SmartAnalytics

Industry Week recently published <http://www.industryweek.com/systems-integration/five-things-consider-you-make-big-data-investments-2013>  a viewpoint I wrote entitled ‘Five things to consider before you make big data investments in 2013’. Due to the massive volumes of valuable unstructured data permeating the average organization on a daily basis, innovative IT executives are moving fast to leverage this untapped data for more meaningful business insights and enhanced decision-making capabilities. We know big data can deliver unprecedented insights into business. Both IDC and Gartner expect big data spending to accelerate in 2013 and beyond.   

Five Things to Consider 

The article identifies the following five things to consider when making big data investments and discusses each in greater detail.

The need for information has created this disruptive nomenclature that has taken the world of data by storm.  This revolutionary term has the same bearing as “service oriented architecture”, a few years back.  Analytics has been the mainstay of business processing for decades however, the term “Big Data” has added several new dimensions to the world of data.  Big data enable companies to create new products and services, enhance existing ones, and in a lot of cases invent entirely new business models. All this has become possible, not because Big Data has the answer.  Rather, people have now started asking the right questions.  The ability to look for the answer will become the key basis for competitive growth, and in a lot of cases, a fight for survival.  So the strategic thought leaders of the organization need to aggressively build big data capabilities.

Many CIOs are venturing beyond the risk averse ‘sustaining operations’ mode to progressive engagement using social media. That is a good start,but more needs to be done.When it comes to evaluating and implementing a traditional system of record tools such as ERP, CRM, HRMS etc., CIOs have a fairly good handle on what works and what does not for their LOBs. A certain level of maturity has been achieved in these traditional systems and CIO offices have learned to master the best fit implementations for LOBs. A+ for the CIOs on that count. It is the social media that will, however,redefine the next generation CIO-LOB conversations and grading of CIOs.

Most of the B2B Marketers feel their current online marketing mix is falling short to meet the sales demand, and that they’re under immense pressure to be able to measure the online campaign effectiveness and also being productive. We often hear that the concept of the marketing mix isn’t so useful any longer in this era of customer-first. But I believe it is still highly relevant today as a framework to develop digital marketing strategies.

Managed Markets in Pharma - A Primer

The managed care model has seen huge growth in the pharmaceutical industry in the US. It is estimated that 85% of all prescription drugs are today reimbursed through a managed care plan, and the remaining 15% of cash paid prescriptions is still shrinking. This proportion is even higher for expensive new specialty pharmaceuticals. Managed markets are the dominant channel for pharmaceutical firms and ensuring unfettered access to their drugs is a critical competitive advantage that could spell the difference between commercial success or failure of the drug.

Interested in slicing, dicing, measuring, and analyzing data for customer and business insights? According to a recent survey by Bloomberg, 97% of companies with revenues of more than $100 million are using some form of business analytics, up from 90% just two years ago.

Effectiveness of customer contact center agents is commonly based on metrics such as AHT(Average Handle Time), CSAT (Customer Satisfaction), CPC (Cost per Contact) etc. Established vendors in the contact center space have traditionally focused on these metrics from a long time. Several such vendors solve performance questions through sampling large and segregated data sets ignoring the big data approach, making a contact center more tactical to the company rather than strategic. 

When I was coming back from an international travel recently and was browsing through the inflight entertainment shows available, "Person of Interest" series on CBS caught my eye. A computer genius develops a machine for the government which is used to detect information leading to acts of terrorism before they can be executed. "The machine" separates the information gathered into two categories: relevant and irrelevant. The scientist, however, discovered that the irrelevant information also often led to the discovery of other acts of violent crimes. With the state-of-the-art surveillance technology, the program uses pattern recognition to identify people who are about to be involved in violent crimes.

Limitations of organic growth are forcing companies to look at innovative ways to improve market share and profitability. Business transformation strategies are evolving more rapidly than any time in the past. For any of these transformation plans, be it: M&A, new product introduction, geographical expansion and others to succeed, the CIO office needs to play a key role. Let us analyze some perspectives with which CIO could look at these strategies and proactively work with the business.

A recent study by the Nucleus Research says that Analytics pays back $10.66 for every dollar spent. The study is based on data from 60 case studies and relates to investments in Business Intelligence, Performance Management and Predictive Analytics. Not surprising are the areas where they saw ROI increase - revenue, gross margin and expenses.