Data Science – What’s Hot and What’s NOT

With data collection happening at every possible step of the consumer funnel and now beyond it, we have access to unprecedented data of consumer that we never had. The challenge emerges when the data is there but we don’t have intention or resource(s) or science to decipher what secret(s) it unveiling . CrowdFlower believe 2015 will be a big year in data science. In simple words - Its not about what company’s have, its now about what they can do with it.

The further argue that the role of the data scientist is also going to go through an evolution where we a Chief Data Scientists will supersede Chief Information Officers when it comes to making key IT and big data related purchasing decisions in the coming year. Overall, companies are going to be paying critical attention to data science and the impact this space will have on organizations of all sizes and focus.

CrowdFlower 2015 Hot & Not List includes:

• Rich Data vs. Big Data: In 2015, companies will rely on rich data–the volumes of data that have actual relevance–instead of big data, to drive growth.

• Data of Everything vs. Internet of Things: Our fascination with the Internet of Things isn’t going away but the aggregated data generated from connected devices will add a new layer of value to IoT.

• Chief Data Scientists (CDS) vs. Chief Information Officers (CIO): In the past, CIOs were the keepers of all things IT but in 2015, Chief Data Scientists will hold the purse strings when it comes to key IT buying decisions that leverage company data.

84% Of Enterprises See Big Data Analytics Changing Their Industries’ Competitive Landscapes In The Next Year

87% of enterprises believe Big Data analytics will redefine the competitive landscape of their industries within the next three years. 89% believe that companies that do not adopt a Big Data analytics strategy in the next year risk losing market share and momentum.

These and other key findings are from a Accenture and General Electric study published this month on how the combination of Big Data analytics and the Internet of Things (IoT) are redefining the competitive landscape of entire industries. Accenture and GE define the Industrial Internet as the use of sensor, software, machine-to-machine learning and other technologies to gather and analyze data from physical objects or other large data streams, and then use those analyses to manage operations and in some cases to offer new, valued-added services.

Big Data Analytics Now Seen As Essential For Competitive Growth

The Industrial Internet is projected to be worth $500B in worldwide spending by 2020, taking into account hardware, software and services sales according to Wikibon and previously published research from General Electric. This finding and others can be found on the home page of the Accenture and GE study here: How the Industrial Internet is Changing the Competitive Landscape of Industries.

The study also shows that many enterprises are investing the majority of their time in analysis (36%) and just 13% are using Big Data analytics to predict outcomes, and only 16% using their analytics applications to optimize processes and strategies. Moving beyond analysis to predictive analytics and optimization is the upside potential the majority of the C-level respondents see as essential to staying competitive in their industries in the future.

A summary of results and the methodology used are downloadable in PDF form (free, no opt in) from this link: Industrial Internet Insights Report For 2015.

Key take-aways from the study include the following:

• 73% of companies are already investing more than 20% of their overall technology budget on Big Data analytics, and just over two in ten are investing more than 30%. 76% of executives expect spending levels to increase. The following graphic illustrates these results:

• Big Data analytics has quickly become the highest priority for aviation (61%), wind (45%) and manufacturing (42%) companies.  The following graphic provides insights into the relative level of importance of Big Data analytics relative to other priorities in the enterprises interviewed in the study:

• 74% of enterprises say that their main competitors are already using Big Data analytics to successfully differentiate their competitive strengths with clients, the media, and investors. 93% of enterprises are seeing new competitors in their market using Big Data analytics as a key differentiation strategy.  The single greatest risk enterprises see from not implementing a Big Data strategy is that competitors will gain market share at their expense.  Please see the following graphic for a comparison of the risks of not implementing Big Data strategy.

• 65% of enterprises are focused on monitoring assets to identify operating issues for more proactive maintenance. 58% report having capabilities such as connecting equipment to collect operating data and analyzing the data to produce insights. The following graphic provides an overview of Big Data monitoring survey results:

• Increasing profitability (60%), gaining a competitive advantage (57%) and improving environmental safety and emissions compliance (55%) are the three highest industry priorities according to the survey. The following table provides an analysis of the top business priorities by industry for the next three years with the shaded areas indicating the highest-ranked priorities by industry:

• The top three challenges enterprises face in implementing Big Data initiatives include the following: system barriers between departments prevent collection and correlation of data for maximum impact (36%); security concerns are impacting enterprises’ ability to implement a wide-scale Big Data initiative (35%); and  consolidation of disparate data and being able to use the resulting data store (29%), third. The following graphic provides an overview of the top three challenges organizations face in implementing Big Data initiatives:

Courtesy – Louis Columbus

Data Driven Marketing

This info graphic based on a recent survey conduct with almost 1000 digital marketer and analysts by folks at Econsultancy provides a great insight into the importance of data in the entire whelm of marketing paradigm. This while advocates the fact that in any organization which is serious about marketing in this data age needs to elevate up on how they use or rather utilize their data to make the marketing decision. Further, the importance of data and its ability to understand and further base marketing decision and/or investment dollar base on deeper data analysis is not only good to have rather a fundamental element in today marketing world. The more you invest in understanding the data the better conversion yield you will get out of it.

