4 Challenges Holding Back Industrial Data (And How to Solve Them)

Industrial businesses are generating more data than ever—yet many still struggle to turn it into real value. From reliability and maintenance teams to operations and IT, everyone knows data has potential, but too often that potential remains untapped.

 

Here are four of the most common challenges with industrial data—and how platforms like VROC can help overcome them.

 

1. Dark Data: The Value You Didn't Know You Had

Dark data is information that’s been collected but never used. It’s buried in systems, spreadsheets, data lakes and historian archives—waiting to be discovered, yet disconnected from decision-making.

According to a SPLUNK survey, 60% of business and IT leaders say more than half of their data is never used, with a third admitting that up to 75% of their data sits idle. Often, this is due to lack of integration with analytics tools or poor data governance.

Over the years a number of our clients have shared similar experiences, whereby they might be collecting sensor data but its never been integrated into their PI Historian, often due to the integration cost or complexity. This sensor data therefore is ignored and analytic results lack integrity.

This is where VROC can make a real difference. Our platform is designed to be agnostic, able to integrate with legacy and modern systems alike—meaning no data is left behind. By centralising your data into a unified, distributed platform, VROC helps uncover hidden insights from previously unused sources.

 

2. Siloed Data: When Teams Don't Talk, Systems Don’t Share

Data silos form when departments, business units or sites operate in isolation. The result? Disconnected views, duplicated work, and missed opportunities for optimisation. 

Imagine your compressor continuously failing due to issue in a process that's seemingly separate. Without data from that process connected and analysed alongside the compressor data, the cause of the failure may never be identified - the real cause? Siloed data. 

Research shows that nearly 70% of enterprise data goes unused because it's trapped in silos. Even more telling—61% of organisations say silos create poor data quality and inefficiencies, according to Dataversity.

With VROC, you can break down those walls. Our platform acts as the single source of truth, ensuring everyone across your organisation—from engineering to operations—is reading from the same playbook. Interoperability is key, and VROC’s architecture enables data to flow freely, securely and in real time.

 

3. Bad Data: Garbage In, Garbage Out

Flawed data leads to flawed decisions. Unfortunately, poor-quality data is more common than many expect—especially in industrial environments.

From inconsistent sensor readings and manual data entry errors (which still occur in 70% of manufacturing sites, per NAM), to duplicate records and corrupted legacy migrations, the risks are high. In fact, bad data costs companies an average of $12.9 million annually, according to Gartner.

VROC’s platform is built to flag and manage data quality issues automatically. By identifying inaccuracies, gaps or anomalies at the source, the system ensures that your analytics are always fed with high-integrity, trustworthy data—before any insights are drawn. (learn more about this)

 

4. Slow Processing: When Insights Come Too Late

Industrial processes move fast. Your data should too. But too often, teams are stuck waiting on overnight batch reports or running into bottlenecks when insights are needed most.

The reality is: if data isn’t processed quickly enough, the window for action can close. Delayed insights are a missed opportunity.

Because VROC uses a distributed storage and processing architecture, it’s optimised for real-time and AI predictive analytics—not just dashboards after the fact. That means problems can be detected, and opportunities seized, often before they happen—not hours or days later.

 

Unlocking Value From Industrial Data Starts With the Right Foundation

Whether you're dealing with legacy systems, siloed sites, or sensor noise, the good news is: you don't need to rip and replace everything to fix the problem. You just need a platform that plays nicely with what you’ve already got—and turns raw data into clear, actionable insights.

That’s exactly what VROC's DataHUB+ is built for.

With full interoperability, automated data quality detection, real-time processing, and the ability to become your single source of truth, VROC helps engineers and IT teams eliminate the friction that’s holding their data back.

 

Want to see how VROC can unify and activate your industrial data?

Contact us or explore our platform in action through our wide range of case studies.

 

 

References:

Splunk, The State of Dark Data

Dataversity,Trends in Data Management 2023 report

NAM, Seventy percent of manufacturers still enter data manually

Gartner, How to improve your data quality