Can Analytics decipher Mona Lisa?

INDIA: It may sound amusingly incredible but someone has actually attempted a book on answering what women want with some 200 odd pages, in all honesty and humour, being completely blank. After all, it’s been not only a mystery but also a challenge for knights, kings, brand-strategists and confused husbands or boy friends every where to work out this dangerous yet tempting maze — what women want?

Wouldn’t it be a miracle if these men could not only crack the monosyllabic silences of their women but could also do the right thing, wash the right dish, bring the right flowers, acquire the right company, buy the right solitaire even before these better halves uttered something, or let’s take fantasy for a flight, even before they themselves thought of it! Sounds good but unreal like a good piece of fiction right?

It is albeit a challenge that corresponds for men in a different universe also. They are not from Mars but from a planet called ‘Analytics’ which is so much in spotlight nowdays that we should not be surprised if some zany scientist declares it a part of the galaxy soon.

Why not? It pops up in almost every telescope these days. Every big software and even some hardware players, have been betting big on the Big Data syndrome. With that, analytics-aligned solutions, boxes, appliances of all sizes, shapes and jargons have been tottering about in high frequency.

Someone on this side could be busy making a breakthrough with in-memory processing while someone on the other hand might be equally busy and excited with the algorithm bracket of this frenzy called ‘analytics’ and its fraternity. Think of applications, packaged analytics, user interfaces, data visualization or discovery tools, ERP or Data Warehousing extensions, serviced solutions or managed offerings; and you know that it is bandwagon that boasts of an enviable ground-clearance as well as huge head-room. This way or that way, depth or breadth, horizontals or verticals, it is growing like a furious Amoeba in all directions.

But is the wagon trotting in the right lanes? Does it respect pedestrian traffic enough when it whizzes on at dizzying speeds? Does it have a seat to accommodate all kinds of passengers?

Because, everything said and done, while it may appear that all women want diamonds or chocolates or magnetic deodorants, the truth can not be more cruel and evasive. You can not ignore the diversity, the mystery of Venus-dwellers or assume them to be wearing the same glasses. And more than that, you can not always ask them. Sometimes you have to be intuitive, and if you are lucky and smart enough, even proactive. Needless to say, without hurting their sensibilities and differences. Be it women, or your customers that you want to get to know better, with pr without analytics.

That’s why, analytics-pegged solutions can not work like trawlers, more so when the ocean is as vast, unhospitable and strange as a woman’s mind or a customer’s expectations or an organization’s multi-crayoned operations . If they have to pick the fish called information, they have to dig deep and swim around sharks as well as oysters.

Part 1: Analytics and privacy conundrum

Talking of sharks, they are aplenty. That explains why even though Gartner predicts analytics to scoop in 50 percent of potential users by 2014, or 75 percent by 2020, analyzing data in a much denser fashion than before; three factors could discourage this adoption rate of BI and analytics- Ease of use, performance and relevance.

 

A big retail group’s faux pas with credit card information and pregnancy zones, or the recent brouhaha over NSA, suffice to caution that analyzing faster or vaster is not that much a barrier as is the issue of where to stop or pace down. Privacy issues can not be shrugged off or intercepted so easily.

Ian Bertram, Global Manager of the Analytics and Business Intelligence Research, Gartner;  recommends that governance processes should be in place. “At the same time bigger questions of ethical contours are to be kept along. What do you want to do with this data? Did Target do anything wrong by matching buyer patterns for coupon distributions? We have come to a lot of ethical dilemmas and boundaries recently. A lot of discussion is going to continue around privacy questions certainly.”

And everyone is thinking about it, Natwar Mall, Senior Vice President, Fractal Analytics nods along. “This issue will evolve. But we can not forget that as a general direction, the society is becoming more open and everyone of us is generation a lot more data today than before. How much of this is good or bad, has still to emerge” If analytics tools can afford drilling out information while maintaining anonymity, then customers can feel some respite in an atmosphere where it is otherwise technologically easy for any brand or company to become intrusive and insensitive to privacy notions.

Vishal Batra, Lead Researcher for Edge Analytics, IBM Research - India
is confident on that part. “The way we have architectured our solutions is not by identity. We understand the customer buying behavior. The way the solution allows an enterprise to pattern behavior is possible through location or other attributes irrespective of the ‘who’ of a behavior. Plus, the customer can control opt-out or opt-in and can specify preferences or priorities.” He cites that structured authentication, well-defined scope, proper configurations, contextual-scenarios help in bolstering the security side of this solution.

If one hand there is the unrelenting dilemma on privacy, on the other hand we find how personalization is redefining competition and penetration for brands more than ever.

In fact, marketers could be missing a powerful opportunity to engage with consumers and deliver personalized experiences that drive brand affinity, if a research from Adobe Systems Incorporated has got it right. Its global study that polled both consumers and marketers in seven countries across the United States, Asia-Pacific and Europe showed that a significant portion of consumers and marketers feel online advertising is still not effective (consumers 32 per cent; marketers 21 per cent).

Marketers in the U.S. and Europe were even dismissive of online advertising. "Banners have brought much of the worst characteristics of advertising - being intrusive and manipulative, catching one's eye with hyperbole, and using surreptitiously-captured information - into the digital space. Consumers realize they are now in control and won't accept it. Yet, beyond banners, there is a lot of online marketing content that consumers do interact with, and the era of creativity to explore what works is just beginning," as David C. Edelman, global co-leader, Digital Marketing and Sales Practice, McKinsey & Company pointed out in this survey update.

"Digital marketing has created a remarkable opportunity, but it comes with higher expectations from consumers. They expect a story tailored specially for them, a level of trust and transparency with the brands they do business with and, most importantly, a great experience. Brands delivering anything less will ultimately be ignored," Ann Lewnes, chief marketing officer, Adobe had added there. Some actions, like being asked to share personal information such as a government-issued ID number (e.g., a social security number) were viewed as crossing the privacy line (U.S.86 per cent; Asia-Pacific 55 per cent; Europe 60 per cent).

It goes without saying that in the analytics space, both old and new boys, should be cognizant of private data as it tries to ride high on the horse called Big Data. Blinkers won’t be of any use here, with these seemingly harmless jaws around. Analytics needs something more than technology evolution here to ensure that no one bleeds, neither vendors nor customers.