goods and the ownership transferred and different parties have different insurance companies whom they insured the shipment with, which needs to be part of the smart contract and also once these parties complete their leg of the whole journey they could get automatically paid, by uploading the photo proof with data elements such as the end user that made the hand off, the end user’s driver’s license proof, along with that the date stamp, the time stamp, if it is a perishable or a produce merchandise, then possibly the temperature, then also the GPS coordinates where the hand off occurred, these companies that offer this service would love this opportunity to automate this step because that would help them get paid faster, which means better cash flow situation for their organizations and also some efficiency induced in the whole process to get paid.

Also, if there is an exception that was reported, automatically provide all these photos that were taken at the hand off points of the other legs of the whole journey to other parties or the insurance companies involved in the Supply Chain community, so the exception can be quickly addressed, and the concerned parties are compensated accordingly.

Also, during this pandemic, we saw how useful the no touch bill of lading was. A bill of lading or a shipping manifest is a legal document that is required by every transportation service provider, a truck or a carrier to carry it along with them to demonstrate to a law enforcement officer that they are hauling a merchandise that is legally allowed, or if it is a controlled substance they do have all the relevant documentation like a Drug Enforcement Administration certificate or anything else, the problem is this was always a paper document, that the truck drivers need to carry it along with them until the transportation is complete and also attach it to a proof of delivery document with the signature of the recipient. Now with this being paper, with them carrying around in their hands, was spreading the Covid 19 virus, so it made sense to carry it electronically and share it as well as get it signed on a no touch basis wither by emailing and or texting to perform all those steps. So, at that time sharing these documents as photos was quite useful.

The other area where these photographs, videos and documents are useful are for better Supply Chain Visibility. By reading the contents of the different documents along with the context and along with the GPS coordinates and the actors that are taking the photos several insights can be obtained on the on-time delivery of the shipments, missed appointments, even traffic patterns around the area where the delivery needs to happen and this whole repository can act as a massive reservoir of data, where even status of purchase orders can be inferred. These data will be highly useful in case of an exception that occurred due to some kind of an outage of a specific service that is essential for a normal functioning of the Supply Chain. Also now running AI and ML models on this data with additional information such as weather at that location at that time, interruptions to Supply Chains can be forecasted, against which operators within those Supply Chains can be better prepared to address any exceptions that might arise.

So now realizing all these opportunities, the organizations that are currently installing systems and infrastructure to house such a data repository need to include these photographs and videos within their data architecture so that they can nicely leverage the opportunities available with such a system and also can integrate with the other systems in order to maximize this data culture-based approach.

[1] https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-analytics/our-insights/catch-them-if-you-can-how-leaders-in-data-and-analytics-have-pulled-ahead/