| SOUTH WALES BUSINESS REVIEW
Future-proofing with Hozah Naomi Bishop
Co-founder and director of Hozah SWBR speaks to Naomi Bishop, the co-founder and director of Hozah, a fully automated parking payment system. Here, she highlights the importance of looking to the future to secure your business. What value does futureproofing add to Hozah? As a Smart Cities technology company, future-proofing is the underpinning of Hozah’s entire ethos. We believe that certain industries and processes within those industries are behind when it comes to technological advancement. Hozah has approached land management within Smart Cities as a sector and has found that rather than the hands-on, fairly physical approach that’s been taken in the past, you can manage physical assets digitally
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without the need for high-cost physical labour. Thinking about not just what is better to manage city assets now, but what the demands on the Smart City will be in the future is key to creating robust technological systems that will stand the test of time. Data and technology are evolving fast, but by future-proofing you can ensure that what you create is not just fit for market now, but forms part of creating the market of the future.
How does using big data help you in this future-proofing process? I think it’s critical that companies use data and the information it gives them to steer company direction. Data plays a big part in forming patterns, gathering information, and gaining key insight into behaviours. I think to be able to future-proof anything you need to first understand the intricacies of its target market and how it’s currently being
used: where are the areas for improved efficiency, where are there potential gaps in service, what don’t people like and what can you do to change that in the future? By doing that you remain one step ahead and always think about not just what is needed now, but what will be needed in ten years from now.
Do you have a real-life example of when future-proofing through using big data has been a success? We work very closely with local authorities all over the UK. One real-life example of when big data was used to make key decisions was in the implementation of EV charging points nationwide. Most councils have a green agenda and are looking to improve emissions profiling across their towns and cities. Hozah was able to help make key decisions in this regard and future-proof these decisions, helping to
