Quantcast
Channel: Analytics India Magazine
Viewing all 17517 articles
Browse latest View live

Does Your Car Have More Awareness Than Your Business?

0
0

Following the number of product announcements we made at our annual partner conference, Qonnections, I have been talking a lot about Qlik DataMarket.  For the uninitiated, Qlik DataMarket is a curated data service to bring third party data directly into Qlik Sense and QlikView with the same ease as ingesting internal data.  To illustrate the value and importance of external data, I often use the analogy of driving a car.  In short, in order to drive a car you do not just look at the dashboard.  If you do not look out the windshield it is very difficult to stay on the road.  The best you can do is wait until you hit a rumble strip and then correct back.  Running a business using only internal data is much the same as driving a car when only looking at your dashboard.  You can’t correct your course until the situation is dire.

The Auto Industry Is A Leader

I’m not a big car person, but I am a complete Tesla owner wannabe.  When lusting over a Model S the other day it occurred to me that this analogy is starting to become a little obsolete.  I wish I could say this was due to advancements in analytics practices, however it is due to the advancements in car technology.  Cars these days are bringing all sorts of external information to the driver’s dashboard.  It started with a simple temperature reading to warn drivers of icy conditions and now cars can adjust speed, have cameras, park themselves and at least 20 brands can avoid some collisions.  Tesla is going as far as to claim lane changes by just tapping the turn signal and there are many self-driving cars in development.  It’s completely crazy!!

The so-called “slow-to-change” auto industry, encumbered by strict regulations, has figured out how to integrate internal and external information from the physical world into dynamic decisions driven by computational analysis. However, many businesses fail to simply integrate internal and external data to make long-term strategic decisions.

Why Is Analytics Lagging?

I believe there are two primary drivers as to why businesses are lagging: the ability to access the information and the ability to integrate the information.  Although there is a massive amount of external data available for analytics it can be difficult to find the desired information or even know what is available.  Qlik DataMarket helps solve this issue.  The available data is curated and appears right in the data load interface.  Users can work through all the various categories of data and select the specific data of interest.  This goes a long way to help users find useful external data.

Once the desired external data is found, bringing it together for a unified view with internal data is key.  If this is difficult, then it will only be done on occasion when the value is already proven.  This means that experimentation and exploration does not occur.  Being able to go from “I wonder….” to “I know…” quickly only encourages more questions to be explored.  The cost to ask and answer a question dramatically influences the creativity of the questions.  Simply put, the easier it is: the more it will be done.  The Qlik Indexing (QIX) Engine is uniquely suited for rapidly bringing together multiple data sources because it includes all of the data in the analysis and does not favor a ‘primary source’.  James Fisher calls this equal rights for data.

What Can We Do About It?

Gaining a fuller view of your business starts with expectations.  You should expect to need internal and external data in order to make decisions and discovery insights.  You should expect bringing multiple sources together to be a normal activity.  Then you will only accept technologies that are really good at doing this and treat all data equally.  Finally, you must expect the world to change.  If you expect the world to change then you will also expect your data needs to change so you will insist on having an agile data environment that can quickly add internal and external sources.

Do not accept a world where your car has more situational awareness than your business.  Insist on including external data in all your analysis and find ways to make it an easy process.  That’s how we roll at Qlik – pun intended.

By Josh Good

(Visited 32 times, 11 visits today)

The post Does Your Car Have More Awareness Than Your Business? appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.


The Siri-ization of analytics

0
0

sirialization of analytics

The other day I was watching my son break his head against math when it struck me that I have no idea what math will do for his future. My father’s script was much simpler – he knew that if Atul Jalan didn’t learn his math, hell waited ahead.

My worry is not the pace of change. Not at all. My worry is that the skills my son learns, might be completely unnecessary when he sets out to do whatever it is in life that he will do. (Which I hope is wine-tasting, an exceptional profession for my son to be in, especially in my golden years.)

I had to learn to use machines to automate. He will have to learn how to collaborate with machines. That, I think is the essential difference. But what does it mean for my son?

The Filters of Civilisation. I like to think of this entire progression as a series of filters that we as a race pass through. The first filter was when we learnt that there was more to tools than fingers. The (36x fast-forward) second filter, was the Industrial Revolution where we created machines to perform tasks. We moved through an automation filter next. And immediately after, the business intelligence filter, where machines were actually helping us take decisions based on data that we had to input. So, going by that logic, what would the next filter be?

Intelligent machines are the filter we are passing through currently. And to misquote the poet, bliss is it in this dawn to be alive. We are moving into a day when machines build on the understanding provided, themselves, in the direction you want them to. An age of smart machines that have the ability to slice data in any which dimension, understand it, build on it and offer us answers.

The age of the smart machine is not in the future.
That phone in your pocket, is one.

And we already are influenced by smart machines. Sometimes without even realising how we are using it or how reliant we are on it. Like “Damn you, auto-correct”, for example. The smart keyboard uses language modelling for context (it knows how certain alphabets combine together in a language) and then adds machine learning to it (after a while it suggests words you use oftener) to tailor itself to your need. And if you keep abusing auto-correct enough, it is less likely to offend you as time goes by. My son depends on it!

Damn auto-correct often enough and it will correct itself.
Now how do we import this technology into humans?

Your smartphone is the best indication of the future. Your machine already understands your voice. (Do not forget that this means your machine understands your accent and your individual modulation.) Gesture recognition is also available today, so now your machine understands your actions as well. Now add to this Emotion Recognition (this demands that the machine understand social and cultural contexts and you as an individual, again) and you really have a machine that understands you completely, maybe even better than you understand yourself.

This ability of machines to understand us, combined with the power of cloud computing, advanced analytical sciences and Big Data can bring us behavioural insights into every individual on this planet. That is what makes this dawn heaven! I know, it does sound like Carl Sagan, but it is true. We already see this around us.

Know how every human behaves.
Know what every human feels.

Very soon (Manthan is working hard towards it), a retail organisation will be able to identify your emotions like trust, expectation, attention, interest or lust the moment your fingertips glide over your keyboard or from your gestures or body movement. Apply analytics and behavioural insights to this knowledge and you are able to trigger the right information flow to the customer.

Now comes the best part. No user needs to understand or even try bothering to understand underlying technologies – but all, can use it. This is what we call Siri-ization of analytics at Manthan.

Yesterday, the power of advanced analytics was limited to analysts and data scientists. In retail, the roles on the floor depended on information and recommendations that trickled down. With Siri-ization, everyone on the floor can use it, real-time, to figure what their next course of action should be. No skill requirement, no hierarchy, nothing.

Siri-ization consumerizes knowledge.

And that happens because the machine already knows your customer inside out. It knows your business inside out. It knows all possible business contexts. It knows competitor pricing. It It understands the categories. It understands trends as of this morning. It knows where the customer is at this precise point in time. It understands preferences. It knows Victoria’s secret. All you need to do, is ask the machine. And thou shalt receive a recommendation. Immediately.

I know this sounds very close to omnipotence and omniscience. But this is where we are today, this is the filter we must pass.

Synthetic Intelligence.
Not Artificial.

