Among the very visible consequences of a global pandemic is that businesses — like communities and institutions worldwide — are being forced into new ways of doing things. Not out of expedience or convenience, these changes are basic to survival. Even before COVID-19, there were compelling reasons to find better means of managing big data and using Data Smarts. The risk this data can pose to the organization when it is unnecessary, irrelevant, or simply incorrect is obvious.

How to manage "Smart Data" — the data that is only necessary for business purposes, and which has been thoroughly vetted to ensure compliance with regulation — in this remapped environment will be even more of a challenge than it was pre-pandemic. That is if you are not prepared with the right tools.

It is no different for the tourism sector and the many travel-related businesses within Finance, Travel Retail, and Insurance, which has reflected a lot in the post-pandemic to have a much more mature and sophisticated approach to Big Data. To match that maturity and the need for more Smart Data, ForwardKeys has responded by introducing a brilliant new service: a Data-as-a-service Platform called ForwardKeys Connect - addressing the need for flexible access to heavy volumes of data.

Data Smarts – the curated datasets with built-in intelligence, focusing on answer-specific business questions - are a way for ForwardKeys to offer Smart Data to wider markets around the world. Hence the name and the strength behind this new product, ForwardKeys Connect, is all about connecting the dots for you in one space and in a very simple-to-use way. Just imagine connecting data with other data, external systems and more!

“One of the biggest problems that both our current and potential clients face is the difficulty in flexibly accessing large volumes of data, that would allow the data to be merged onto different intelligence platforms, dashboards, or reports. We live in a world of data and many data providers and access points – data siloed will not provide the rich and desired 360 views of the travel sector,” says Katia Stepien, Product Owner at ForwardKeys.

Among the datasets available as Data Smarts in ForwardKeys Connect, clients can enjoy access to:

Thanks to its unique set of features, the platform guides users from the data discovery and understanding stage, through the data preparation phase allowing them to apply filters, granularity changes and play with column selection to focus on what matters and reduce the datasets to sizes much easier to handle.

Up to the last and most crucial step – connecting the data to practically any external tool, using any programming language with flexibility unrivalled on the market, allowing both seamless integrations of the freshest data and tracking of historical variation and discovering patterns – in a matter of minutes. This is groundbreaking and a must-try for those in search of improved business results matched with productivity in the office!

“One of the things we learned during the crisis is that you can’t sit on your hands and wish for miracles to fall in your lap. Remember that the pace of technological change can be rapid. You must keep on innovating because even in the tourism sector things are changing. That’s what makes us at ForwardKeys tick and want to do better each time,” adds Stepien from ForwardKeys.

Data Smarts are relevant because they empower individuals and organisations to turn data into actionable insights. In a world flooded with data, having the tools to navigate, understand, and leverage that data is a crucial driver of success, innovation, and growth. For better or worse, there’s no way back to “the way it was before” for both business operations and culture in the aftermath of COVID-19.