Intelligent Business

Most of the businesses around the world have been facing one major
challenge which is churning right set of data. Important business decisions are
taken based on data which comes with its own set of parameters like accuracy,
comprehensibility, security etc

Business Intelligence (BI) is increasingly being used by on-the-go business
people, too. It is now possible to deliver reports from servers to hand-held
devices and let authorized users make changes to the data in those reports, eg
data sourced from excel sheets. Most of the errors which are committed are due
to the faulty data transfer from one sheet to another or missing certain data in
collation. This can be reduce to a large extent. BI platforms are used to build
applications that help organizations learn and understand their business. BI is
a software platform that delivers the 12 capabilities which can be organized
into three categories of functionality: integration, information delivery and
analysis. Information delivery is the core focus of most BI projects today, but
there is an increasing need to focus more on analysis to discover new insights,
integration to implement those insights.

Market overview

BI market is growing and continues to evolve. It has only penetrated 10 to 15
percent of the known user base. Gartner report 'Hype Cycle for ICT in India
2008', expects BI market in India to reach $46.8 million by 2012. India is a
huge market for BI and is growing with double digit figures. If deployed
successfully, BI can improve decision making and operational efficiency, which
in turn drives the top line and the bottomline. The India Advanced Analytics
software market (2008- 2013) is slated to grow at a CAGR of 22 percent Source:
IDC's India Business Intelligence Solutions Market Analysis and 1H 2008 Update,
(October 2008).

Organizations across the globe have invested heavily in ERP and CRM to
streamline and integrate their business processes. Sizeable portion of
investments happen in licensing, implementation, AMC etc. The Business Process
transaction data which is sourced has to be accurate. To generate data output,
organiza­tions create standard reports available in the system. They also
analyze and manipulate data by exporting the same to excel. Today companies have
started Implementing Data Warehouse for Business Intelligence and data analysis
for the senior management.

Limitations

Most of the standard reports are static and hence data analysis is not
possible. Generating non-standard reports requires dependency on a third-party
vendor. There is no control on data loss, security or transparency while
transporting to excel. Heavy investments are required in data warehouse
creation, training, data consolidation etc with data analysis not possible on
real-time basis.

From the green aspect reports get printed without checking its accuracy. By
using BI, companies can save on printing cost and reduce paper consumption. The
retail industry has lagged behind in adopting new technologies, and this holds
true in its acceptance of BI as well. These are challenging times for the retail
industry, with increased competition, blurring customer segments, rapidly
changing buyer behavior, low profit margins, increasing input cost and emer­ging
sales channels. With every step of organizational growth, business processes
continue to generate an enormous amount of data with increasing complexity but
retail business leaders point to the lack of sufficient information and
insi­ghts to take smart decisions for their businesses.

It is a knowledge-driven economy now; hence a rapid under­standing of
business is more crucial than ever before, on account of the new rules of
competition and the greater complexity and speed for change. Up-to-date
information is one of companies' strategic resources and the basis for
compe­titiveness in today's ever-changing business climate. Retailers more than
ever, must realize the need for a solution to turn strategy into actions,
decentralize planning, budgeting and achieve partici­pation and collabora­tion
across all business functions such as customers, suppliers, stores, supply
chain, operations and marketing. Retailers need to adopt analytical solutions
early with intelligent use of their business data which can help them grow and
beat the competition.

Latest offerings

MAIA 's 1KEY Agile BI Suite software can be deployed enterprise-wide,
connects disparate data, and is scalable and cost-effective. 1Key BI has
In-Memory Processing Architecture , hardware and infrastructure optimization and
BI licensing in-built. Along with it, the software also can convert all existing
static reports to dynamic reports with rich features for data-analysis. It can
create a mechanism of generating non-standard and ad hoc reports, thereby
reducing the dependency on third-party vendors and/or proprietary skills. Sanjay
Mehta, CEO, MAIA Intelligence said, “1Key provides a secure, enterprise-wide
easy-to-deploy and easy-to-use BI and Reporting tool where users can create and
format their own reports. It connects directly to source data, thereby enabling
real-time BI and reporting.” MAIA has come out with a feature 'portable cubes'
which carry information and can be printed even without connecting to the
Internet. This comes with 1Key which is India's first BI product indigenously
developed in India.

Similarly Sybase has come out with in-database business analytics which is
called IQ15.1. It delivers smart functionality that allows users to drive risk
management, fraud detection, business process management and investment
strategies by running real-time predictive analytics directly in the Sybase IQ
15.1 database. This increases speed and accuracy while utilizing years of
organizational data enabling organizations to make better predictions about
business risks, opportunities and make operational decisions more efficiently.

Challenges

The management of unstructured data is recognized as one of the major
unsolved problems in the IT industry, the main reason being, tools and
techniques that have proved so successful transforming structured data into BI
and actionable information simply do not work when it comes to unstructured
data. Sudesh Prabhu, Director-Presales and Services, Sybase India while
explaining the nuances of BI said, “No one involved with analytics doubts that
data is exploding. Websites and operational systems already produce volumes. New
business regulations plus several civil court actions resulting in huge damage
settlements have focused efforts on unstructured data. To archive and analyze
data, tremendous IT power is required.” Citing an example Prabhu said, “Using
general-purpose, row-based DBMS that were never designed for analytics causes
significant hardware bloat.” Generations of disparate tools merge into a
complex, brittle infrastructure. Lack of agility and high costs have pushed
enterprises to the tipping point. A purpose built analytics server can convert
intelligence applications in tune with the existing system. A column-based
analytics server has the potential to help companies with large data warehouses
and complex analysis needs.