This is what we used to call Artificial Intelligence not long ago. I personally, prefer to call it Synthetic Intelligence, though. We are not faking it; with all of these technologies that are simultaneously crossing our path, we are duplicating the neural pathways of the brain – to create machines that are intelligent. Intelligent enough, most importantly, to understand a million contexts, dice, analyze and bring you a defined set of right answers.

Which brings us to the next, natural question. With all of these capabilities already with the machine, what will my son do? He has guided recommendations on decisions to be taken, based on a scientific analysis of a large volume of data. With course corrections available every second. So then, what does he do now? What does he do with his innate capacity as a human?

If machine can do all, what will my son do?

I think my son is really fortunate to be born into this day. For I really believe that his tomorrow lies in discovering skills and practices where the quality of human involvement can be deepened. He will be able to bring humanisation and context to Big Data. He will be able to see the exciting insights that lie beneath. He will be able to bring to the fore his (yet) unduplicated skill as a human – empathy. And together they will collaborate to create a consumer environment and experience that will be unparalleled.

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,

But to be young was very heaven!

– Wordsworth

This is true augmentation. With all the new technologies we mentioned above, what we are enabling, is the true potential of the human mind. David Sarnoff said this (what appears like) aeons ago. But it is even truer today. With every advance in technology, we move a step ahead in our ability to frame the questions that machines should answer. What can the machine answer, in a way, becomes our new benchmark.

The human brain must continue to frame the problems for the machine to solve.

– David Sarnoff

And in the Manthan context, with Siri-isation, every retailer will just need to ask questions. And, discover the next question. That, will truly exploit the creativity in each of us. And this will be true across businesses. Let me give you an example. Very soon, I will be able tell a driver-less car to take me to the supermarket of my choice. But prod the envelope a little more, and my car will be able to suggest the closest supermarket where my needs can be best met.

What we do at Manthan today,  is bring together multiple technologies that enables everyone with the power of analytics; thus pushing him to explore his domain deeper. Helping help him and his business rise to a higher level in customer experience and delivery – a business environment where human ability can be better focussed, better optimised to create breakthroughs in the domains we operate in.

As part of its Siri-isation effort, Manthan is looking at Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Speech and Gesture Recognition, Facial and Emotion Recognition, Cognitive Reasoning, Guided Analytics, Adaptive Learning and Behavioural Analysis. With these and the power of cloud computing, the volume and complexity of Big Data can be made available, in a disciplined, reasoned fashion, to every business user.

The technologies already exist.
Manthan Siri-izes it to bring you the best answers.

Most of what I am talking about, you already use. What Manthan does is bring these technologies together, to enable an analytics-unschooled business user to ask questions and find answers that have mapped the query against every byte of data available to deliver the best business decision.

With Siri-isation, I really believe Manthan (like many others) is moving from the analytics and technology business into the answers business.

Coming back to my son. He needs to develop empathy to ask the right questions tomorrow. For that, does he need math? I don’t know. Should I be teaching him empathy? I wouldn’t know how to do that. But what I do know for certain, is that he will be able to crunch Big Data with a gesture. Decision options will be placed in front of him on a platter. And he will find a way to move on to a higher level of human capability.

True, there are a lot of questions that machines cannot answer today. But wait, that’s today. I would like to believe that there are more filters for us to pass through. Till then, let’s ask and receive.

Ask yourself what you will do tomorrow when the machines get smarter.
And you truly will discover what you are capable of.

(Visited 29 times, 15 visits today)

The post The Siri-ization of analytics appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Life of a Data Scientist in an Internet Company

0
0

infoedge

There are so many articles about “What wonders analytics can do for the business” and about data scientist jobs such as “How to be a data scientist”, “How to hire data scientists” etc. But, there is limited information about “What Data Scientists Exactly Do and How Are Their Lives In An Internet Company”. I think that I can cover this topic genuinely since I have worked as a data scientist many years in various industries like Banking, BPO, Defence etc. and currently leading team of data scientists at InfoEdge which is the parent company of various popular portals like Naukri.Com, JeevanSathi.Com, 99Acres.Com, Shiksha.Com etc. In this article, I will cover uniqueness of data science problem in an Internet company in terms of data and user behaviour. Why this problem excites the Data Scientist like me. How Data Scientist spends his life to build scalable real time personalized solutions to solve various challenges of the industry.

Uniqueness of Data Science Problem In An Internet Company

  • Huge Amount of Data

All three V’s i.e. Volume, Variety, Velocity of Data exists in internet domain. Internet company like Naukri (which has more than 70% of market share in Jobs Category in India) generates tons of amount of data every day with all varieties i.e. structured, semi-structured, unstructured. Naukri generates every day lots of amount of data about many millions of Searches, Page Views, Applies, Registration etc.

  • User Behavior

It’s always a challenge to engage an internet user and to bring him back especially on Mobile where conventional way of engaging like searching is difficult. Every user is interested only in services and products which are personalized to him/her. Nobody will engage to the site if we show generic product and services to everyone or segment specific.

Why Data Science Problem in Internet Domain Excites Data Scientists

For a data scientist, large amount of data is the prerequisites to play with. Our job as data scientists is to torture the data until it confess. Data Scientists love challenges and it excites us more if data is large and of varied type like unstructured, semi structured etc.

Internet Domain Challenges provides the opportunities to test and learn various advanced techniques (Machine Learning, Deep Learning, NLP, Semantic Technologies etc.) and Technologies like Hadoop, Nosql-MongoDB, neo4J etc. We at Naukri leverage most of these techniques and technologies to build scalable and accurate Real Time Personalized Recommendation Engines, Notifications Systems and Semantics Search and Alert Systems.

 A Typical Day of Data Scientists in Internet Domain

I can share the typical day of Data Scientists @ InfoEdge.

The day start with looking at the numbers of previous experiments followed by discussion how to improve them further. Then, building the new features (such as how people move from one location to other location while switching the jobs, is there any industry and functional bias with respect to different experience group etc., how important skills and roles for an individuals, is it different than population or segment) by processing the large profile data, behavior data. Rebuilding the model with new set of features and test its performance in Testbed. Once model provides gains in Testbed then productionize the code to integrate in the respective Live Systems (RealTime Recommendations Engines, Alerts, Semantics Search etc.). To test and learn of the new feature, we always run A/B and evaluate its performance. Once experiment is successful then roll out the experiment to all and replicate it to other applications. Pace of experiments is very fast. In a single week, we can build features and see their performance since most of the systems are online and we can evaluate the performance in very quick time.

After the experiments goes successful, it’s time to have fun. Going for Team outing (bowling, movies, lunch and gupsup and leg pulling of each others) is always fun. Having Samosa and Jalebi to nearby sweet shop is favorite of us.

We also have frequent technical discussions of new tools and emerging techniques to keep ourselves upbeat in the industry. We often run POC and pilot of new emerging techniques.

We@InfoEdge feel proud not just contributing to grow the business but also making the life of so many users better by helping them to get desirable jobs (Naukri.Com), matching them to the right life partners(JeevanSathi.Com), screening out to right properties(99Acres.Com) and making out to right education choices (Shiksha.Com).

