You need insight and granular detail about the impact of the virus on your people and processes now. Combine new but proven technology with your existing data including data you never used before (your dark data). Look ahead, look back and look at everything. Pulling together all the possible data drives better decisions in times of crisis. This information will support decision-making at all levels, always with full transparency up and down the ranks. Information with rich context puts knowledge rather than guesswork in the driving seat.

Learnings: Taiwan, China, and South Korea

In Taiwan, China and South Korea, big-data analytics are helping to combat the Covid-19 pandemic. Because of its past experience with the SARS-1 virus in 2003, Taiwan was one of the first countries outside of China to take preventive measures against the virus. Taiwan used the GPS locations of passengers aboard the cruise ship Princess Diamond to track their movements throughout Taiwan in order to determine with whom they had been in contact. Everyone who had possibly been in contact with one of the passengers was placed in a 14-day quarantine. South Korea and China have also leveraged geo-data in order to combat the virus.

Use of data within organisations

Organisations in a crisis environment must excel in two-way communication to maintain and build trust in the workforce. Rapid, coordinated responses require top-down leadership. But adapting to un-predictable change, with distinct dynamics in different departments, also requires decentralised initiative-taking. In vital sectors, it is even more important to provide employees with detailed information. At some point during the Corona virus outbreak, people and teams in these sectors will have to work under circumstances of some risk to their health (if not already).

Reliable information in order to get the employees (sometimes already divided into two or more teams) with the right skill mix to the right locations with the best instructions for protecting their safety will be vital. SynerScope has already proven to be able to provide information with 99.9% accuracy to mechanics before they arrive on-site.

All companies will have to deal with employees infected by the virus. But we cannot tell where, when or how severely infections will impact our teams. What data is available to adequately inform and question employees? What should we do? What should we let teams decide? How should we separate teams and individuals to slow the advance of the virus? What tailor-made advice should we give each of our staff members? How do we keep teams with all the necessary capabilities and skills available? How can we obtain feedback from the frontline of our company to obtain a more complete picture? How can we distribute learnings throughout the organisation? And finally, Covid-19 is going to be affecting us for months rather than weeks?. We need to prepare for the longer term too.

The technology and data, including dark data, are available to have an action-oriented Covid-19 platform, including an app in place to respond to the impact. By supporting companies, this will also help society as a whole. We propose a separate private sector and public sector approach, although both may soon be able to use the exact same data, as the AVG/ GDPR limitations on the use of data are being relaxed by the EU authorities in an attempt to combat Covid-19. Together we can now enter the fight against Covid-19 with more information to hand than ever before.