The pace and importance of digital transformations increases in the corporate world. Digital transformation changes not only the technology used by the company to run its processes, but could also enable a new business strategy and new ways of working. For example, digital transformation of manufacturing, also known as Industry 4.0, brings about flexibility and optimisation of the processes, but also enables strategic re-shoring of operations and increases the education expectations from the workforce.

However, one of the biggest benefits of digital transformation is providing the data needed for business analytics. Indeed analysing the increased volume of data provides the information and knowledge necessary to further optimise performance and bring value to customers and shareholder. To achieve this we need to develop appropriate Big Data Analytics Capabilities (BDAC), and this presentation proposes a maturity framework of BDAC enabling companies to reflect on their maturity and to plan their next steps in improving their BDAC.

Interacting with large volumes of complex data poses its own requirements, and the second part of the presentation will introduce the Data Visualisation Observatory at the Alliance MBS – a high-definition 3D immersive visualisation environment, and describe the different research platforms we have developed in the short time after opening the lab.

About Prof Nikolay Mehandjiev

Dr Mehandjiev is a Professor of Enterprise Information Systems and Director of the Data Visualisation Observatory at the Alliance Manchester Business School. He teaches and researches digital technology, big data and their transforming role for the manufacturing and process industries.

Mehandjiev has published more than 150 peer-reviewed research outputs and has edited three special issues of international journals. He has participated in 25 collaborative projects worth €57m of which € 5.3m to the University of Manchester.