 

(Visited 392 times, 149 visits today)

The post Life of a Data Scientist in an Internet Company appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Analytics Cities of India

0
0

A working man is an able man. Capitalism and globalisation has resulted in creation of plethora of workable jobs and businesses. So much so that locating a job has evolved into discovering the right job, more so recognizing the sought after vacancies. 3 years ago, an article in Harvard Business Review “The sexiest job of 21st century” not only gratified all the Data Scientist of their work but catalysed the gamut of analytics market too. A denomination of being associated with data which has only been a designation in an office has now become a separate programme in universities.  Focused curriculum, bona fide teaching pedagogy, committed faculty and nurturing technology are the outcome of analytics’ thriving demand in the market. Consequently, the educational enterprises are counselled rigorously towards hatching of skilled individuals in the said province. Analytics programmes and certifications in Management Schools, major and minor subject in Analytics, entrusted analytics pedagogue and academic version of analytics software for learning illustrates the adoption of case in point by market and the society.

While Sahil and I are on the verge of submitting our academic project on courses Business Intelligence and Big Data & Advance Decision Analytics, we did an analysis of analytics job market by cities in India. The commercial aspect of such study is (i) Helps institute administration understand the emerging cities closer to their institute for analytics jobs which in turn help them drive better placements and industry connect (ii) Help an analytics aspirant student in decision making of college selection. The closer the college is to these emerging cities, the easier it will be for him to get connected to the analytics companies. (iii) Help the job portal capitalize on the analytics market

The data capture was done from the 3 job portals i.e Naukri.com, Shine.com and Monster.com. These three were called the top 3 portals by World Blaze.in. The keyword “analytics” was used to filter out the jobs from these portals and then the cities were captured. Monster.com was rejected from the analysis due to unavailability of the comprehensive “Location Filter” feature. The capture was done on 25th Aug 2015 at 9.45pm with a tolerance of plus minus 2 mins. The freshness filter for Naukri.com was “Last 30 days” but for Shine.com it was not applicable due to unavailability of the feature. This limitation would not hamper the results much as the main objective was not to compare the availability of Jobs on Naukri.com versus Shine.com

View the infographic here.

The infographics revealed some interesting insights and led to some recommendations.

  • 47% of the Analytics Job market is in Bengaluru and Delhi NCR Region.
  • Close to 28000 analytics related jobs are at Naukri compared to 4000 jobs at Shine which is 2nd biggest portal after Naukri. Monster.com has 2000+ odd jobs
  • Cities like Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh and Indore have also entered the league of providing analytics jobs.
  • Institutes located in these cities have a strategy advantage over their rival institutes
  • Students who are planning to apply into analytics courses should match the institute location with these cities in order to have better exposure during the course
  • com beating the competitors by very high margins can gain more strategy advantage by creating sub portal for Analytics to cater to needs of the applicants needs especially. Their already existing e-learning, certifications and resume making feature would strength such a move

These sequels to our study are believed to be the concomitant of the following grounds:

  • The sphere of analytics is mostly congested by the IT industry and Bangalore and Delhi are expeditiously developing themselves in this discipline. Ergo, the jobs are bound to be concentrated in this region but a staggering figure of 47% needs a deeper inspection.
  • Considering the fact that this job would necessarily be a blue collar job which roughly are the 13% of the total job market of 15 lac a year, resulting in roughly around 10% of the blue collar jobs. This is clearly an outcome of the decision making bodies of industries and companies relying more and more on analytics than hunch.
  • Tier 2 an tier 3 cities have been growing as favourites of technological start ups and as a breeding ground for skilled individuals. Analytics being a new entrant in the industry has attracted appreciable minds into the arena as new companies or new division in companies.

The opportunities are numerous and we may still be at the edge of the new mountain that has been discovered. We see already analytics being revolutionised into Big Data, Quantum computing, machine learning and artificial intelligence. The technological barriers are being liquidated as we speak. The managerial implications only points towards an upward trajectory of the society and the business.

References:

 

Written By

Sahil Garg |Manu Jain
2nd Year PGDM Marketing, IMT Ghaziabad
email id: sgarg.d89@gmail.com | manujain3710@gmail.com

About the writers:

Sahil and I are 2nd year MBA students from IMT Ghaziabad. We are also the co-founders of Admito.in, which aims to help student in his/her college selection process. Currently Admito.in is incubated in IMT Ghaizabad

(Visited 456 times, 158 visits today)

The post Analytics Cities of India appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Infographic: Analytics Cities of India

Ratan Tata backs Infinite Analytics – a predictive analytics company

0
0

infinite analytics

Mumbai, (Aug 31, 2015) Infinite Analytics, a company out of MIT, received funding from Ratan Tata to expand its state-of-the-art predictive analytics technology to verticals beyond retail and e-commerce.

Existing investors like Nikhil Vora of Sixth Sense Ventures and new investors from Silicon Valley and India have also participated in this round.

The company already works with customers including AirBnB, Comcast, B2W Digital, BabyOye, Croma Retail, eBay, Future Group, Infibeam, NBA, NDTV Retail, Trendin, Tata Marketplace amongst many others. and will use the additional investment to beef up hiring, scale up in current verticals and to explore newer verticals.

The company was born in an MIT class of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web. Since its inception in 2012, Infinite Analytics has raised a seed round from various investors across the globe in Australia, Taiwan, India, UK and the USA. It is also backed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Deb Roy, Chief Media Scientist at Twitter, who are advisors and investors in the company.

According to Akash Bhatia, Co-founder & CEO, Infinite Analytics, “It’s a dream come true to have Mr. Tata back us. We have grown up admiring and respecting Mr.Tata’s business acumen and this is a great opportunity for us to learn from him directly. His guidance and vision will definitely help us grow Infinite Analytics into an analytics powerhouse.”

Purushotham Botla, Co-founder & CTO, Infinite Analytics says, “We are honored to have Mr. Tata as an investor and advisor. We share a common vision about how technology can be used to solve difficult problems in industry and society. We look forward to working with him to uncover promising areas where we can deploy our analytics product.”

About Infinite Analytics (www.infiniteanalytics.com):

Infinite Analytics is a company founded out of MIT that specializes in Deep Machine Learning and Predictive Analytics. Their Analytics Platform merges data from multiple sources (customer demographic data, transactions data, loyalty program data, third party data, open data) to create a 360-degree view of the user. Their NLP, Semantic and Predictive Analytics Algorithms detect and predict patterns in the merged data with the end goal of increasing revenues for clients. Their clients include some of the biggest names in Retail and E-Commerce worldwide like AirBnB, Comcast, B2W Digital, BabyOye, Croma Retail, eBay, Future Group, Infibeam, NBA, NDTV Retail, Trendin amongst many others. Infinite Analytics has a super team from MIT with backgrounds in e-commerce, technology, data analytics, cognitive sciences, particle physics and image recognition, along with super advisors in Sir Tim Berners-Lee – the inventor of the World Wide Web, Deb Roy – Chief Media Scientist at Twitter, Erik Brynjolfsson – Director of Center for Digital Business at MIT, and Rosemary Leith – Director of World Wide Web Foundation.

 

(Visited 17 times, 17 visits today)

The post Ratan Tata backs Infinite Analytics – a predictive analytics company appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Power of Data: Benefits to HR

0
0

Analytics is the new kid on the block today. Every business function worth its salt is talking about using “Big Data” to strategize for its future.  Can HR be far behind other functions? No.

