Affecto
Business Value with IoT

Robots helping us save cost and effort, sensors providing us with real time data for quick decisions are aiding businesses, retailers, financial institutions, and industrial companies to make use of information in ways that serves us all. “Now that’s information put to good use,” says Hakim Laukkoski, Business Unit Director, Industrial and Energy, Affecto. “However, data without context is just noise. It only becomes relevant when we know how, when and where to use it in ways that adds value.”

Affecto has been dealing with data and data driven processes for over 30 years. Headquartered in Helsinki, Finland, Affecto has extended into sensing the world, transforming the physical world into digital by means of service design, industrial internet, IoT, analytics and advanced analytics. “IoT is much more than just technology. It’s a new way of sensing the world today, and making sense for tomorrow,” remarks Laukkoski.

Affecto discerns technological requirements and incorporates analytics, cloud, and connectivity capabilities to furnish the users with comprehensive solutions that leverage the power of data. Affecto collects, analyzes, and infuses data into business processes. “Through our data driven solutions, we are transforming physical entities into digital experiences,” states Laukkoski.

“IoT combined with powerful analytics creates opportunities to increase revenue via new value added services and connects companies even tighter with their customers,” says Laukkoski. Affecto adheres to co-creation and prototyping methodologies and consults its clients to adopt a stepwise process for solution development. Through Affecto Innolab and Advanced Analytics Workout, the firm helps the clients to create solutions quickly and deduce the application areas of IoT and analytics.

“Regarding our solutions, Affecto is technology agnostic and we have partnered with leading technology providers in IoT, sensing, connectivity, and the analytics space,” states Laukkoski. The firm has established partnerships with industry leaders such as Alteryx, Tableu, Qlik, Microsoft, Amazon and IBM.

Our service enables the entrepreneurs to focus on product as it provides a holistic way to harness analytical capabilities

The company proffers Analytics as a Service and the end-to-end solutions assisting SMBs with systems integrations and advanced analytics capabilities. “Our service enables the entrepreneurs to focus on the product as it provides a holistic way to harness analytical capabilities,” says Laukkoski. The firm has executed many successful projects. Some of them include retrofitting sensors to an old hydropower plant to gather temperature and vibration data in order to create predictive abnormality models. “We have also crafted soft sensors for heavy machinery. With additional R&D sensors, we transform the data into predictive models. This enables us to install the same models in production versions via software updates,” informs Laukkoski.

Unlike other firms, Affecto focuses on industries and customer value. While our competitors focus on technology, Affecto focuses on unique combinations of industry and technical experts. “In order to understand and create customer value across the value chain, you have to master both,” evinces Laukkoski.

Affecto has invested in B2C and Industrial growth programs. The B2C growth program adds new business value through advanced behavioural and video analytics, machine learning, and consumer 360 degree analytics capabilities for industries such as consumer goods, retail, media, telecoms, and healthcare. On the other hand, its industrial growth program addresses analytical challenges in manufacturing, technology, energy, and process industries.

Laukkoski believes that in the near future, “Analytics-as-a-service” will be the way to do analytics in the future. He also believes that “Software-robotics” also known as RPA (Robotic Process Automation), is one of the ways to automate manual processes in information flows. “The main focus at Affecto is to create customer value for the entire value network by means of technology,” concludes Laukkoski.