Roy Kok, ARC Advisory Group. Email him at [email protected] or check out Kok's Google+ profile.There are many sources of data that can be used to drive your strategic decisions, but understand that your decisions are only as good as the data on which they are based. Common sense, no? You are reading this publication, an excellent source of data. Some of it is vendor-supplied; some of it is delivered through the personal experiences of others or of editors. You will also turn to your own internal sources, acquiring regional opinions, staff opinions and, perhaps, consulting industry peers.
The data you collect needs to be tested for accuracy, bias and fit for purpose. Then there is the problem of reliable and repeatable data to guide your decisions on an ongoing basis. This is especially hard to come by, as few have the incentive to create metrics on an ongoing basis.
Your sources for data will typically include items like the Purchasing Managers Index (PMI), stock market indices, various stock tickers, GDP data, employment data, the Consumer Price Index (CPI), currency rates, trade balances and commodity prices. The challenge comes in interpreting these indicators and relating them to your particular business. Markets, such as the Automation Marketplace, may or may not track these indices in ways that are clear and intuitive. So the challenge remains: Where to get relevant and accurate data on which to base your strategic decisions?
ARC Advisory Group delivers a number of reports designed to give you market data. These reports will be highlighted quarterly, through an exclusive relationship with Control and ControlGlobal.com. These reports are the Automation Index Quarterly, Enterprise Market Quarterly, Automation Market Quarterly and the Capital Expenditures Annual Report. All of these reports offer intelligence and metrics on industry.
The ARC Automation Index
ARC developed its quarterly automation index to summarize the current state of automation markets, to enable participants to learn from past developments and to provide a forecast based on major variables such as investment, consumer spending, GDP and other leading economic indicators. ARC bases its index on the publicly available data of major automation companies, including published revenues. Each vendor is included within its region of origin. Extreme values, such as those resulting from acquisitions, are excluded, and all raw data is seasonally adjusted. Seasonal changes in financial reports are frequent, due to incentive structures and are usually strong in the last quarter of a fiscal year.