Data and technology enablement has advanced rapidly in the last decade and will continue to do so. Given the huge amount of workforce data available in organisations today HR analytics has huge potential to deliver clear business benefits, but many HR leaders are at a loss as to where to begin.

A recent survey of CHROs (Chief Human Resource Officers) of companies found that the next big investment in the coming 6-18 months in HR will be in HR Analytics. Most companies feel that workforce analytics is their strategic priority.

Globally, 78 percent companies (employing 1000 and above employees)  rated HR analytics as urgent, but only 19 percent companies felt they were equipped to handle this as compared to 81 percent in finance, 78 percent in operations and 58 percent in marketing and sales (Deloitte, 2014). Thus, HR is still playing catch up in the Analytics arena, though the scope is huge.

Many have talked about the “Power of Data”.  Usually, decisions are made on perceptions. Data gives the objective and fair view enabling us to make precise decisions uncoloured by personal or professional biases. IBM believes that precision is better than guesswork. HR analytics helps in prioritising strategic decisions. They have in fact implemented many solutions in their HR domain to harness the power of data. They also use expense analytics to understand where the most expenses are being made in HR and how to make maximum utilization of these.

Currently, if we look at the statistics, 39% of the companies worldwide have data to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the employees which can be used for customising their development programmes, 38% use quantitative metrics for benchmarking but only 42% know how to extract meaningful insights from the data available to them.

In 3-5 years, 50-60% workforce in top companies would be temporary. Talent management  would be one of the major challenges for the organizations. This includes the whole value chain from recruiting the right talent to nurturing and retaining it. Analytics allows organizations to maximize the investments they make in human capital.

But exactly what is HR-Analytics? As per a senior talent acquisition professional, it is just not about just numbers, but also logic and reasoning. Analytics uses Analysis and builds on it to understand the ‘why’ behind the numbers. The data is plentiful, but the process of using the results for meaningful interpretation that leads to action is what makes analytics powerful. The connecting the dots between seemingly uncorrelated data can identify useful patterns which help in making better decisions. As said by a senior HR professional, an assumptive point of view is a dangerous luxury when not backed by data and review.

Studies over the past decade have shown that a judicious use of Analytics in Human resources can help predict up to 80% the employee turnover, can help in making better recruitment decisions by predicting the probability of the potential candidate to remain with the organization for longer than a year. Most of the companies employing analytics in HR primarily use it for recruitment, compensation and Human resource planning.

Organizations like Shell have made it a mandate to digitalise all their HR practices and use analytics to drive the power of one, i.e. collaboration. They use it to better engage employees in teamwork and measure their performance on not just how the employee is performing, but also how much it has helped others perform better. It has improved their retention statistics drastically. IBM uses analytics to drive their change adoption process.

Starting the workforce analytics is a journey, not a destination. It requires setting proper direction. But once the course is set, the journey can be smooth indeed!

(Visited 33 times, 33 visits today)

The post Power of Data: Benefits to HR appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Interview – Gail Galuppo, CMO at Knowledge Universe

0
0

gail galuppo

Gail Galuppo is a C-suite executive in customer strategy and marketing with extensive experience leveraging data and analytic solutions to identify “order of magnitude” insights and drive change. Working for top corporations across the globe in financial services, retail, banking, payments and technology industries, Galuppo transformed organizations to enable customer-centric decisioning with the use of strategic analytics.

We speak with Gail on marketing analytics and how CMO’s are using it for effective decision making.

AIMAnalytics India Magazine: Gail, Thanks! What, per your experience, are the most significant challenges that CMO’s face today in the analytics space?

GGGail Galuppo: Today the biggest challenge a CMO faces is in understanding analytics and the next big hurdle is convincing his or her peers in the C-suite to adopt analytics for the strategic decision-making process. Analytics will succeed only if it becomes part of the culture of an organization. A lot of companies are looking at analytics as a quick-fix solution. The real impact will only come from sustained investment and leadership involvement in implementing decisions.

AIM: So, how can CMO’s better utilize analytics and showcase its value?

GG: We use analytics to better understand what’s going right in our business and what we can improve. I believe the best way to showcase the value of analytics is not just to understand and interpret the multi-channel data and draw predictive insights but to actually embed analytics at the point of action, at the point of decision-making.

As an outcome-focused CMO, I do believe that CMOs are at the forefront to lead this change for businesses.

AIM: Can you brief us about a specific use case in analytics that has brought significant value to any of your past organizations?

GG: I was leading marketing at Sears Holdings Corp., which was at that time more a “product” focused company where merchants were indirectly driving the decision-making within the organization. But what we were able to do changed the business forever. We were able to leverage the Teradata warehouse, transaction data and research data to better understand what our customers/potential customers were buying and where they were buying it. We were also able to identify what they really wanted out of their relationship with us. Over a period of time, we were able to provide fact-based insights, which we used to influence decisions across all business functions.

This is what eventually led to a change in the culture of the organization from a product-focused firm to a customer-focused firm.

This ties back to what I mentioned earlier about embedding Analytics at the point of action and showing the impact on the culture of the company.

AIM: How do you see Analytics evolving today in the industry as a whole? What are the most important contemporary trends that you see emerging in the Analytics space across the globe?

GG: For almost 20 years, I have been working with data warehouses, econometric modeling and analysis. This is long before analytics became a fashionable buzzword. A lot of people at the C-suite think that analytics is about campaigns. But what I really find successful is looking at how we can leverage customer data to deliver insights and drive actions. This is the key for marketing, and that approach can be replicated across all the entire business to drive outcomes.

Hard-side marketers know how to blend the creative side of Marketing with fact-based analysis to drive business growth and customer loyalty.

AIM: What are your thoughts on analytics talent and what skill sets do you look at while recruiting in analytics?

GG: An analytics hire could resemble a mythical unicorn, with the variety of required skillsets listed in current job description. I look for a deeper skill set than just data knowledge. Industry experience and a candidate’s ability to understand the business and the market makes a lot of difference. It is important for a candidate to understand that Analytics is no longer about prioritizing or reporting but rather about bringing in insights that can be used for driving actions. Traits like curiosity, creativity and a focus on outcomes are what I look for.

AIM: What are your thoughts about Analytics in India? Where does it figure in your whole analytics strategy?

GG: I am very excited by the potential in India. I was one of the first leaders in GE to start looking at the potential of analytics in India. Over the last few years, I have seen the growth of many individuals. For example, I have known the BRIDGEi2i Analytics founders Prithvijit, Ashish and Pritam right from the initial days at GE and it is amazing to see the passion with which they drive analytics-based insights.

At a broader level, India has the potential and ability to take a greater stance on fact-based decision through analytics to drive decisions.

And for companies, I believe it is about a CMO becoming a customer strategy leader and helping peers of supply chain, finance and other functions to see how analytics can help influence the business to drive continuous growth. The CMO should be the early adopter of analytics and evangelize it across functions and for the overall benefit of the organization.

AIM: Anything else you wish to add?

GG: The industry is at an exciting tipping point. And I think it will help if marketers really understand how to build a customer strategy with data.

Over the years, I have used analytics with behavioral data and integrated it with quantitative research data. And through this we were better able to understand what customers want and how we can continue to stay relevant in their minds.

