During a crisis like Covid-19, businesses and governments need data analytics tools to quickly and effectively respond to the flood of issues that will emerge.
As the Covid-19 outbreak continues to wreak havoc around the world months after it first emerged in China, business leaders and policy makers globally are struggling to deal with the unprecedented healthcare and economic impact of the virus’ spread. Countries in the Asia Pacific has been dealing with the crisis since the beginning of the year, longer than the rest of the word, as the virus travelled quickly from ground zero in Wuhan in Central China to the region.
In the face of this swiftly-evolving pandemic, leaders across all sectors have had to make tough decisions on a daily basis, and often with little clarity of the situation on the ground. Some countries in Asia that appeared to have tamed the coronavirus just a month ago have been hit with a fresh wave of infections in recent weeks.
As with similar crises in the past, being able to obtain relevant and timely data, and draw valuable insights from them, is key to making effective decisions during such challenging times. For instance, aggregated mobility information from telecom data was used to battle the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
Yet, the situation is different in our COVID-19 world. Rather than having too little information, today’s decision makers are faced with having to parse through an avalanche of data to arrive at the insights they can base their actions on. With the situation changing so quickly, leaders face the dilemma of identifying the information they require at any given moment, and being able to analyze it in a timely manner.
