Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/594816
42 SMT Magazine • November 2015 Moradkhan: Yes. That's one of the key optional modules where some of our longer-term cus- tomers have said, "You know what? I'm realiz- ing that customers are calling me or calling my people, and asking a question. My employee is going into the software, looking up the answer, then responding to the customer. How much better would it be if I took some of these views and just made them available to my custom- ers over the Web?" So we have a customer por- tal offering that allows you to do that, and it's done very carefully with encryption and with a higher level of security, because now there is some data traveling over the World Wide Web. The other thing is sometimes the informa- tion that you share with your customer may not be as detailed as the information that's avail- able to you internally, so we manage all of that. That's where we actually can turn into a stra- tegic advantage for you, because offering that level of integration to customers may be the deciding factor for them to go with you rath- er than with somebody else. Let alone the fact that it brings a great deal of efficiency because they're not calling up your internal resources to answer some questions that they could just get online to see. Matties: it's like an Atm machine. You don't want to go see a banker to get money, right? Moradkhan: Yes, a very good example. Matties: is there anything that we haven't talk- ed about that we should share with the reader? Moradkhan: I would just emphasize being smart and analytical about this transformation process, transforming data into actionable busi- ness intelligence. Really do some soul-searching and ask yourself, "Do I have a strong strategy there? Am I doing that well?" Then, second- arily, "How much time, resources and money am I wasting there?" If you feel like you're not happy with the answers to those questions, then I think Portus could be a perfect solution for that. Matties: When you say turning it into actionable items, give us an example that someone might consider. Moradkhan: For example, let's say that you have data in your system about your on-hand inventory, about what you have on-order with suppliers, and you have the demand from your customers. A classic use of this is to take the demand that you have from your customers, break it down to the component level, and see if you have enough of the components either on-hand or on-order to meet that demand. A ImProvING ProDUCTIoN eFFICIeNCIeS WITH beTTer DATA STrATeGIeS FeaTure INTervIeW