Today’s world faces immense challenges when it comes to sustainable development. Becoming as profitable as possible is no longer enough. Employee demands, environmental impact, government regulations, and increasing customer power are changing the development game. To be successful, companies need to bet on several horses at once. For example, you could set up the most cost-efficient production process, but if no one wants to work for you, even the most optimized process won’t deliver the goods. Without doubt, the optimization of business operations is very different and much more complex, than it was ten years ago. Using new techniques and available data are essential in solving challenges both today and in the future.

For companies across the globe today, the focus is not only on being more efficient and savings costs. Instead, they are having to balance multiple important goals (people, planet, and profit) and push multiple buttons instead of just one, to secure the future of their organizations and that of our planet.

The digitalization of the world is rapidly increasing. The distribution of information, communications technology, and global interconnectedness, have great potential to accelerate human progress and sustainable development. For companies across the globe, it is a matter of keeping up, adapting, and innovating to benefit from these technological developments and tools.

Every company needs to adapt to and use new technological developments to innovate and benefit from them. So, how can you apply data, mathematics, and cloud computing to solve larger, more complex puzzles? And how can you use these tools to balance multiple goals for 'People, Planet and Profit'?

• Interconnectivity
  Machines, devices, software applications, people, and processes are more and more interconnected. Technologies like the Internet of Things are boosting this development. As a result, more actions can be automated, and more decisions can be made integrally (leading to a decrease in silos).
• (Real-time) Data explosion
  A major accelerator of the ever-growing data streams is the fact that just about every device is connected to the internet these days. This leads to new, real-time, and untapped data sources that organizations can use to their benefit.
• Mathematics
  Artificial Intelligence (AI) is symbolic of the power of mathematics. An enormous collection of mathematical techniques can be applied to automating and improving decision-making. AI is one of these techniques and has increased in power due to the availability of data and computing power.
• Cloud computing
  Cloud computing makes computing power available on demand, and at an almost unlimited scale. It enables the capture and storage of large data sets and the utilization of as much CPU/RAM as is necessary to run very heavy algorithms.

The combination of technological developments makes it possible to solve problems that have never been solved before. By using more detailed, real-time data, applying advanced mathematical techniques (like machine learning and optimization), and utilizing the unlimited availability of computing power, it is now possible to solve more complex and integrated models, leading to better decisions.

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An example: scheduling of employees in hospitals

Previously, scheduling of employees in hospitals could only be done by linking the job to be done with the skills required for the job. The schedule had to comply with the collective labor agreement, and the work had to be done with as few people as possible. This approach is no longer adequate. Employees are becoming scarcer, so it’s important to keep them happy. To this end, employee experience can be utilized to optimize the schedule and continue to meet their changing needs and demands. This in turn balances employee satisfaction and operational efficiency. Optimization and machine learning techniques are effective tools for balancing these multiple goals.

Another example: road transport
All transportation companies will soon face legislation requiring a certain percentage of the fleet to be electric. The distance a petrol-fueled truck can travel on a full tank is a known factor, regardless of circumstances. With an electric truck, however, you need to calculate/recalculate the performance under different circumstances, such as weather conditions. The software you use must incorporate these new factors, for example by having real-time weather forecasting. Another factor is the well-being of the truck driver, who might prefer to have lunch at noon, for example, and not at 13.30. Keeping drivers happy means satisfying those needs and demands as well. It is no longer sufficient to deliver as much as possible in as little time as possible; there are more buttons that need to be pushed.

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Balancing act

In short: efficient processes alone won’t solve the challenges of today’s world. To be successful, companies need to balance multiple goals. Businesses will need to adopt new methods to thrive or perhaps even just to survive. Advanced technology, data and mathematics enable organizations to solve more complex and integrated models, leading to better decisions and sustainable development. Fortunately, businesses always have more than one button available to them. Which buttons will you need to push to solve your challenges, both today and in the future?