The Enterprise Crystal Ball

Once considered as a luxury to enterprises with deep pockets, BI has come a long way. It’s now a necessity and has become an essential item in CIO’s shopping list. According to the PwC’s sixth annual digital IQ survey which polled nearly 1,500 business and IT executives across 36 countries and examined the digital attitudes and practices of both business and IT executives from around the world, it stated that data mining and analysis along with cyber security have emerged as the top investment priorities among companies in India this year as compared to the last year, which indicated the highest investment in private and public cloud. This is because with the evolution of cloud-based services and its increased adoption among businesses, companies are now realizing the potential of analytics and the business value of information generated out of it, making it one of the top strategic investment priorities over the next three to five years. At the same time, the companies are keen on addressing any digital threats or risks, hence the focus on cyber security.

States Debdas Sen, Technology Consulting Leader, PwC India, “India is today uniquely positioned with over 90% CIOs, CTOs, and CEOs rating the digital IQ of their companies as ‘strong’. Moreover, with the role of the CIO changing, the need to run the IT department as a business, rather than a cost center is a trend that we are seeing across industry sectors.”

What’s Driving Analytics?

Let’s look at the analytics part. The PwC survey states that organizations across industries are ramping up investments in technologies like cloud, mobile, social, data mining and analytics, and considering the implications of other emerging technologies like 3D computing, robotics, and sensors. For instance the survey revealed that 92% of the Indian respondents have a strong or very strong Digital IQ, compared to the overall global average of 63%. This is an increase over previous year, where 85% of the Indian companies had rated themselves with a ‘strong’ or ‘very strong’ Digital IQ.

The key point here is data analytics to be an investment priority for top performing companies. So clearly, many organizations are on the route to adopting what some vendors call it as a ‘new style of IT’ which is nothing but a confluence of leading technology trends like social, mobile, analytics and cloud (SMAC). Add to that the big data opportunities makes analytics the key area that offers enterprises the immense potential to leverage it for competitive advantage.

Reflecting on this Manish Bahl, Vice President, Country Manager, India, Forrester Research says, “Almost 68% of Indian CIOs plan to increase their investments in business intelligence (BI) and real-time customer and business analytics in 2014—tops in Asia Pacific. Indian firms see technology as a key growth driver and strategic business enabler. Focus areas include real-time information processing to drive critical business decisions and analytics to develop new use cases, increase efficiency, and create a unified view of the customer across operations. Retail, wholesale, financial services, insurance, utilities, telecommunications and manufacturing companies will spend more on BI and analytics in 2014.”

Gaining that Competitive Edge

If we look at the adoption dynamics, it’s the growth push that’s driving BI and analytics market. Until unless enterprises derive real-time insights, it is not possible for them to map the business outcomes. Quips Bhavish Sood, Research Director, Gartner India, “We see signs of the emerging importance of BI in India as senior executives are increasingly exploring the different styles of analytics to resolve their business imperatives.” “There is an increased emphasis on metrics management and the growing use of performance management. Software and service providers are increasing marketing spend on BI thus leading to higher visibility. In many industries, especially the regulated ones, such as telecom and financial services, clients are setting up dedicated competency centers focused on the use of information.” adds Bhavish.

Industry experts and analysts say that Indian CIO’s are gaining better understanding that executive sponsorship and data quality are the two most important reasons that determine the success of BI implementation.

Says Murli Mohan, General Manager, Dell Software, “The year 2014 is going to be a year of opportunities for BI and analytics and we will witness some revolutionary changes in the way businesses use data. According to the latest report from Gartner, by 2017, 40% of utilities with smart metering solutions will use cloud-based big data analytics to address assets, commodity, customer or revenue-related needs. As enterprises increasingly become ‘data first’ in 2014, we expect them to seek clarity through deeper analytics. Organizations will bring in new technologies to put this data to different uses in order to solve myriad business challenges.”

The renewed vigor at which Indian enterprises are looking at contemporary technologies is due to the fact that they are transitioning to the next level of maturity and scaling their IT to the new normal economy. Also IT is increasingly getting polarized on an eco-system based approach where concepts like Converged Infrastructure (CI) is becoming the norm.

As the PwC report aptly says that Indian companies are realizing that it is essential to have a digital capability woven throughout the organization rather than considering it as a centralized function operating in a silo; and also that innovation is important. Just as building relevant technical skills and resources are critical to addressing this change, a shared understanding of how a digital strategy works to accomplish the organization’s goals and who is responsible for each aspect is also crucial. Achieving this level of collaboration requires IT organizations to fully understand all aspects of business and that business in turn understands all aspects of IT. For instance the PwC survey states that the top performing companies had a higher degree of understanding of both aspects.

Outlook

As we look at the analytics adoption in this part of the world, the outlook remains bullish. For instance, Gartner believes that Indian enterprises adopting BI have the advantage of benefiting from earlier adopters in developed markets, rather than needing to build their approaches from the ground up. In order to increase adoption, enterprises should evaluate data discovery, geospatial, and mobile-based approaches.

Moreover, unlike in the west, India does not have legacy baggage even in verticals like BFSI. So in many ways with every technology refresh many enterprises are leapfrogging with new technologies and raising their bar. But there are challenges as well, for instance analysts cite that the general lack of talent across all fields of information management in organizations will continue to be the critical barrier to their successful adoption of business analytics initiatives. The increasing interest in big data also creates new challenges and confusion across these areas. These challenges need to be successfully circumvented.

Clearly, CIOs need to approach the BI selection and deployment process with caution. And when it comes to selecting the vendors they need not necessarily go by popular perception rather look for solution that guarantees better real-time insights and business outcomes. Often times most of leading solutions suffer from lack of country specific customizations, in that place a rather not very well know solution will 100% match the requirements. A well laid out BI solutions roadmap and careful vendor due diligence will see a successful analytics deployment and long-term dividends.