as you like it: make bi/analytics delivergenisights.com/documents/whitepaper.pdfcognos tableau zoho...
TRANSCRIPT
July, 2014
As You Like It: Make BI/Analytics Deliver
7 pitfalls to avoid
Make BI/Analytics Deliver
Aaum Confidential Page 2 7
Billion needs vs Gazillion products
There is a plethora of basic and advanced analytical BI solutions out in the
market. According to Gartner, the market for BI and Analytics platforms will
remain one of the fastest growing software markets.
The Advanced and Predictive Analytics (APA) software market is projected grow from $2.2B in 2013 to $3.4B in 2018, attaining a 9.9% CAGR in the forecast period1. IDC commented that simplified APA tools that provide less flexibility than standalone statistical model tools yet have more intuitive graphical user interfaces and easier-to-use features are fuelling business analysts’ adoption.
A.T. Kearney forecasts global spending on Big Data hardware, software and services will grow at a CAGR of 30% through 2018, reaching a total market size of $114B2.
“But which solution best serves the
needs of a business?” - An important question
with which a number of decision makers are
struggling today.
A big part of the business runners equate simple reporting tools with advanced
analytical tools. Sometimes businesses opt for highly advanced tools from the
biggest solution providers in the hope that the solution will definitely benefit
their profits. They fail to realize the costs involved in implementing such
solutions without doing in depth analysis of their requirements and the tools’
offerings; and end up disturbing the balance between their business
operations. They land themselves in a catch 22 situation and despite of healing
the old pain areas, they develop new ones.
2 http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2014/06/24/roundup-of-analytics-big-data-business-intelligence-forecasts-
and-market-estimates-2014/
Make BI/Analytics Deliver
Aaum Confidential Page 3 7
Exhibit A: The 7 Questions to ponder while opting for Analytics
Whether you are a manufacturer or a marketer, all the businesses are now undergoing a transformation,
away from traditional tactics to analytics. From getting insights into streamlining production, reducing time-
to-market and increasing product quality to financial services firms seeking to upsell clients, analytics is now
essential for any business looking to stay competitive. Here are the 7 BIG questions which needs to be
addressed before going forward with a BI Solution.
1. Is it exactly your product? The businesses need to understand that the tool which they are opting or have opted, should exactly be the
one required by them. There are tons of tools available and marketed by the big guns in the software
industry. Sometimes they are so sophisticated that you don’t even know how they can be used efficiently. So
if businesses get stuck with such irrelevant solutions, they become an injured race horse, who has to run
despite all the pain.
2. Is the investment giving returns? Some businesses don’t get bothered with the amount they spend on activities like marketing and sales
promotions but when an investment goes bad in enterprise level solutions, the businesses become unable to
stop the bleeding cash out of the operations. So a check on the ROI becomes an integral part.
3. Is it customisable? The next problem can be the customization. A business has already in place some system which keeps record
of the transactions, but when it is in need for something more sophisticated and intelligent but easy to handle
at the same time, customisation becomes a problem. Not every solution is capable of sitting on top of the
existing platforms.
4. Is the storage/access-to-data good enough? With the fast paced developments in technology, Cloud storage has come into the picture where you don’t
need to actually store your data in physical disk drives but your solution provider does this for you on the
cloud. You can access anything and everything in real time. The thing to watch out here could be the hassles
which one can face while accessing data.
5. Does it have advanced analytical capabilities? If a business is going for a simple reporting tool then anything with some basic features can do the job but
when there comes the question of in depth analysis of the data, then some tools lag behind the others in
terms of their data handling capabilities. With the amount of data created and stored today, there is certainly
a need for something with BIG Data handling capabilities and that too with ease.
6. Is there a dedicated support team? Not all the people in a business know every tiny bitty-bit of the solution implemented. And in such situations
one needs someone to train or to guide one through the technicalities. And if a dedicated support team is
there, then the tasks become easier. Almost all the big solution providers have support facilities through
phone, emails or personal chats but what matters here is the response time to a particular problem.
7. Is it easily scalable? Sometimes when a business opts for a solution, it works well till a particular level, but when a need arises to
implement the same across business domains or at other locations of the same business, it becomes a tedious
task to do so because not always every segment of a business functions the same way or captures data in the
same manner. So scaling the solution becomes important.
Make BI/Analytics Deliver
Aaum Confidential Page 4 7
A quick reality check:
Below is a checklist encompassing 15 criteria which are expected out of a good BI
Solution. You can give these parameters scores out of 5 (5 being the highest and 1
being the lowest) on the basis of importance these parameters holds in a BI Solution
in sync with your business and requirements
Give score only to those parameters which you consider relevant in your business
setup
Compute the Total Score
Divide the Total Score by the number of relevant features
Arrive at the Absolute Score
Let us understand this with help of a hypothetical product ‘Best BI’ which has
got the following ratings.
How does your current BI/analytics solutions fare against the questions in Exhibit A?
Make BI/Analytics Deliver
Aaum Confidential Page 5 7
Below is a table encompassing various capabilities of tools offered by some vendors:
Vendors/Products geniSIGHTS SAP (Crystal Reports)
IBM Cognos
Tableau Zoho Reports
Birst OBIEE Qlikview Jaspersoft
Information Delivery features
Ad Hoc Reporting Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Scheduled Alerts/ Alarms
Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Customizable Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Dashboarding capabilities
Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Ad Hoc Analysis Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Advanced Analytics Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
BIG Data Support Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Support Features
Email Support Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Phone Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Online Chat Yes Yes No Yes Yes No Yes No Yes
Free Trial Yes N/A Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Mobility Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Cloud Capability Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Deployment Mode SaaS, On premise, client Server
SaaS, On premise, client server
On premise, client server
On premise, client server
SaaS
On premise, client server
SaaS, On premise, client server
SaaS SaaS
User Levels As per requirements
Restricted Restricted Restricted Restricted Restricted Restricted Restricted Restricted
(DISCLAIMER: This table is based on the information available online)
In the above chart, the respondent doesn’t consider
parameter 9 (Phone) and 10(Online Chat) to be of
important factor in evaluating a BI solution in sync
with his business.
The Absolute Score of ‘Best BI’ is arrived at by
dividing the Total Score (40) by the number of
relevant parameters (13) is 3.08 which falls under
the OK category.
Likewise you can also compute your Absolute Score
and see where you are. On the basis of that you can
frame your further strategies to opt for a relevant
solution.
Make BI/Analytics Deliver
Aaum Confidential Page 6 7
Understanding GeniSIGHTS
Aaum’s geniSIGHTS is built in a way to scale from simple reporting to advanced analytical
solutions.
geniSIGHTS Advantage:
Extensible across Technologies, Platforms, Devices
Precanned advanced analytics solutions that fit common business needs
Report Generation at ease Interactive reports at affordable price User Levels: As required
geniSIGHTS is offered in three modes:
geniSIGHTS Reporting – basic customer
needs like reporting
geniSIGHTS Analytics – intermediate
requirements like reporting, data analysis
geniSIGHTS Analytics+ – advanced analytics like prediction, big data analytics, etc.
There is a wide gap
between too generic
and too specialized BI
solutions. The key here
is to decide what works
best for your business
setup.
Make BI/Analytics Deliver
Aaum Confidential Page 7 7
The need of the hour is not to have a bloated solution bundled with features that may not be desired. Such solutions would often be priced higher to justify the research, product development. The much desired solution is the one that would fit exactly to the requirements and would scale as the businesses mature; thereby significantly improving the ROI.
geniSIGHTS EXCEEDS the customer requirements.
AAUM Research and Analytics Private Limited Tel: +91 44 4203 4478 | Tel: +91 44 4201 7047 | Email: [email protected] | Web: www.aaumanalytics.com