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Do’s and Don’ts of Adopting Analytics

Analytics

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Rashi Varshney
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NEW DELHI, INDIA: Frost & Sullivan India ICT Awards 2015 held on June 18, in Le Meridien, New Delhi attracted leading names in technology, and brainstormed on some of the questions around ‘digital transformation’. One of the key panel discussion was, ‘how to use advanced analytics to drive customer engagement’.

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Since advanced analytics is a key to grow and to drive customer engagement at scale. This session helped the business leaders on the tools, methodologies and best practices for efficient implementation of analytics to derive insights on customer engagement and thereby boost the growth opportunities of an organization.

Moderated by Mukul Krishna, Senor Director, Digital Media, Frost & Sullivan, the panel of the discussion consisted of Dhiraj Ahuja, Program Head – Strategic Initiatives & Vice President, Customer Care and Business Excellence, Apollo Munich Health Insurance; Dr Prashant Pradhan, Director - Smarter Planet Business, IBM India and South Asia; Puneet Jetli, CEO, Digital Transformation and Enterprise Solutions Business, Happiest Minds; Aniruddha Paul, CIO, Kotak Mahindra Bank; and Dr Rishi Bhatnagar, Vice President & Head, Digital Services, Tech Mahindra.

Highlighting the importance of analytics for any business, Dr Bhatnagar said that analytics helps in converting data into information and knowledge of end customers and hence result in improved revenues.  “How can you run business if you don’t know your customers,” he said.

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Echoing the similar view, Apollo’s Ahuja told that only six month back the company had done descriptive analysis and just within this short span of time, the company has double the efficiency. “Such is the impact of analytics,” he said.

A lot of enterprises adopt analytics as a trend, but sometimes fail in adopting it successfully. So the panel, owing to their experiences suggested a few do’s and don’ts while adopting analytics.

CEO-driven approach

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IBM’s Prashant Pradhan cited examples of a few companies which adopted analytics beautifully and the project were drives by CEOs rather than only CIOs. Based on the example he asserted that “the programme will be smooth if from the beginning top management is involved”.

‘Wow’ factor of Analytics

While pointing out the ‘wow’ factor of analytics, Happiest Mind’s Jetli said that people often try to bring in the concept of ‘MIS (management information system) into analytics, rather they should just put all the data together to let it surprise them. “The beauty of analytics is that you do not know what to expect from it,” he added. This will let them get surprised and will help in reaper more than expected benefits with analytics.

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Garbage in Garbage out

Sometimes the failures are because of the data quality, which sometimes company fails to evaluate whether the quality of data is useful or not. When a company analyses data of bad quality then it becomes the case of “garbage in and garbage out,” said Ahuja. According to him, the first do’s of analytics for enterprises should be getting quality of data.

Adding to same point, Kotak Mahindra’s Paul said that along with quality of data, have quality of people is another key parameter while adopting analytics. He also added that for effective analytics most important do’s is to have multidimensional approach.

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Use the unused

Industry has been talking and brainstorming around analytics since long now, but not many of them are able to build that smart, ‘IOT’fied ‘Utopia’ world of analytics, which can be due to various factors. Addressing the same, Pradhan said that across industries, companies are not using the data the already have, since data is not a ‘friend’ to many of the key managers of the company. “So much unrecognized value already exists, company should first monetize it and then think of utopian world,” he added.

Government should be analytics adopter

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The panelists foresee that in next few years, industries which are directly connected to consumers are going to have analytics and will adopt much faster than the other industries. Such industries are FMCG, banking, healthcare, government, etc.

Aniruddha Paul, Kotak Mahindra, affirmed that anyone who is in possession of data should use analytics. “Largest data processor is government, and then any other B2C company like FMCG,healthcare, should use it,” he said

Adding to it, Tech Mahindra’s Rishi Bhatnagar estimated that banking & finance, healthcare, and retailers will adopt analytics faster and will use it externally while industries like manufacture will adopt it for internal use. While according to Ahuja, social media clubbed with mobile is the fast areas for analytics.

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