I would say cut through all the hype surrounding data and focus on the real outcomes and see who can help you achieve those outcomes. For example, you might need to work with specialist firms to solve the challenges that no one else is looking at currently while you work internally to drive the change in culture and make sure people are seeing the real benefits.

Biography of Gail Galuppo
(Visited 132 times, 61 visits today)

The post Interview – Gail Galuppo, CMO at Knowledge Universe appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.


Sports Analytics: The Game Changer

0
0

Decisions about which player to drop for the next match, which team combination would be best against a particular opposition and which player needs what type of training have direct impact on the outcome of a match. These decision in front of teams and coaches have been taken mostly based of gut feeling in the past. The trendsetter of data driven decision making was Billy Beane. General Manager of team Oakland Athletics, and a former baseball player himself believed that the runs scored by a team could be predicted using analytics. His story showcased in the movie money ball in 2003, gave an insight to viewers about how using data can change the way a game can be played and in recent times, development of data approaches to sports has continued to evolve.

The base of all the analytics is the data which is collected on and off the field. Lots of collected during the game is via manual methods. Teams had to scan there scout notes from clip board, convert them to excel or pdf and give them to their data developers. The problem is, the data moves so fast in the field that it is lost in time.  The quest for getting more real time data has led to the analytics providers as well as teams are coming up with new and sophisticated ways of capturing, monitoring and analysing the ever increasing volume of the sports data.   The technology is now trying to bridge this gap. For example, a company named, “ZebraTechnologies, manufactures RFID tags. These tags can be attached to players; equipment’s and even balls to gauge their movements, distance and speed.  Blinking 25 times per second, the tag delivers recorded data in 120 milliseconds which is not possible by any scout to match.” [1] Devices like cameras sensors and other wearables are also being used to record all the performance aspects of the players on and off the field. Be it calorie intakes, training levels and even the interaction of the players with fans and other players.

Data is also provided for analytics by Third Party Providers of each team. “The major players in this category, both large organizations like Bloomberg and sports analytics entrepreneurs— include:

  • ShamSports—NBA salary data
  • Bloomberg Sports—Player performance data and “match analysis” for all major professional sports
  • com—MLB “wins above replacement player” analyses
  • Sports Reference—data and analytics on major professional sports
  • ProFootball Focus—NFL player analysis
  • Opta and Prozone—English Premier League football (soccer)”

 

Wearable devices are being increasingly used to capture and analyze real time information. Adidas’s miCoach is one such device which can be attached to the jersey of a player. It records real time data like the heart rate, acceleration and speed of the player. It also shows which player needs rest based on the data collected and who the top performers are. Such devices are also helping in reducing the injuries of a player. None of the teams want their star players to sit out of a match due to injuries. For example, in a sports like rugby where the chances of getting injured is very high, the injury levels has been reduced due to the use of wearable sensors. The sensors record the impact of collision, intensity of activity and compares it with the historical data in the database to determine if a player is in a danger of getting injured or is overexerting. In NFL GPS trackers are now a part of the standard training kit for the players. FIFA has long opposed wearing of such devices, but now for the first time they have allowed it. Tennis federation has also relaxed rules regarding usage of wearable devices. More and more sports are turning towards analytics. The data can help the trainers and physicians to better train the players as well as by the coaches to better plan their games.

In addition to the wearable devices, video analytics is also being increasingly used across various sports. “A company named, SportsVU, has 6 cameras in each game of NBA which tracks movements of players and ball 25 times per second. Basketball Players have been chosen based on the information conveyed by advanced metrics which show which move and shots is a particular player strong in. Using these insights, the coach and the team formulators had an ease of selecting the players with the appropriate defence tactics needed to counter the stronger players. The selected player were then given unprecedented level of statistical information about the opponent he had to guard. This gave the players an advantage over the opponents and an edge in the game. In the ninth annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference (SSAC), Battier, now retired basketball player recalled onstage as to how he replaced Morey in the team in spite of averaging only 10 points per game due to the analytics revelation of his fine defence and shot selection.

It is not just NBA, in premier league soccer in UK, the famous team Arsenal has made huge investments in analytics, and they have made their own analytics team to make use of the data they have been collecting. 8 cameras installed around the stadium records players of every players. They system is provided by a company named Prozone, and tracks 1.4 million data points in every match. It monitors 12000 matches across the globe and analyzes all the data using automated algorithms.” [4] The system, also known as “Player Tracking: is used to analyze the overall efficiency of a team by analyzing the movements of its players.

The data collected is used to analyze the game of each player.  The players and coaches have can get access to data like ‘”all passes by Lionel Messi that were unsuccessful”’ or ‘”all successful tackles by Christiano Ronaldo” [5]. A player interacts only for a fraction of a game with the ball. Off ball events become even more important wherein player runs or get into positions where he can hurt himself. Teams in many sports have found that the cost of implementing analytics programs can quickly be recovered if they save the team having to pay for expensive players to sit out a season with injuries.

The data driven decision making has also trickled down to the fans. They now receive more analytics content than ever. There are websites like FiveThirtyEight.com which are dedicated to sports research and analytics. It uses a sophisticated system of number crunching and past data to determine the most likely outcome of a game. With fan betting on sports legal in countries like Singapore, the fans use these platforms to make betting decisions. For any sports organization, fan experience is the ultimate measure for its success. Better the teams and the ticket vendors understand their fans the better they will be able to cater them. Right from the ticket purchase to ordering merchandise fans generates lots of data points. Companies like SAS, provides analytics solution to analyze create personalized communication to the fans.  Sports organizations can information like whether a 7pm game is too late for fans in a particular place or when a fan is interested in a particular tea coming to their town. FanApps are being used to provide information about the favorite players of the fan. Analyzing there buying patterns and suggesting targeted discounts on the merchandise. These apps even provide information like the bathroom wait times.

Fan following does not fit in any model. The fans for the best player or the maximum playing sportsperson need not necessarily be the greatest. As such, the fan trend needs to be analysed to find out which player do the fans want to know about and what information about the players are they interested in. This information can be deduced by applying analytical tools on the fan data collected from social media platforms, mobile devices, emails, etc. This will help to enhance the digital experience of the fans and provide means of keeping them hooked to various digital portals such as fan pages, team sites and public forums.

The analytics will continue to evolve and would be relied on to make decisions in sports. The teams using are having competitive advantages over others. It is just a matter of time that others will follow.

varun mishra-Varun Mishra
PGDM, Marketing, 2nd Year
IMT Ghaziabad

References

[1] Stienberg, L 2015, ‘Changing the game: The rise of sports analytics’, Forbes, Accessed 30th Aug 2015, http://www.forbes.com/sites/leighsteinberg/2015/08/18/changing-the-game-the-rise-of-sports-analytics/ [2] Thomas H. Davenport. 2014. Analytics in Sports: The New Science of Winning. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.sas.com/content/dam/SAS/en_us/doc/whitepaper2/iia-analytics-in-sports-106993.pdf. [Accessed 31 August 15]. [3] Marr, B 2015, ‘Big Data: The winning formula in sports’, Forbes, Accessed 4th September 2015, http://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2015/03/25/big-data-the-winning-formula-in-sports/ [4] Brousell, L 2014, ‘8 ways big data and analytics will change sports’, CIO, Accessed 1st September 2015, http://www.cio.com/article/2377954/data-management/data-management-8-ways-big-data-and-analytics-will-change-sports.html
(Visited 47 times, 12 visits today)

The post Sports Analytics: The Game Changer appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Praxis Business School announces Spring intake for its Analytics program

0
0

praxis

Praxis Business School is among the few B-Schools offering Full Time Analytics Programs in India. In fact when the program started in 2011, this was the only Full Time program in the country.

