Our second call will focus on reviewing your Target Use Case.  We’ll expect you to be prepared with a process diagram and high-level understanding of what data is being collected at each step of the process.  While every customer is different, most of our target use cases include one or more of the following concepts.

   Data Ingestion, Transformation and Warehousing
Bringing disparate datasets together, cleansing and joining in preparation for Advanced Analytics and Predictive Modeling

   Predictive Maintenance
Detect the irregular heartbeat before the heart attack of downtime and performance degradation.

   Predictive Quality
Identify and fix potential defects before they manifest themselves in production.

   Yield and Throughput Increase
Identify and fix bottlenecks and hidden factors limiting throughput and yield. Identify and fix factors influencing scrap in continuous processes or assembly.

   Demand and Inventory Movement Forecasting
Reduce supply chain risk by ensuring the right amount of parts and raw materials are present.

   Sustainability and Energy Management
Combine data from production processes and/or facility and energy systems to improve efficiencies and achieve sustainability/ESG goals.

The Business Case is built by our Pre-Sales team and documents how the Target Use Case drives Return On Investment (ROI) in three critical areas.

   Measurable ROI
Measurable ROI is the expected financial benefit of solving an operational challenge.  This is often easily measured- for example, reducing defects by 4% will save $250,000.

   Capability ROI
Next is Capability ROI- ways our Use Case saves employees time and frustration by empowering them to make better decisions faster.  For example, manually cobbling together multiple spreadsheets is time-consuming and brings a high probability of human error.  Using Machine Learning to automate this process improves accuracy and makes employees more valuable to the business faster- creating a workforce readiness advantage.

   Strategic ROI
Lastly, we target Strategic ROI by ensuring the chosen Use Cases scale across multiple products, lines and plants. This ensures our customer maximizes returns and drives true competitive advantage. We also identify areas for technical integration, making sure we fit into existing architectures like Amazon, Cisco and Microsoft to maximize their value and avoid redundancy.

Prior to starting the Business Case, we encourage customers to sign a Mutual NDA to protect their interests.

Time Required from Customer Resources:  2-3 meetings, 3-5 hours

Experience has taught us to measure twice and cut once with regard to data quality.

Most customer data is not in the condition required to execute Use Cases immediately.  There can be issues impacting the ability to join data.  Sometimes the data isn’t being collected frequently enough to build an accurate Machine Learning model. More often than not, these challenges are easily overcome with feedback from customer subject matter experts and IT.

Before completing the Business Case, we’ll request a sample set of data for the target use cases.  Our expert Onboarding Team uses this sample set to perform a quick Data Quality check, determining the value of what you have today and identifying gaps that impact use case viability.  We provide a Gap Analysis and Confidence Index score, which identifies factors influencing success and failure based on the current state of your data.

From here, our Pre-Sales and Onboarding teams work together to complete our Customer Business Plan and initial Statement of Work draft.

Time Required from Customer Resources:  1-2 meetings, 3-5 hours

All of the work to this point is assembled into a Customer Business Plan (CBP).  The CBP includes the following.

• Target Use Case Summary
• Business Case and ROI targets
• Data Quality Analysis and Confidence Index
• Process Integration and Interface plan
• Rough Order of Magnitude Budget
• Confirmation of Available Budget

The CBP is reviewed and accepted by the customer.  Once accepted, the CBP is integrated with the Delta Bravo Statement of Work.

Our Statement of Work clearly articulates the components of our delivery and billing structure. Each engagement starts with a one-time per Use Case Onboarding fee, which varies based on the complexity of the target Use Case. An annual software License fee goes into effect at project start and customers have the option to purchase ongoing annual Support. We offer volume discounting to make the ROI equation more favorable as new Use Cases are executed on the Delta Bravo platform. We also have options for customers who prefer Capital Expenditure (CapEx) pricing models.

We do not charge “per user” or “per data source” or “per connection” fees.  Our goal is to drive digital maturity with our customers, not accounting headaches. Users can quickly be added or removed from the Delta Bravo platform by customer administrators or our Support team.

Intellectual Property (IP) built on the Delta Bravo platform, by our Onboarding team or internal customer resources, will always belong to the customer. Specifically, code used to perform ETL processes, modeling and model deployment- the pieces that drive competitive advantage.  This IP is available to the customer and can be exported quickly and easily if desired. We earn our business through excellent tools, processes and people.  We do not create “technical lock-in” for our customers.

Most customers are concerned with the amount of commitment required from busy subject matter experts and operational resources.  Delta Bravo’s Engagement Methodology minimizes time spent in long, redundant meetings by using modern collaboration tools. We prepare customer resources with what to expect far in advance of calls or meetings.

   Project Plan
Each Delta Bravo customer is presented with a Project Plan at Onboarding. The Project Plan includes deliverables expected from both sides and a timeline agreed upon by both parties. The Project Plan includes specific detail on responsible parties for all important decisions and deliverables.

   Communication Platforms
Onboarding is managed through a modern project tracking system, giving customers real time visibility into task status and timelines. Additional documentation is created for customer teams, sharing how data transformation and modeling structures are built, managed and maintained ongoing.

   Value Delivered Quickly
Complex data transformation and model structures take time to implement.  However, within days customers can quickly access our Data Lake to perform detailed analysis on multiple datasets from one interface.

   Iterative Process
Validating data accuracy and piloting functionality is critical to building trust, acceptance and adoption of the solution. These processes are iterative, as feedback from multiple sources at multiple times influence change.  Delta Bravo understands and plans for this flexibility in our Onboarding and Support engagements.

   Big Picture Perspective
Customers seeking to maximize the value of their data investment benefit from our process. Recommendations on improving data quality and utility are provided by our Onboarding team.  Our Best Practice perspective is informed by years of experience- both positive and negative. We help our customers drive maturity with as few growing pains as possible- whether that’s at their first plantwide Center of Excellence or scaling out to hundreds of facilities worldwide.

Delta Bravo offers flexible Support options that can change over time as customer teams grow and add data science talent. Options range from full, white-glove support which includes model monitoring, tuning and retraining, as well as Quarterly Strategic reviews by our expert Data Science team to minimal support focused simply on model performance and/or software licensing.

For customers that already have Data Science teams, support beyond the platform access license may not be required.  We are flexible in our approach to support with the priority of ensuring maximum value and scale for each use case.