With the ever changing BI needs, the solution also needs to be in pace. This gives a partner significant ongoing services scope. Until now channel players have majorly played a significant role in creating the IT landscape for the customer. But as BI partners it gives them an opportunity to help better address the customer’s business needs. A successful BI implementation results in tagging the partner as the customer’s trusted advisor and also helps them in other avenues of the customer’s analytics journey, be it predictive, prescriptive or cognitive.
Today in the age of big data we have access to volumes of data, coming at high velocity from variety of data sources. Therefore, the need to derive insights from huge chunks of data continues to increase, leading to the demand for self-service big data analytics.
Every line of business can be optimised by implementing insights derived by BI solutions. By using technologies such as predictive analysis, trend monitoring, real-time data visualisations and dashboards such as Tableau, big data converts every action of a customer or business function into quantifiable insights. These insights may include consumer behaviour, sales effectiveness, revenue management, supply chain management, marketing campaign efficiency etc. that will help empower businesses to make insights-driven decisions.
[quote font=”tahoma” font_size=”13″ font_style=”italic” color=”#262626″ bgcolor=”#f2f2f2″]
“Newer solution possibilities have opened up because of the combined impact of newer forms of data along with a wider and more exciting set of BI/analytics capabilities ranging from discovery to predictive to prescriptive to cognitive.”
Dulles Krishnan
Director
IBM Software and Solutions
India South Asia
[/quote]
Even in areas like social media, Business Intelligence techniques can help customers understand the impact of their social media campaigns by delivering insights on the performance of every post, segment data by demographics and geography and identifying loyal advocates. BI has applications across verticals like Telecommunications, Banking, Financial services and Insurance, Government, Manufacturing, Retail, Education and Healthcare. Many of the issues that businesses are facing today are data driven and the right use of BI and big data analytics tools can help to turn those issues into opportunities. Typically, departments and even individuals who rely heavily on data tend to be bigger users of analytics tools.
[quote font=”tahoma” font_size=”13″ font_style=”italic” color=”#262626″ bgcolor=”#f2f2f2″]
“There is also the need to create more awareness and educate enterprises about the power of analytics and the competitive advantage that can be gained by harnessing data in the right way.”
Deepak Ghodke
Country Manager
Tableau India
[/quote]
BI offers tremendous opportunities to businesses in terms of using both the traditional and newer forms of data to glean insights and leverage those at the point of maximum impact – which could be on the shop floor, at a customer interaction point or in the board room. It offers the opportunity not just to drive top line revenue, and very significant bottom line impact, but also new business opportunities all together. We feel that the industry is merely just waking up to the power of insight. Subhash Mittal, Partner & Director (Operations), Biztek Advisors says, “BI help Companies make complicated decisions in real time with the information they receive. Specifically, BI analytics is assisting employees to use customer information to better the relationship with their clients. When a company is in the middle of a storm, literally or metaphorically, it can depend on BI and association management to guide its way out.”
[quote font=”tahoma” font_size=”13″ font_style=”italic” color=”#262626″ bgcolor=”#f2f2f2″]
“BI is no more just an IT –function. It is about people and business decisions. With the proliferation of web-based data to Cloud based services, BI applications are available over the web. Now it is consumed as service from the cloud.”
Jyoti Chopra
Direcror-IT
Glaze Trading India
[/quote]
The benefit of BI has been realized by the decision makers and that’s why space has been created or is being created for CIO to be a part of Board so that he can present the benefit expected out of the complete analysis. In fact the way business was done, is getting changed. Digital Marketing, e-Procurement, Reverse tendering, e-recruitment, complex manufacturing are many examples which are having enormous saving on one part. It is also increasing the reach of marketing and management. Seeing the benefits, Companies are willing to invest in BI and analytics what is required to absorb these deliverables.
[quote font=”tahoma” font_size=”13″ font_style=”italic” color=”#262626″ bgcolor=”#f2f2f2″]
“Today enterprises don’t suffer from lack of data, they suffer from lack of actionable insights.”
Mitesh Agarwal
Vice President
Solution Consulting and India CTO
Oracle
[/quote]
Most organizations have implemented some form of BI to enable decision-makers to monitor, understand, and improve business performance. Yet more than 80 percent of enterprise information exists as unstructured data beyond the reach of traditional BI environments—in websites, social media, content management systems, e-mails, documents, sensor data, external databases, and more—and this diverse and dynamic data is growing exponentially. Unlocking actionable insights from these sources of information requires expanding the boundaries of traditional business intelligence (BI) systems.
Many early adopters of big data analytics struggled with analyzing too much, which resulted in small amounts of information about many different areas, and an incomplete picture of the business overall. As analytics become more accessible to business users, there is a shift toward more focused and realistic big data discovery projects, which in turn provide valuable data for business decisions. With Big Data and too much emphasis on Analytics, many user friendly tools are available now to churn the data. The use of clouds and adoption of mobiles have further created space for instantaneous availability of meaningful information for better decision and thus the demand of BI and Analytics.
[quote font=”tahoma” font_size=”13″ font_style=”italic” color=”#262626″ bgcolor=”#f2f2f2″]
“BI help Companies make complicated decisions in real time with the information they receive. Specifically, BI analytics is assisting employees to use customer information to better the relationship with their clients.”
Subhash Mittal
Partner & Director (Operations)
Biztek Advisors
[/quote]
Latest Trends in BI market
The nature of business Intelligence is a new normal in the era of Digital transformation. It has changed the way BI systems are deployed and used. Industry people need actionable insights faster than the competition by reducing the data-to-decision gap. “BI is no more just an IT –function. It is about people and business decisions. With the proliferation of web-based data to Cloud based services, BI applications are available over the web. Now it is consumed as service from the cloud”, opines Jyoti Chopra, Direcror-IT, Glaze Trading India.
