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Ashit Panjwani
Director, Marketing
SAS India
It’s no secret that times are challenging. Demands on business leaders are higher and more complex than ever. It won’t be an exaggeration to state that the decisions which organizations have made in last few quarters or will make in next few quarters will decide their ability to compete.
Today, companies are focusing on reducing cost and preserving their capital. Many will explore which division to divest, assets to sell, or staff to let go. Others tighten belts with strict controls that make it almost impossible to seize opportunity.
It doesn’t have to be that way. In the midst of turmoil stands opportunity. Organizations that are prepared can seize the moment, mitigate risk faster than competitors, and perhaps make some incredible once-in-a-lifetime deals.
For others, the financial crisis represents a call to action: getting their house in order, trimming the excesses, refocusing on core strengths, and getting to know what truly drives value.
It’s important for organizations to cultivate a culture based on fact-based decisioning. Business Analytics (BA) has a strategic role to play in today’s environment by equipping leaders with enterprise intelligence.
Companies have made substantial investments in their operational systems, and these systems have matured over the years. The key differentiator now would be how quickly these organizations can derive intelligence from the information generated by these systems, and reduce time-to-intelligence and therefore time-to-market. With competition growing by the day, it’s imperative for companies to leap ahead of others for which they need to take intelligent business decisions.
BA is helping organizations transform this information into intelligence, which in turn can fuel innovation and help them succeed in today’s competitive environment. The right deployment of BA solutions can not only help companies understand what happened and why, but more importantly provide predictive analysis and help them gain critical foresight capabilities about what best can happen.
Growing market
As per surveys done by various market research organizations, Business Intelligence and Analytics is currently the top priority of many CIOs. The latest report on the Indian advanced analytics software market suggests that this segment is expected to grow at a CAGR of 22 percent.
The future of BA involves things such as consistency of information across the organization, and predictive analytics that will support proactive decision-making. Combine this with some of the technology developments and infrastructure issues that are taking place. For example, Wi-Fi is becoming common, so a user is not going to be tethered to his desk. But BA is already mobile, and people are going to be comfortable with it, so the opportunity to get analytics closer to the point of interaction will be realized.
Companies will increasingly move away from transactional database systems to fully-integrated enterprise intelligence platforms that can efficiently disseminate intelligence. Just as an ERP platform is needed for the operational side of the business, an enterprise-wide analytics platform with all components fully integrated is and will continue to be needed for the intelligence side of the business.
Companies will also increasingly demand industry-specific solutions that will be at the heart of their enterprise intelligence strategies. In this highly competitive market, companies need to address business challenges with regard to managing growth, managing profitability, providing superior customer service and adhering to regulatory compliance. BA has the potential to address all these.
Today, emerging enterprises continue to face the pressures of constantly changing market demands, increasing regulatory requirements, fiercer competition, sluggish economies, and the need to do more with less. These business realities have led many SMBs and emerging enterprises across verticals to adopt BA applications for gaining greater insights.
Partners can seize this opportunity and help organizations address their business challenges through effective deployment of BA.
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