Till now Praxis Business School offered just 1 Analytics batch per year. But now, the school has announced the launch of Spring Batch of its one-year full-time Analytics program in January 2016. The analytics course at Praxis has been consistently ranked among the top 10 analytics courses in India.

Praxis Analytics Program Highlights

Praxis program is a unique offering in multiple ways.

  • The 500+ hours of classroom training with additional hours of case studies, projects and assignments make it one of the most rigorous and comprehensive courses in analytics in the country
  • The program is co-created with and co-delivered by the industry, making the program effective & relevant
  • The program has 9 months of classroom training followed by campus placements for Internships and final recruitments

Prithwis MTalking about the launch of the spring intake, Dr. Prithwis Mukerjee, Program Director – Business Analytics said – “We have been receiving an increasing number of applications for our July batch every year. Instead of making one batch very large (and hence a little difficult to manage, given the number of lab hours we have in the program), we decided to opt for two batches in a year.

Unlike the MBA program, Analytics does not conform to any well-established ‘campus placement season’ – there is a growing need for well trained analytics professionals across the year and we get requests for people from firms all the time. Two batches a year may actually help in matching the demand for manpower better.

Program Objectives and Coverage

The Course aims at equipping students with the tools, techniques and skills to enable a seamless absorption into the domain of Analytics and grow into the roles of Data Scientists. Praxis thus focuses on offering its students a comprehensive analytics experience, a deep-dive that ensures extensive coverage, rigor and hands-on lab-work in the following:

  • Technology Skills: an understanding of a wide range of tools like Excel, SQL, R, SAS, Hadoop, Python, MongoDB (NOSQL), Amazon AWS (EMR / EC2), QlikView and Tableau that are commonly used to extract, analyse and visualize data.
  • Statistical Modeling and Analytical Skills: knowledge of statistics, data mining and machine learning techniques and the ability to create predictive models
  • Applying analytics to business situations: a fair understanding of business functions like marketing, finance, operations and the application of Analytics in verticals like BFSI, retail, telecom etc.
  • Communication and Visualization Skills: the ability to tell an effective story.

Target audience for this program

The Praxis program is targeted at candidates who are serious about carving a career in analytics for themselves – and are willing to commit a full year to learning. These are candidates who wish to see themselves grow as successful Data Scientists. Praxis has a fairly rigorous selection process and admits only those who demonstrate strong analytical skills and an interest in numbers and problem solving.

Charanpreet SinghProfessor Charanpreet Singh, Associate Dean, Praxis Business School feels that this differentiates the program from the on-line and hybrid programs on offer – Praxis aspirants understand that they need to commit to full-time, rigorous learning to be able to adequately cover the three pillars of Data Science – statistics & data mining, technology and business – so that they can contribute effectively in the organizations they join post the program.

A majority of the students are from Engineering, Economics, Mathematics, Statistics, Pure Science backgrounds, though the program does admit students from the commerce/ bba streams provided they possess exceptional analytical and number skills. Around 30% of these students are post graduates (including MBAs). The current batch has an average work experience of about 3 years – ranging from 0 to more than 5 years in firms like Accenture, Amazon, Axis Bank, CapGemini, Coal India, CTS, Deloitte, E & Y, HDFC Bank, Hewlett Packard, IBM, ICICI Bank, Infosys, Persistent Systems, Royal Bank of Scotland, TCS, TechMahindra, Thomson Reuters, Wipro etc

The Praxis Placement Program

Students will be part of the Praxis Placement Program which is designed to identify appropriate career opportunities and facilitate your transition into the exciting area of analytics. Praxis takes ownership of facilitating internships and/ or final placements upon successful completion of the program.

Companies like Abzooba Inc, Axis Bank, BRIDGEi2i Analytics Solutions, Genpact, Happiest Minds, HDFC Bank, Hewlett Packard, HSBC Analytics, ICICI Bank, ICRA Techno Analytics, IDC, ITC Infotech, Karvy Analytics, Kie Square Consulting, Millward Brown, PwC, ValueLabs etc. have participated in the campus recruitment process. Praxis Analytics alumni have transitioned into companies like Cardekho.com, Dell Analytics, Fidelity, IBM, Lowe’s, Quikr.com, Target, TCS, Walmart Labs, WNS etc. and are doing very well.

Praxis GateAlumni Speak

“Praxis trains you really well on all aspects of analytics and business domains. This enables you to face and deal with any business problem analytically. The faculty is excellent and this is an institute that develops you into the person you aspire to be and sets you up at par with the best in the field of analytics”

Sudhanshu Ranjan, Assistant Manager, Research & Analytics at HSBC – PGPBA Class of 2014

How to apply

Students need to complete the online application process through the website www.praxis.ac.in

Shortlisted candidates will appear for a written aptitude test and a personal interview. Selection process would be held across all major cities in India.

Important Dates

Online application process is currently open

Selection process will be conducted between September & November 2015

Program commences in January 2016

Interested candidates can register here for more information

(Visited 142 times, 142 visits today)

The post Praxis Business School announces Spring intake for its Analytics program appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

ACCS’ 15, 26th & 27th September 2015, IIT Kanpur

0
0

IIT Kanpur prides on being one of the most prestigious educational institutes of India. MBA at IIT Kanpur thrives with the vision to nurture leaders who dare to unlearn and relearn in the dynamic world of business.

Why focus on analytics?

In the current world of business, companies deal with huge amount of data. Analytics aims to extract useful information from raw data and hence is the savior for the corporate world to manage and analyze the past and current data and take appropriate business decisions. Equipped with results obtained from analytics, companies are now more confident in striving towards entering a new market or retain original customers.

Keeping in mind the importance of analytics in business, MBA at IIT Kanpur presents “ACCS-the Analytics Case Study Competition and Symposium” under Prabandhan, its annual management fest, on 26th and 27th September 2015.

What is ACCS?

ACCS is one of the few business analytics competitions and symposium events held in the country.  Organized by Vishleshan- the business analytics club of MBA, IIT Kanpur, ACCS aims to attract the best minds from top B-schools across the country to come up with analytical solutions to business problems. Many reputed companies participated in the last edition like Accenture, HP, Jigsaw Academy, Capgemini, among others.

You are welcome to see the highlights of the last year’s event at: http://www.iitk.ac.in/ime/accs14/

Events in ACCS:

Case Study Competition: We welcome enthusiastic number crunchers to solve real world case studies provided by companies. The aim is to test the approach of the students to solve the problems.

Symposium: We also invite leaders in the field of analytics to share their experience with the students. It is a great opportunity for students to connect with and learn from the best professionals in the industry.

Like previous editions, it will be a great experience for the participants. We encourage and expect huge and zealous participation of students.

Crowd highlights:

The last edition of the even saw participation from reputed B-schools like IIM Lucknow, NMIMS, SJMSOM, MDI etc. An analytics webinar, conducted as a follow-up event in the March’15, saw many industry experts sharing their expertise with the students.