In 2016, witnessed enterprise being taken over by self-service analytics. IT began leveraging technologies to scale analytics programmes as business users collaborated with their data. IT and the business partnered to maximise the impact of their data. In 2017, this culture of self-service analytics will continue to spread and become a workplace norm. And the tools that support this evolution will become commonplace.
- Modern BI will become the norm. Many organisations have already embraced modern BI, moving analytics from the hands of the few to many. We’ve moved past the tipping point toward modern BI, according to Gartner. And we’ll continue to see organisations of all sizes democratise analytics, leverage trusted and scalable platforms to encourage people to uncover insights in their data.
- Collaborative analytics goes from the fringe to the core. Thanks to easy access to governed data and easy sharing via cloud technology, information no longer flows in one direction. Gone are the days of data-sharing via PDFs or PowerPoints. In 2017, people will share live, interactive workbooks and data sources.
- All data becomes equal. In 2017, the value of data will no longer be tied to its rank or size. What will count is that people can quickly and easily access the data and explore it alongside other types of data to answer business questions and improve outcomes. Business users won’t have to worry about whether their data is stored in Hadoop, Redshift, or an Excel file. They’ll have a full-picture view of their analytics, no matter how many disparate data sources they have.
- Self-service analytics extends to data prep. While self-service data discovery has become the standard, data prep has remained in the realm of IT and data experts. This will change in 2017. Common data-prep tasks like data parsing, JSON and HTML imports, and cross-database joins will no longer be delegated to specialists. A report from IDC indicated that spending in APAC on self-service visual discovery and data preparation market will grow 250% faster than traditional IT-controlled tools for similar functionality. In the near future, non-analysts will be able to tackle these tasks as part of their analytics flow.
- IT becomes the data hero. It’s finally IT’s time to break the cycle and evolve from producer to enabler. IT is at the helm of the transformation to self-service analytics at scale. IT is providing the flexibility and agility the business needs to innovate all while balancing governance and data security. And by empowering the organization to make data-driven decisions at the speed of business, IT will emerge as the data hero who helps shape the future of the business.
- People start to work with data in more natural ways. In 2017, the interface to data will start to feel even more natural, thanks in part to improvements in areas like natural language processing and generation. A new addition to the BI toolbox, natural language interfaces can make data, charts, and dashboards even more accessible by letting people interact with data using natural text and language. Though there is healthy skepticism surrounding this new field, it will be an exciting space to watch.
- The transition to the cloud accelerates. In 2017, data gravity will push businesses to deploy their analytics where their data lives. While many organizations will continue to deploy a hybrid architecture of cloud and on-premise solutions, cloud analytics will increasingly represent a faster and more scalable solution.
- Advanced analytics becomes more accessible. Business users have grown more data-savvy. Advanced analytics has grown more approachable. Business users are already leveraging powerful analytics functions like k-means clustering and forecasting. And in 2017, advanced analytics becomes the standard for the business user.
BI & Analytics’ Adoption in India
According to Deepak Ghodke, Country Manager for Tableau India, “ There has been an uptick in the adoption of BI solutions such as data analytics in India but many of the companies who decide to use these technologies don’t really have a clear idea of the results they intend to get out of it. So there is also the need to create more awareness and educate enterprises about the power of analytics and the competitive advantage that can be gained by harnessing data in the right way.”
There’s also a strong demand for data professionals across verticals in the Indian market. Our India entry around 3 years ago was in response to market demands in the region. India is an important market for Tableau currently with respect to future potential.
To increase revenues by using BI, business leaders should have their business plan, goal, and objectives well defined. This is a crucial step because it will help to zero down on the on the exact results they are looking for. It will help to find specific answers that are necessary to make business decisions. It will also facilitate in finding refined and focused solutions to the challenges one might be facing.
Also, the BI/ Data Analytics industry is moving to more of a utility model, where huge capital investments are reducing. Customers now want to spend on continued, pay per use, operational expenses even for BI and data analytics solutions.
Dulles Krishnan, Director IBM Software and Solutions, India South Asia shares his views on how Business Intelligence changing the world and is creating newer business opportunities in India. He shares, “Newer solution possibilities have opened up because of the combined impact of newer forms of data along with a wider and more exciting set of BI/analytics capabilities ranging from discovery to predictive to prescriptive to cognitive. With the help of these solutions, we can now help customers fundamentally transform the way they do business using a mix of these capabilities and have a huge impact on key result areas in ways that were not imagined until now – sometimes giving these businesses the vital competitive edge to differentiate and lead in this challenging business environment. Engaging with customers on such areas is what excites us the most.”
Finally…
BI can lead to better analytics for Growth, Cost Optimization, New opportunities, immediate availability of right information, risk mitigation, its uses are enormous. With use of IOT with BI and analytics, the risk mitigation and loss of human life in many complex and dangerous manufacturing areas can be reduced to minimal. Major enterprise in telecom, insurance, finance and banking are also using BI for customer behavior analysis. Uses of BI are unlimited across all verticals. It provides rethinking in business extension and new opportunities. With so much data getting generated and used in the business environment today, businesses need software that harnesses the collective human intelligence of an organization so that BI can be optimized. It needs to deliver naturally intuitive solutions that bring the best out of people that allows people to constantly adapt to changing environments. Businesses need software that stays agile with this highly changing environment to help take better decisions; else they will not be able to survive in today’s time. This applies to businesses in the domestic markets as well as across the world.
