Data-driven companies are the future, and now more than ever this is apparent as COVID-19 has completely changed the playing field when it comes to companies that can pivot and transform digitally and companies who can’t.

“In the current environment, you can see large retailers disappearing at a rate of knots because they haven’t been data-aware and data-adopting,” said Glenn Fitzgerald (pictured), chief data officer of the product business at Fujitsu Europe. “That lesson is not lost.”

Fitzgerald spoke with Stu Miniman, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the SUSECON Digital event. They discussed ways Fujitsu is helping companies become data-driven. (* Disclosure below.)

Data-driven companies help change the future for companies and customers

Fujitsu Europe, which is part of Fujitsu Ltd., is a large company with significant managed services capabilities, and its customers range from governments to manufacturing industrials to insurance financial sectors in Europe, according to Fitzgerald. Recently, Fujistsu has pivoted to a more consultant-led approach to its customers to help them understand their data, as they saw how so many companies still didn’t grasp how to use it.

“What we want to do with them is take them through the story of data transformation,” Fitzgerald said. “Every organization, however large or small, has to derive business advantage and discrimination from its data. Otherwise, they’ll go the way of … the high street. You can see in this recent pandemic … it’s a current and rather violent example of this change of how to manage data and get the best value out of it.”

The key to leveraging data is to understand how artificial intelligence can help a company, according to Fitzgerald. AI is just statistical mathematics that is acting upon a large set of data, and if a company has a large set of the right data, it can produce fantastic results for the client. But without that data, AI is a relatively meaningless exercise.

“We’re beginning to see very significant results produced by the application of neural networking the machine learning to technology-based, data-derived solutions for our clients,” Fitzgerald stated.

For example, Fujitsu Europe is working with a large financial institution in London that wants to produce an AI base that will perform the task of insurance underwriting, which is a relatively mechanical task. Another example is with a healthcare company that is making an intelligent heart monitor for pacemakers that uploads patient data into an AI-based knowledge system in the cloud, which can then predict when a patient is going to have a heart attack and prevent it from happening.

“[This was] one of the most personally rewarding examples I’ve been involved with,” Fitzgerald said. “A really fantastic example of human-centric interest.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the SUSECON Digital event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for SUSECON Digital. Neither SUSE, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: Glenn Fitzgerald