The document discusses how companies can leverage "free data", or information that is automatically collected during regular business operations but not fully utilized. It provides examples of how analyzing patterns in existing data from sales, mail volume, and inventory can help optimize staffing, forecasting, and product distribution. The key message is that companies invest heavily in automation yet often fail to mine the valuable data already being captured for additional uses that could streamline operations and reduce costs. Fully leveraging free data requires looking at processes with a new perspective to discover overlooked opportunities.

1. WHO SAID NOTHING IN THIS WORLD IS FREE?
The Discovery of Free Data
What would you do if you suddenly learned you were sitting on a gold mine? Well, start
digging. Odds are, you are rich in resources you probably didn’t even know you had. We call it
“free data” – a gold mine of information.
An abundance of data is captured in an automated format through the overall workflow process
each and every day. However, only a portion of these facts and figures are used for the
immediate task at hand. The rest is typically discarded. This extra information – or free data – is
actually quite valuable and could be put to use in other capacities that would streamline your
operations and save a great deal of money.
You are already collecting information for specific purposes. Now you must look deeper and
ask yourself how you can mine that data and use it elsewhere. We’ve noticed that there is free
data circulating in virtually every industry. You just need an eye to find it.
Information Mining
When is the last time you were at the airport, number 194 of the 200 people in line at your gate
– while one lone counter clerk worked to check everyone in during the ten minutes remaining
before your flight? Had that airline made use of its free data, you could have been relaxing in
the lounge with plenty of time to spare. The airline’s computer is full of information – including
how many tickets were sold. Knowing what time most travelers would arrive for their flight,
management could have easily planned to have more workers behind the counter. Free data.
How about the cash register at the fast food restaurant that logs in sales information? If this data
is saved and analyzed, the manager may notice a pattern. Maybe every Tuesday at 3:30 p.m., the
store experiences a rush. Perhaps that’s the time kids get out of school and come in for their
daily dose of French fries. (You see, the register will also have recorded information as to what
customers are buying.) Now the restaurant can forecast and schedule additional employees for
that afternoon shift. And they will be sure to have plenty of ketchup on hand to go with those
fries. Free data.
A producer of snack foods in Dallas is a prime example of a company that took advantage of
free data and made it work to their advantage. In the 1980s, this company’s trucks would retrieve
unsold items from stores and give storeowners credit for the merchandise. The information
collected on receivables was stored on a computer. One day, someone in the snack food
company’s marketing department took note that data was being gathered on which items were
and were not selling. In the meantime, raw materials – corn and potatoes – were sitting on the
railroad track, waiting to be processed. A quick analysis of this data told snack food company
personnel whether or not potato chips were selling in West Texas and if corn chips were stronger
in the southern part of the state. The Dallas plant then knew what to make and where to ship it.
Free data.

2. 2
Taking off the Blinders
What kind of free data is floating around in your operation? You, like those in many
companies, may be pressed from an operations standpoint to reduce costs and improve profit
margins. People are investing hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars in automation …
but using it with blinders on. Technology is being left on the table.
Take the example of incoming mail. Perhaps you spent a quarter of a million dollars on a
machine that sorts your mail to individual PO boxes. Great. But did you know that other valuable
information is being captured simultaneously? You can also determine your volume and the
pattern of mail by day of week or by hour. All that data is contained within your machine. Now
you can take this knowledge and start forecasting. If you know that every Monday at 8:00 a.m.,
you get 30% of your volume, you can build a staffing schedule. Free data puts you in control of
your workflow environment instead of reacting to it.
Too many companies are wasting time, energy and money on manual processes, when needed
information has already been electronically captured. A mailroom clerk, for example, will sit and
manually log the trays of mail, when the machine has already counted every envelope. Or what
about the employee who re-keys information into a computer for billing purposes? The data was
already in electronic format. It just came off the computer. But it is being entered again. Billing
may not have been the end goal when this particular automation system was purchased, so no
one thinks to mine that information. But it’s there.
Understandably, managers are focused on accomplishing their particular job – getting from
Point A to Point B in the shortest amount of time with the least amount of problems. However,
there may be a number of side paths that can lead to answers for another operation or help in a
particular area of the processing stream.
A Different Perspective
Free data is often discovered when somebody simply looks at a process from a different
perspective. They see that while information is being gathered for one purpose, it can be
effectively used for another. The zoo generates a lot of manure. But some individuals have
turned it into a business enterprise for fertilizer. Again, free data.
Our challenge is to explore the ways in which you can make more use of the data that already is
out there … right at your fingertips. Don’t let this valuable resource slip through your hands.
Grasp hold of it.
Look to see if you have information available that can be used in a different way than originally
intended. The more you train yourself to view your operation with new eyes, the more instinctive
it will become. And you will be the richer for it.