Contact details:

Feel free to contact the following coordinators for more details:

Vinay Chahal

Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

M: +91 7755057922

Email: vinaych@iitk.ac.in

 

Himesh Anand

Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

M: +91 9953594349

Email: himesh@iitk.ac.in

(Visited 7 times, 4 visits today)

The post ACCS’ 15, 26th & 27th September 2015, IIT Kanpur appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Analytics platform MoEngage raises $4.25 million from Helion Venture

0
0

moengage

MoEngage, Indian mobile marketing automation platform, has raised $4.25 million in Series A funding. The funding is led by Helion Venture Partners with additional funding from Exfinity Ventures and angel investors including Kunal Bahl, Rohit Bansal and Raghunandan. With the new funding, the company will be launching their platform globally and continuing to build out their leading mobile marketing automation platform.

“We have been working in stealth mode with the largest internet companies and built out the next generation mobile marketing automation platform for B2C companies. We have seen tremendous growth in the very first year of our journey, becoming the number one mobile marketing automation platform in India. With this funding, we will double down on product innovation along with geographical expansion in US and emerging markets,“ states Raviteja Dodda, CEO of MoEngage.

The company was founded by Raviteja Dodda and Yashwanth Kumar in July 2014, to help mobile app companies retain and engage users through targeted and personalized messaging which, in turn, improves their retention and conversions.

Along with new funding, MoEngage will also be unveiling three new capabilities, using which mobile marketers can further optimize their application.

Uninstall Tracking and Analytics: Mobile app companies can track the complete list of uninstalled users, along with plausible reasons for uninstalls through its prediction engine, providing an opportunity to proactively engage and retain these users as well as re-target them through e-mail Campaigns and Advertising networks.

● Geo-fencing Capabilities: Marketers can create and update geo-fences, and trigger push notifications based on location combined with advanced segmentation capabilities.

● Smart Email Campaigns: Mobile app companies can use the advanced segmentation capabilities to create mobile-optimized email campaigns with easy-to-use pre-built templates and end-to-end statistics from email opens to conversions inside the app. Email campaigns can be targeted towards un-installed users (or) based on the performance of push notification / in-app campaigns (for instance, users who haven’t interacted with a push notification campaign).

On a monthly basis, the firm is currently profiling one fifth of smartphone users in India and delivering around 1 billion personalized interactions. The company currently works with many of the consumer-internet companies in India including Snapdeal, Cleartrip, OLA’s TaxiForSure, Gaana, OYO Rooms, Yatra and Redbus. In the US, MoEngage has an office in San Francisco and currently works with companies like Sell It and SpotHero.

(Visited 6 times, 2 visits today)

The post Analytics platform MoEngage raises $4.25 million from Helion Venture appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Rahul Yadav To Launch Data Analytics Startup

0
0

Rahul-Yadav-Housing-featured

Rahul Yadav, former CEO of Housing.com is planning to launch a start-up focused on visualization and data analytics.

And Yadav’s new venture has perked up interests from none other than Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal and Micromax co-founder Rahul Sharma. The trio is believed to have made personal investment in the new venture.

While Yadav has not yet disclosed the name of the new venture, speculation is rife that his company will focus on analyzing big data to predict consumer behaviour and provide speedy insights at key decision points.

The data analytics and visualization firm is likely to be used by e-commerce companies on a day-to-day basis.

Rahul Yadav is also scheduled to meet India’s richest man Mukesh Ambani, chairman of energy-to-retail conglomerate Reliance Industries (RIL). Later, he had posted on his Facebook page about his new venture as, “All Indian internet companies put together < My next venture”. Getting similar and strong awesome feelings again for an upcoming meeting with Mukesh Ambani.

Interestingly, Softbank, which is a majority stakeholder in Housing.com, is also a major investor in Alibaba, which in turn has invested heavily in PayTm.

Keeping in mind what Rahul is planning for his new startup, Rahul might not be joining Bigg Boss after all and wants to focus on the startup.

(Visited 283 times, 68 visits today)

The post Rahul Yadav To Launch Data Analytics Startup appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Understanding Consumers in Digital Era – 16th-17th Nov 2015, Noida

0
0

iiml

IIM Lucknow is pleased to inform you of CMEE’s forthcoming Workshop to be held at IIM Lucknow, Noida Campus on November 16th-17th, 2015 – Understanding Consumers in Digital Era. November 18th-20th, 2015-

The workshops will feature some of the top experts of the leading industry, key people of social networking sites and marketing industry. The workshop will be leaded by 2 legends of Qualitative & Quantitative marketing Prof Russel Belk and Prof Naresh Malhotra as the main speakers.

WORKSHOP 1: UNDERSTANDING CONSUMERS IN DIGITAL ERA (16th & 17th NOV’15)

Consumers are rapidly getting used to digital platforms for online shopping and sharing experiences. Marketers realize the importance of the digital medium to understand, interact with and satisfy consumers on a continuous basis. Digital transformation is one of the top trends in top marketing companies. This workshop aims at discussing data collection methods on the digital media along with approaches to analyze the data obtained. Qualitative and quantitative techniques of collecting and analyzing data will be discussed in the workshop. Marketing research professionals as well as marketers who want to obtain deep insights from understanding the online consumer will benefit from this workshop.

WORKSHOP 2: TEACHING MARKETING RESEARCH (18th & 20th NOV’15)

Marketing research is regarded as a foundation topic in marketing education and comprises one of the most important components of marketing practice. Many instructors, however, often consider “Marketing Research” a challenging topic to teach, and a dry subject for students to learn. This workshop attempts to provide an innovative teaching methodology in a way that will engage students. An attractive curriculum comprised of exercises, case studies and group projects will be shared to address the challenge in teaching marketing research process. Participants will be exposed to contemporary fascinating facets of qualitative and quantitative marketing research tools and techniques commonly used in marketing and consumer behavior research for marketing decision

 

All participants are requested to fill in the registration form. Click Here to download the Workshop Registration Form. Kindly ensure that the completed form is mailed to cmee@iiml.ac.in

 

Contacts

Prof. Satyabhusan Dash

Chairperson, CMEE

IIM Lucknow (Noida campus)

Phone (Office): +91 – 120 -6678486

Mobile: +91-9971616700,

Email: satya@iiml.ac.in

 

Ms. Ginni Bharti

Research Associate, CMEE

IIM Lucknow (Noida campus)

Phone (Office): +91 – 120 -6678483

Mobile: +91-8588840324

Email: cmee@iiml.ac.in

(Visited 4 times, 4 visits today)

The post Understanding Consumers in Digital Era – 16th-17th Nov 2015, Noida appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

CYPHER 2015, A Huge Success 

0
0

The first ever CYPHER2015, Analytics Summit, held in Bangalore on Sep 12, 2015, was a huge success with more than 400 analytics enthusiasts and professionals attending the one day summit.

Keynote speakers included ATUL JALAN – CEO at Manthan Systems, LAKSHMANA GNANAPRAGASAM – Head of Analytics at Quantium India, MOUMITA SARKER – Director – Client Delivery at Cartesian Consulting, SAMEER DHANRAJANI – Business Leader, Cognizant Analytics at Cognizant Technology Solutions and VIVEK RATNA – Country Director, HP Big Data Platform.

