BRIDGING THE INTELLIGENCE GAP -
Oct 31 2002
For the uninitiated, Business Intelligence (BI)
is an umbrella term for a set of tools and applications that allow corporate
decision-makers to gather, organise, distribute and act on critical business
information.
Recently, Frost and Sullivan in conjunction with SAS India Pvt. Ltd., released
the Business Intelligence Report, India 2002-2008. As per the report, SAS India
Pvt. Ltd. has emerged as the undisputed leader in the Indian BI application
market, with a market share of 22.5 percent and top-of-the-mind recall at 70
percent for the year 2001.
The report is based on 'end-user' research. It provides for comprehensive
information on the emergence and evolution of current and forthcoming BI trends
and tools in India, cutting across verticals of India Inc. from the period
2001-2008. The Indian market presently sees the big five consulting firms
providing services for BI implementation, along with the vendors that have tied
up with some domestic companies to provide vertical specific solutions. SAS,
NCR, Teradata, Oracle, SAP, IBM
and Microsoft have come up with vertical-specific and customised solutions for
indian businesses.
Having achieved a leadership position in India within a span of five years,
Gourish Hosangady, CEO and Managing Director, SAS India Pvt. Ltd. said that
having the first mover advantage played a key role. He added, "Being a global
leader in the BI space, I'm glad that we have achieved a similar position in
India within five years. This would not have been possible without the support
of our customer base which exceed more than 120 installations in the country,
including the likes of StanChart Bank, Orange, Goodlass Nerolac, Airtel,
Novartis and Citibank amongst others. This is just the beginning and we see the
trend of double digit growth continuing year-on-year as we move forward with a
significant jump in our market share."
According
to Gourish, the need for Business Intelligence was felt primarily due to a
decline in traditional growth, changing business strategies and also because of
the volatile market environment. Moreover, the Intelligence gap was caused as
most companies could not generate the intelligence they needed or were not fast
enough to act on it. Besides, they continued to incur huge costs due to
uninformed decisions and misguided strategies.
Generally, BI applications include the activities of online analytical
processing (OLAP), report generation, decision support systems (DSS), query and
reporting (Q&R), statistical analysis, forecasting, data warehousing and data
mining. Some of the popular BI tools in usage are:
-
Multi-dimensional analysis software, which is also popularly known as online
analytical processing (OLAP) tools. This software gives the end user an
opportunity to look at the data from various angles.
-
Data
Mining Tools - The software automatically searches for significant patterns or
correlation in the data
-
Query
Tools - They allow the user to ask questions about patterns or details in the
data.
Business intelligence is the
process of getting enough of the appropriate information in a timely manner and
usable form, and analysing it so that it can have a positive impact on business
strategy, tactics and operations. BI applications allow users to quickly and
easily view data on essential metrics such as sales, inventory and customer
activities. This information can be dispersed to the organisation through a
dynamic interface, preferably one that is web-enabled. If a dynamic interface is
implemented, users can explore the data from different perspectives or levels of
detail.
The use of BI also helps
the organisation to find out which their top-selling products are, who their
most loyal customers are, which businesses are performing the best and which
need improvement, the efficacy of their promotional campaigns and how exactly
this is reflected in sales. In India, the market for BI tools is still in its
development stage. Companies that have implemented applications such as ERP,
SCM or data warehouses, often face a situation where they have a huge amount of
data and information, but no helping tool or a clearly defined map, which can be
put to use for making strategic decision. The total BI application market is
expected to generate revenues of $10.7 million by the end of 2002.In 2005,
revenues are estimated to touch $30.4 million. These revenues are expected to
grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 33.9 percent over the forecast
period.
Though the BI market in India is still in its nascent stage,
the market is likely to witness high growth rate during the period 2002-04. The
demand could be fuelled primarily by large and medium-sized enterprises and
MNCs. One positive trend observed in the market is that many organisations are
going in for data mining, OLAP on transactional data, and some data mart suites
to address the needs of specific business units or departments.
The demand for data mart solutions is witnessed from sector, such as power,
petroleum and derivatives manufacturing shipping and transport, metals and
fabrication. Some medium-sized enterprises, particularly from the sector such
as automotive ancillaries, construction and cement, fertilizers,
service-transport, hotels and textiles have opted for DSS related assignments.
This positive trend is likely to spur the growth of BI solutions in the country.
|