Atul Jalan, Founder and CEO, Manthan Systems, has a different perspective on
unstructured data. He said, “Data may be present in multiple formats it may be
very difficult for 'timely access' of data and can act as a set-back for
analysis of data. There may be variations in data because of lack of discipline
and this can result in erroneous decisions. Unstructured data requires larger
data storage space.”

Advantage

The BI solutions can be of great help to enhance the productivity and
profitability of any business organization. These constantly monitor the
performance of an organization. It is very instrumental in updating the model of
the business organization. The prominent BI advantages are the usage of trusted
intelligent information to improve the performance and accountability of service
programs, detect potential frauds and track compliance. It helps in making
decisions based on factual information from a single trusted source. It provides
online services securely through single-point administration and conveys
priorities across the organization for better response. “Banks may need to
analyze business performance, fraud, risk performance, accounting, supply chain
effectiveness or perhaps they are facing data challenges posed by regulatory
reporting mandates,” said Prabhu.

Summing up the tangible and intangible benefits Mehta said, “At customer end
BI easily saves about 20 minutes of employees' normal analysis. Reporting saves
about 90 minutes beyond the traditional reporting, improve efficiency,
productivity and data implementation. Important tangible benefit is the
authenticity of data and its source. Lot of intangible benefits include faster
decision making, quicker response and productivity savings.” There are a number
of business and technical benefits. It leverages existing IT resources to
streamline data analysis and eliminates Static Report usage for better adherence
to data security/statutory and regulatory compliance.

Domains like BFSI, government, telecom­munications and retail generate huge
amount of data with lot of variations. To have faster access to information,
businesses need to adopt appropriate and efficient BI solutions to aid better
decision making. A good efficient solution may be an integration of the best of
breed technologies in each of these areas. Adding more light on this Jalan said,
“In simple words BI solutions acts as a support tool of extensive, relevant and
pro-active management and decision making in companies.”

SI advantage

System Integrators (SI) provide complete solutions to such businesses. They
have the unique advantage of knowing the customers' business and knowledge of
various technologies. Using BI can increase their cash flow and a develop a
healthy bottomline-through not just sale of licenses but the quantum of high
quality premium services that go with the implementation. In most cases
deploying of BI by SIs has seen high success rates. It gives lot of visibility
to them and existing customers are content with the results. SI can cross sell,
which will help them enter new markets and new domains.

According to Mehta, SI's can use their existing customer base to convert into
a potential base for BI, if they possess right understanding of the requirement
and solution. BI provides the top management the ability to sense, recognize,
and estimate changes in the business environment better and more quickly.

Verticals

Any company which deals with data requires BI as Mehta said, “MAIA caters to
whole set of industries from telecom to manufacturing, retail, media and
government etc. Our USP lies in product flexibility which can be done according
to the customer's requirements.” Currently, most retail enterprises have
deployed and stabilized ERP/CRM/SCM or core business (transactional)
applications and are thus looking for a tool that can leverage the IT investment
in these packaged applications. Sharing his insights Mehta said, “Presently, the
demand for BI solutions is largely being driven by MNCs and large enterprises.
BI solutions seem to have gained more acceptance and significance in retail
where customers play a pivotal role in the future of the company.”

Commenting on the market size Jalan said, “With respect to retail BI and ARC
in specific, we estimate the total potential market size for ARC on a global
scale (with associated revenue streams in licensing, services, support and
maintenance) and complementary service offerings in the retail BI/PM space to be
$6 billion growing at 20-30 percent YoY.” In many companies the CIO makes a huge
difference in implementation of any software. Prabhu said, “CIO's in most of the
organizations are becoming demanding. BI has become one of their key priorities
as it helps to identify and capture potential customers. Every organization
wants to keep them completely equipped for any future risk and BI is a component
which will act as the backbone.”

Is BI a discretionary spend or significant value addition?

The Indian BI and analytics market will grow rapidly on account of IT
adoption across verticals, and increasing competition and globalization. Indian
companies are now viewing business analytic solutions as a competitive
differentiator and a strategic tool in an effort to overcome challenges and
increase revenue growth and profitability in troubled economic markets. “BI has
moved well on from query and reporting tools, though standardized and efficient
reporting remains the best way to start any BI project. CIO's these days are
talking about how their core business can get the agility needed to act
profitably in as real-time a manner as possible and are looking at all areas
within their enterprises for leveraging such profit,” said Prabhu. For retail
sector the analytics has to be defined differently Jalan said, “Analytical needs
of all retail roles like merchandisers, marketers, finance managers etc are
different. Therefore customizing BI to suit their needs is important.”

SaaS to make BI more accessible and more affordable

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model is a relatively new phenomenon globally.
Typical use of applications such as analytics-as-a-service and advanced
analytics requires instant answers on large amounts of data. Often these
applications serve many complex, ad hoc queries from hundreds of concurrent
users. On-demand analytics where applications such as stock trading software or
manufacturing software call the analytics system for instant answers are also an
excellent match. Sybase recently announced 'Bring Deep Analytics' to target
mobile operators with hosted BI solutions for messaging traffic. Sybase Operator
Analytics 365 provides a wide range of reports including message traffic,
network utilization, performance indicators, quality of service testing and
customer analysis. Prabhu said, “With Sybase 365 global network the company can
monitor key network components better. It lets users view performance trends and
analyze system history in order to diagnose message delivery issues and
troubleshoot problems.”

BI in Cloud Computing

Sybase recently announced an initiative targeting developers that will enable
enterprises to take advantage of the benefits of the cloud computing model.
Prabhu said, “We are enabling developers to extend their existing software
development environments onto public cloud computing environments such as the
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2).” The company is working with hardware
and software industry leaders to integrate and optimize server, storage and I/O
virtualization.

Revathi Raghavan

revathir@cybermedia.co.in