In 
THE SITUATION...
How will Vivek Singh provide better answers to managements complex questions and create a path for improved performance?
The goal and motto of every IT head is to provide a platform which enables the business and top management to make better decisions. Most business heads are keen to have market intelligence at their fingertips and expect their IT team to provide it, unaware of the complexities involved in it. Vivek Singh, senior IT manager of a large manufacturing industry, needs the right technology and tools to help him address these business expectations of his bosses.
A few things that his top management wants to know include: the next 1,000-odd customers that his organization needs to retain as they are being eyed by competitors; new locations with the potential for future business and profit; emerging market trends which can help the company be ahead of time; new growth areas which can add value to the business and the like. The company is already using some business intelligence tools, but Singh requires specific tools, which can help in better business decisions.
The good part is that Singh is involved in taking decisions regarding appropriate technology deployment and his senior colleagues have full faith in his capabilities to spot the right tools. However, the varied suggestions and recommendations from different sources have confused Singh. Some peers have also suggested that he include business analytics (BA) as one of the critical tools to find the right answers to complex questions.
BA is still in the nascent test drive stages though the vendors have many positive stories to recount. The most complicated task for Singh thus is to unearth necessary data to buy in his business heads concurrence over BA deployment. .
Singh however is sold on the virtues of BA and is working out ways to convince his senior management. But before he takes the final leap, he seeks expert views on the merits of business analytic tools.
BIG QUESTIONS
1) Should VIvek Singh go in for a BA pilot programme? What functionalities does he he need to look at and how does he prepare for BA deployment?
2) What kinds of challenges he is likely to face during implementation and how does he work out a good RoI blueprint, which can convince his top management?
HERE ARE THE ANSWERS...
Vijay Sethi, VP & CIO, Hero MotoCorp Ltd
First Answer
Yes, Vivek Singh should go in for a pilot programme. The objective of a pilot programme is not to test technology but to ensure that BA tools work in Viveks environment.
However, success of a BA project is not dependant just on technology--there are other factorspeople (users), processes (of data collation, extraction, review, etc) and the culture of the organisation. Based on the learning of pilot, rollouts should be undertaken.
In this case, he has to cater to both structured and unstructured data to have more meaningful insights that will help his company. So, some of the functionalities that he should look into would include:
- To have good ETL capabilities/ability to import from various kinds of data sources
- Nice dashboards and charting features
- Set of pre-developed reports/dashboards and Ease of Reports/Dashboard development
- Web interface
- Role-based security
- Rule-based broadcasting features
- Interface with mobile devices like iPad, Blackberry, etc
Some others which could be differentiating ones:
- Capability of pattern-based analytics
- Ability to handle large data sets, specifically for unstructured data as larger the data set more accurate are the results.
- In-memory analytical capabilities
- Predictive Analytics
As a preparation to BA, Singh has to first convince himself that as far as implementation of any analytical tool is concerned, it needs to be taken up as a journey instead of project because as capabilities are demonstrated, demand for information increases. Rules of aggregation generally tend to apply over a period of time, as initially managers have a tendency to ask for transactional information and with passage of time, their demand moves from reporting to intelligence to analytics (both IT and users undergo an evolution on this one). Considerable change management efforts are required to make users use these kinds of systems, as generally they are more comfortable in their excel sheets and pivot tables. But accuracy of data increases with time as usage increases and then demand for analysis increases.
Second Answer
The major challenges that Vivek is likely to face while implementing any analytical tools are user education and change management, resistance to sharing information which are in local excel sheets by some employees as they may fear losing control, delay in data updation in source system, quality of data and so on, besides, user support and system performance once the system is running. From a RoI perspective, investment in BA tool has to be considered as strategic in nature as it empowers business through timely delivery of quality information enabling it to take right and timely decisions, instead of quantitative RoI calculations.
Sunil Kumar Soni, CIO, Ester Industries
First Answer
There are two options with business analytics--to build or to buy. Singh can either build a customised solution with business intelligence tools or he can buy an application relevant to his business environment. The recommended approach for him would be to buy a business analytics application or application suite that will provide process support, integrated with data while having the ability to function independently of an organisations transactional applications. Built on extensive experience and data and process inventory, an analytic application can be matched to the specific requirements of any particular department/organisation.
Preparation for this implementation would include a thorough situation analysis of the current environment and short-term and long-term goals. He should start by defining business objectives, identifying key performance indicators (KPIs) and the functions/departments with the strongest impact on the defined KPIs. The next step would be to secure the feedback and participation of the relevant department heads and other business stakeholders, and then select and implement the analytic application best suited to streamlining decision-making for the chosen business function. Training the users, while measuring and evaluating improvement based on previously defined KPIs is critical.
Second Answer
Challenges for Singh would be handling increasingly complex data footprint, lack of expert users and companys culture. The information explosion has made it complicated for companies to consolidate and share relevant data both within and across business groups and functions. It is therefore important to have defined business objectives and KPIs to ensure that the analytics project offers the ability to cover the relevant range of related decisions.
Another challenge that Singh would face be to find individuals who are both trained in analytical techniques as well as aware of the business issues. Pre-built analytic applications can help address this issue with the participation of the relevant departments.
The key to a successful pitch is extensive groundwork that involves clearly defining business objectives and KPIs followed by the steps mentioned previously. Its important to secure the participation of all the relevant business stakeholders to ensure that their expertise is leveraged and their needs are addressed.
Hilal Khan, Head-Corporate IT, Honda Motor India Pvt Ltd
First Answer
There are a few fundamental aspects that Singh needs to take into account before jumping into a pilot programme for BA. As a first step, he needs to do a predictive analysis to get an inside view of complexity of situation as the BA solution itself is a complex one.
For instance, the need to retain his customers comes with the fact that Singh has to do right analysis and define the problem and get the input data before embarking on the idea of deploying BA. The data needs to be in an unstructured and structured format and segregated under different categories based on the data source. It is imperative to ensure that there is no discrepancy in data categorisation or formatting, else it will result in analytical inaccuracy and he will not be in a position to establish its authenticity. The primary task for Singh is to create an ecosystem with teams from both IT and business to collate the required data and also to set the business objectives.
A clear roadmap of internal systems, business requirements, deficiencies, deliveries, quality of information, etc, needs to be evolved, before the pilot.
Second Answer
The RoI is a biggest challenge as Singh has to take activity into account to work out the RoI blueprint.
For instance, take the task of lead generation for the organisation. He has to think of a tool which will enable procurement of data around lead generation, provide accurate conversion ratio of leads into real enquiries and then later into orders. A proper time analysis needs to be worked out, resource availability and investment ratio around this activity also has to be worked out.
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