Data usage can change the way that businesses operate — from creating a new customer experience to increasing profitability. But to get the most out of data, companies need more than a one-size-fits-all solution, according to Kelly Ireland (pictured), founder and chief executive officer of CB Technologies Inc., which designs and deploys enterprise-class tech solutions worldwide.

Working in partnership with a consortium of companies, CB engages with client enterprise employees to find best business-case tech solutions. CB’s focus is mainly on the convergence between operational technology and information technology.

“The first thing you do is go in and sit down with the client. And not only with the client, the executives, or the CIO or the CTOs, but the employees themselves,” Ireland said. “Because what we’ve seen with [industrial internet of things] and OT/IT convergence is that we have to take into account what the worker needs.”

Ireland spoke with Peter Burris (@plburris), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, at theCUBE’s studio in Palo Alto, California. They discussed CB Technologies’ experience with its customers as they develop ways to apply technology-rich data to business challenges (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

Lab starts ideas churning

One example of this approach is CB Technologies’ work with Texmark Chemicals Inc. CB and other ogranizations, including Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., created the Refinery of the Future consortium to bring advanced IIoT tech to provide a connected worker solution at Texmark. The company is incorporating new tech into existing chemical manufacture procedures at its southeast Texas plant.

“The reason that I think it’s been so successful is that the owner, the CEO … and the VP of operations … immediately wrapped their arms around bringing in employees,” Ireland said.

Half of the Texmark employees are involved in the project. “They’re a small company; they’re maybe 50. They brought half of them to an HPE lab to show them what a smart pump was for their chemical plant,” Ireland explained. “These are people who have been using manual valves and turning knobs and looking at computer screens; they had never seen what a smart sensor pump was. All of a sudden on the drive back to the company, ideas started churning.”

From the interaction with employees, the consortium started to figure out the solutions. Companies have partnered with HPE for the overall results, not just for one or two use cases in which each is involved. “They all can integrate in some sense,” Ireland said.

One of the use cases is video as a sensor. CB and other partners are analyzing data and processing it to be able to identify animals within a train yard and transients that should not be there, for example.

“We can decipher between someone that’s in Texmark’s [personal protective equipment] versus somebody that’s in street clothes. So we are taking all that, analyzing the information in the pictures, and training it to understand when it needs to throw an alert,” Ireland explained.

The other use cases in the Texmark plant are condition monitoring and predictive analytics; safety and security; connected worker or augmented reality; and asset integrity. All technology sits on top of a wireless control system built in partnership with HPE.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s CUBE Conversations. (* Disclosure: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither HPE nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE