business analytics
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Business AnalyticsTomorrow’s analytics that will change the way we make decisions
www.infosys.com
- Arindam Banerji, Parashar Borkotoky
Introduction
Enterprises have been extremely patient with their business intelligence (BI) investments over the years. But, two things have changed, Volatility of markets and the need to manage a myriad of data sources along with huge amounts of data means that decision-making has to move beyond gut feel. Second - with a large number of BI initiatives failing to meet stated objectives within reasonable RoI cycles, decision making capabilities must be made available to a large set of users in quick time with investments that are user-centric and not necessarily just focused on scale. Third, organizations today are not satisfied with traditional reporting models that rely on historical data and answer ‘what happened?’ They are increasingly wanting to know:
• What will happen next? • What’s the best that can happen? • What if these trends continue?
Finally, the science has changed – Hadoop, Pregel are not the same in their science as traditional OLAP tools – the business decisions they support have also changed. This sea-shift from traditional BI, which we waguely term as Business Analytics, is going to shape how decisions are made and attract significant IT investments.
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What are the key trends that are shaping Business Analytics?
What are the key gaps in today’s business intelligence systems?Today’s business intelligence systems are adept at gathering, storing, analyzing, and providing access to historical data. However, they often fall short in looking at the future – they’re quite poor in ensuring that decision makers can deal with volatility in their operating businesses and markets. Key gaps include:
• Unable to predict key business metrics with reasonable amount of accuracy – volatility in markets, external factors not available in historical data
• Lack of industry specific reasoning and decision making models – especially incorporation of functional and sub-vertical specific decision scenarios/algorithms
• Lack of deep, yet contextualized visualization that can make use of BI, pervasive across the enterprise regardless of the device it is served upon
• Lack of a unified data foundation where there is absolute trust in the quality of data – especially the ability to seamlessly integrate the right data from both structured and unstructured sources
• Unable to find statistical relationships between data that can provide strategic insights – co-relation between datasets that can lead to insights
• Inability to map disruptive technologies such as big data or in-memory computing into the right kind of decision making tools
Predict the future
Executives want to predict the future and not just the past. They want our approaches to do through tools/consulting, what they used to do through gut feel
Expand the number of users – 8-10% of users use BI today
Big Data, In-Memory, Analytics as a service, Unstructured data
BI Transformation like ERP Transformation – Concept of Information ERP
Enable bottom-line cost savings
Expected GDP Growth
Regulatory Environment
Consumer Spend Trend
Appropriate visualization for end use models
Device enablement
OPEX Centric business case
Faster, Cheaper Functionality
Business Analytics initiatives at corporate levels
Accuracy of Data
Redundancy of Data
Improve revenue predictability
Improve Productivity of users
Reduce Cost of Initiatives
Improve speed and accuracy of decision -making at highest levels
Decrease costs
Business Driver
Why is this important?
Examples of metrics/changes
Financial Impact
Consumerization
Disruptive Technologies
Transformational
Changes
Data Foundation
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The Infosys Business Analytics offering
Infosys’ is creating a business analytics offering that will give you the processes, tools and expertise to extract the most out of your information investments.
The offerings combine deep domain understanding of business scenarios with advanced technology and analytical techniques to enable quick time to market at affordable price.
The offering will consist of these components:
• Turnkey Offerings that can be used to manage business metrics and tied to business outcomes e.g Forecasting accuracy
• Domain content for key business scenarios like Vendor performance management
• A seamless platform infrastructure with pre-built stack for decision making, analysis and data management.
• Surround services like Knowledge services that are required to manage the business outcome
A Business analytics scenarioLet’s consider the following scenario around Vendor performance management which is typical for manufacturing companies.
BUSINESS DRIVER
• Increased outsourcing and reliance on suppliers
• Globalization of business and of supply chains
• Continuous Merger and Acquisitions
• Ever-changing Industry and government regulations
• Increased uncertainty and unstable supply market
• Improve Profitability
CHALLENGES
• Increased complexity in managing suppliers
• Fragmented supplier data across multiple disconnected purchasing systems
• Increased risk of supply disruptions
• Monitor and reduce sourcing costs
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Infosys approachThe Infosys business analytics approach to such a problem will entail looking at both historical data analysis as well as predictive data analysis such as early warning systems.
An effective business analytics approach for Vendor management would involve looking at the information from multiple perspectives:
Infosys approach (Illustrative)
Historical Insights
E.g. analysis of quality and effectiveness of suppliers
What-if analysis
E.g. Ability to model the key levers that impact vendor costs
Prediction
Ability to estimate the number of defects based on both internal and external factors
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Illustrative Business OutcomesUsing a well-rounded business analytics
approach can result in quantifiable benefits such as:
reduction in procurement costs5%
lead time reduction3%
improvement in ontime delivery20%
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ConclusionThe promise of decision making applications, deployed in cost effective systems that derive insights from all information repositories, internal and external, structured and unstructured along with focus on not just ‘what has happened?’ but also on ‘what will happen?’ will make business insights truly beneficial to all business users– the holy grail of Business Analytics.
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About the Authors
Arindam Banerji
Unit Technology Officer, Manufacturing, Infosys Limited
For the last 18 years, Arindam has been a technologist of some visibility within the industry. As one of the visionaries and chief technologist behind E-speak at HP, Arindam in the late-nineties laid the foundation for the next generation of computing, now broadly known as web services and Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA). He was also one of the early pioneers of semantic search.
In the past, he has been the Global R&D head for Hewlett Packard’s Web-Services (then called E–Services) product lines, Principal Scientist and Head of Strategy Research Organization for HP’s Services business, Architect at Sun Microsystems and the CTO for several tech. startups in the Manufacturing space.
At Infosys, his group focuses on providing technology strategy and advisory services to Manufacturing customers globally, while providing intellectual property driven solutions in the supply chain and engineering collaboration spaces.
He has a PhD from the University of Notre Dame, over 30 publications and 6 patents.
Arindam can be reached at [email protected]
Parashar Borkotoky
Principal Architect - Manufacturing
Parashar has over 13 years of experience in the IT industry, and is a certified TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework) practitioner. He has active interest in supply chain problems/ solutions, information management and data quality. Parashar anchors the Manufacturing Information Effectiveness suite of solutions within Infosys that focuses on solving business analytics and data foundation problems in various manufacturing industry sectors like Automotive, Discrete manufacturing etc. He also works closely with manufacturing enterprises to strategize technology focused business initiatives.
Parashar can be reached at [email protected]
© 2012 Infosys Limited, Bangalore, India. Infosys believes the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date; such information is subject to change without notice. Infosys acknowledges the proprietary rights of the trademarks and product names of other companies mentioned in this document.
About Infosys
Many of the world's most successful organizations rely on Infosys to deliver measurable business value. Infosys provides business consulting, technology, engineering and outsourcing services to help clients in over 30 countries build tomorrow's enterprise.
For more information, contact [email protected] www.infosys.com