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With Data from Market2Mill, Turn your Attention to Decision Making

At Marcal Manufacturing, I reported to Dhamo Srinivasan, Vice President of Operations. Srinivasan was a big believer in data; he taught everyone who reported to him the importance of using accurate data to make smart and informed business decisions. We all learned the lesson to “speak with data,” early on. We struggled, however, to find good quality sources of data.

The recovered fiber industry is a transaction-intensive industry. Every day, thousands of industry players buy and sell multiple loads and various grades of recovered fiber. At Marcal, we knew that to do our jobs effectively, we needed to have up-to-date and accurate market information. Acquiring accurate, near-time data wasn’t easy, however. We knew that highly accurate and reliable market information would need to be based, not on a small sampling of transactions, but on a large number of transactions representing both sales and purchases for all grades.

Today, this volume of data is what is known as “big data,” a term applied to datasets that are so large that they are beyond the ability of commonly used software tools to capture, manage, and process them within a reasonable timeframe. According to William McKnight, president of McKnight Consulting Group, big data is a “class of data that we haven’t historically managed very well.”

Why? Managing transaction data at this level of detail requires special tools and abilities: advanced database software, rigorous security, deep analytical expertise and an abiding commitment to business and industry improvement. Like the vast majority of industry participants, we just didn’t have the time or resources to gather and aggregate this volume of data on a monthly basis in order to help us better understand the market.

Until Forest2Market—an independent third-party provider of market information to pulp and paper companies on the wood raw material side—launched Market2Mill in May 2011, recovered fiber transactional data had never been managed at all. Forest2Market was able to create Market2Mill because it has the resources and experience to manage big data and make it accessible to industry players—large and small; in fact, this is the sole reason that Pete Stewart founded Forest2Market and a major factor in my decision to join the company.

The ability to find big data describing the market is not the industry’s only problem. With the market data we had access to when I worked at Marcal and for other companies in the industry, we were concerned that the numbers might be manipulated. Let’s face it: each and every one of us can put numbers on a spreadsheet. For us, the $1M question was: Can the data be audited to verify its accuracy?  Every business from major corporations to sole proprietorships requires accurate data to make sound business decisions; otherwise, it is just a judgment call, a roll of the dice or, perhaps, a dart thrown at a board.

Mill2Market solves this problem as well. Because, as the saying goes, “We ain’t got no dog in this hunt!” The sport is only to report volume weighted average prices that are based on the actual scale transactions that occurred in the market during the previous month. Speculation is not part of the process, nor is any assessment of the market—right, wrong or indifferent, left, right, up, down or stationary. Forest2Market does not buy or sell recovered fiber of any kind and therefore we have no reason to manipulate the data. Instead, our only interest is in reporting market information accurately. Our business depends on it.

As the only provider of big data in the recovered fiber industry using these high reporting standards, Forest2Market allows its customers to focus on decision making. By subscribing to Market2Mill, companies can focus their resources, not on uncovering adequate and reliable sources of data, but on higher value activities like using the data to make better business decisions and improve their productivity and profitability. Market2Mill provides accurate, auditable and objective data so its subscribers can turn their attention to what they do best: decision making. And this has long-term positive implications for the industry as a whole, since better informed decision making unequivocally leads to a stronger, healthier industry.

Read about the relationship between data-driven decision making, productivity and profitability in Data-Driven Decision Making.