And yes organizations need to invest in building these resources as its apparent by this graphic that alludes to skill shortages in areas like digital analytics tool, statistical modeling and conversion rate optimization.

Business Intelligence - Business Growth Enabler

The BI space in India is witnessing an interesting change. In addition to the conventional industries that are heavy users of BI technology (i.e. IT, banking, telecom and manufacturing), new areas such as retail and financial services are also keen to adopt BI. In fact, today we find several small and mid-sized retailers, brokerage firms, pharmaceutical companies, and financial services companies, evaluating BI needs for their operations. This apart, the market is also expanding to Government agencies that have now started adopting BI to manage spend, gain visibility into progress made and tracking internal processes and performances—all aimed at serving citizens better, cutting costs and exceeding organizational goals.

Gartner predicts Business Intelligence (BI) software revenue for the Asia-Pacific region to reach $399 million this year, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.5 percent to hit $577.6 million in 2011. India has been the fastest growing BI platforms market in Asia (including Japan). It posted a growth of 35.6 percent in 2005-06—from $12.1 million in 2005 to reach $16.4 million in 2006. All these figures are indicative of the significance of BI for organizations across sectors.

Moreover, in recent years, companies have invested in transactional systems like ERP, CRM, HCM and SCM—to run various parts of the business. These systems generate and capture enormous amounts of data, creating an opportunity for greater insight into business performance.

George Varghese, General Manager, Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) and BI, Oracle India, revealed that BI is regarded as the number one priority for CIOs across Asia Pacific as BI and EPM enables the management to link strategy to plans and execution, monitor financial and operational results against goals, and apply analytics to drive enterprise-wide performance improvement.

SMBs too produce tons of data, but lack the kind of analytic capabilities that would enable them to use data to make decisions, and they are hunting for affordable BI.

BI trends

From a trends perspective, organizations today are looking to institute more reliable and accurate processes for monitoring and managing performance both from a strategic and an operational perspective. IDC observes that successful implementations of business performance management (BPM) solutions such as consolidation and budgeting also include a robust BI strategy to integrate and deliver quality information.

Joyer Mascarenhas, VP, Asia Pacific and Japan Professional Services, Cognos stated, “One cannot deliver full BPM solutions without BI, and SOA is an underlying technology through which BPM is delivered seamlessly to the user community. This makes BI a crucial component in BPM and SOA.”

Pallavi Kathuria, Director, Server Business Group, Microsoft India, revealed another interesting market trend for reasons like faster decision-making and better performance management—organizations are making appropriate business data available and visible to all employees at every level rather than just the top management. Therefore, today BI deployments and usage is spreading broadly across organizations rather than being restricted to the top management.

Solution-based focus

Organizations also find it problematic to deal with different vendors, consequently the latter are moving from tools-based focus to a solutions-based focus.

M&A in the BI product space may make companies align with specific tools and technologies. The main reason behind this is that companies may want to align with the product vendor’s BI vision to get ample vendor support in product upgrades, product enhancement and availability of trained resources to implement the solutions. “However, there will continue to be companies who will support best of breed BI architecture to make the most of the individual strength of specific point BI tools for reporting, data integration, analytics, mining and making scorecards,” stated Ramanan R V, Head of Global Delivery and Chief Software Architect, Hexaware Technologies.

Ashit Panjwani, Director-Marketing, SAS India mentioned that CIOs today prefer to purchase their BI solution from an independent vendor and not an application or database vendor. He said, “Customers have multiple ERP systems and warehouses like SAP, Oracle E-Business, JD Edwards, Siebel, Peoplesoft, Microsoft, IBM, and Teradata, and they have other data sources such as XML, Excel, and blogs. They also have a mixed bag of infrastructure like portals, security systems and application servers and as they acquire and merge with other companies these scenarios become even more complex. Customers need an independent performance layer that fits into their enterprise infrastructure and that sits on top of all of their applications and data sources.”

Courtesy -  Vinita Gupta, Express Computer