Bhasker Gupta, founder of Analytics India Magazine shared his thoughts regarding this event. He said, “We realized that there is a dearth of quality conferences around Analytics in India. India being at the forefront of the Analytics wave needed a platform where industry leaders, professionals and various organizations can come together to exchange ideas. We took this initiative with the first edition of Cypher. The success of this event has motivated us to bring back Cypher again next year at a much larger scale.”

DSC_9372

The one-day summit was held at the Hotel Park Plaza in Bangalore. Designed to be an annual meeting to bring analytics professionals at one platform, the summit discussed various trends and challenges in analytics by way of Panel discussions. Attendees also received pertinent information regarding Analytics education in India through various workshops and exhibits. HP was the main sponsor for the summit.

DSC_9266Sameer Dhanrajani, Business Leader, Cognizant Analytics and Data Science at Cognizant Technology Solutions said, “It was great to see a congregation of over 400+ enthusiastic analytics and data science professionals under a single forum. CYPHER 2015 was a well envisaged event and our partnership with the Analytics India Magazine was complementing our key approach of innovative analytics thought leadership and advocacy and continued push towards path breaking topical trends within the analytical and data science fraternity within India. I congratulate Bhasker from AIM for organizing this wonderful event and giving us all a common platform to discuss, brainstorm, and collectively learn from each other’s experiences on the forthcoming trends and topics shaping our algorithm economy.”

Organized by Analytics India Magazine, Cypher 2015 showcased various B-schools, service providers and analytics products in its exhibits. Among the B-schools, Great lakes institute of Management, Praxis Business School and Alliance University showcasing their analytics programs at the exhibit. With 32 speakers between keynotes, panel discussions and workshops; the summit saw more than 150+ companies represented.

DSC_9369Vivek Ratna, Country Director at HP Big Data Platform said about the event, “Cypher 2015 did a great job in congregating the niche audience interested in knowing the POV of professionals having advanced experience in analytics. It covered diverse topics and had cherry picked the experienced speakers with varied backgrounds to deliver the sessions. In my assessment, attendees took back the knowledge not available in text books and they will look forward to coming back again in subsequent editions.”

DCS_4531The attendees had the opportunity to meet analytics leaders as well as representatives from Cognizant, Quantium, AnalytixLabs, Team Computers, Wiley, Bridgei2i, Manthan among others. At the Summit, there was a recognition that leading businesses are already taking action to build analytics competencies. In all sectors, business has developed solutions, continues to innovate and is preparing to accelerate the scale and pace of analytics deployment. Exciting workshops were conducted by Sumeet Bansal (CEO of AnalytixLabs), on “Internet of Things meet Big Data”, PAUL MEINSHAUSEN (Vice President, Data Science at Housing.com) on how Housing.com has grown and structured its data science teams and RAVI VIJAYARAGHAVAN (Head of Analytics at Flipkart) gave glimpse into some of Flipkart’s analytics solutions to drive business growth and User experience for its consumers and sellers. Moumita Sarker, Director Delivery at Cartesian consulting covered the applications of Genome Mapping in Marketing.

For more information, visit www.analyticsindiasummit.com
For event videos, subscribe to our YouTube channel.

All Pictures of the event can be accessed from our Facebook Page.

(Visited 100 times, 23 visits today)

The post CYPHER 2015, A Huge Success  appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.


Qlik Launches New 24/7 Self-Service Distance Learning Platform

0
0

qlik

Bangalore, India – September 21, 2015Qlik® (NASDAQ: QLIK), a leader in visual analytics, today announced Qlik® Continuous Classroom, a new 24/7 subscription-based, self-service learning platform for Qlik® Sense.  With this supplemental offering to the Qlik® Education Services portfolio, Qlik now provides users with a new way to learn that allows them to completely customize their learning journey based on their individual needs.  Users can choose from dozens of modules equivalent to approximately 25 hours of work, with topics ranging from “Foundations of Building Visualizations” to ”Build and Play Stories”.

Learner-centric Distance Training Boosts Productivity with Qlik

The Qlik Continuous Classroom education package includes innovative offerings, such as:

  • Videos with interactive exercises and quizzes – users decide when to start, stop, and resume as often as needed;
  • The ability to interact directly with instructors and peer students, leveraging web conferencing tools and forums to quickly get answers as well as share best practices;
  • Virtual office hours for immediate support; and
  • One-to-many instructor-led virtual training, allowing whole teams to arrange an instructor-led live Webinar course customized to their needs.

The way people consume information today has shifted dramatically, and learning preferences have followed the trend.  According to Gartner, “Analytics leaders should use analytics training as a strategic tool to improve fact-based decision making, share data and insights for better collaboration, and foster a data-driven culture.”  Gartner also commented that “Analytics leaders must use a mix of training delivery methods to improve the learning experience for new analytics capabilities.” [1]

Qlik Continuous Classroom answers this need by enabling users to build their own learning path by choosing the content they want learn, or conveniently select from pre-defined paths.  Because products are frequently updated with new and improved features, content will be regularly added to the library.  This ensures that users have access to the latest Qlik training available for their level, and can take advantage of every new feature and function from the newest product release.

“We at Qlik are always challenging ourselves with how we can make the experience with our product the very best for any type of user with different learning styles.  With an intuitive self-service product like Qlik Sense we wanted the learning process to accelerate user success,” said Kevin Hanegan, vice president of Knowledge and Learning at Qlik.  “Qlik Continuous Classroom is modular to accommodate someone who is only just beginning with analytics or wants to increase their skills in creating apps and best practice visualizations.”

More Information and Availability

Qlik Continuous Classroom is a subscription-based, self-service learning platform for Qlik Sense that can either be used on its own or supplemented by instructor-led courses.  Users will have the option to preview videos prior to purchase. Today, customers and partners can purchase the Qlik Sense Business Analyst role, with additional roles to be added in the future.  For more information and to try the platform for free, please visit http://qcc.qlik.com.

About Qlik

Qlik (NASDAQ: QLIK) is a leader in visual analytics.  Its portfolio of products meets customers’ growing needs from reporting and self-service visual analysis to guided, embedded and custom analytics.  Approximately 36,000 customers rely on Qlik solutions to gain meaning out of information from varied sources, exploring the hidden relationships within data that lead to insights that ignite good ideas.  Headquartered in Radnor, Pennsylvania, Qlik has offices around the world with more than 1700 partners covering more than 100 countries.

[1] Gartner “How to Design Effective Analytics Training to Improve Your Business Analytics Maturity” by Daniel Yuen, Helen Poitevin, Alan D. Duncan, July 15, 2015.

(Visited 25 times, 8 visits today)

The post Qlik Launches New 24/7 Self-Service Distance Learning Platform appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Paytm invests $10 mn in logistics analytics start-up, LogiNext

0
0

loginext

Logistics data start-up company LogiNext has got support from mobile commerce platform Paytm, which will invest $10 million in the first round of institutional funding for the firm.

The move is in line with Paytm’s plan to invest $150 million in Indian tech start-ups over the next few months.

Loginext’s big data analytics platform will help courier companies to bring more efficiency in their delivery network by route optimisation and real-time tracking of their resources.

LogiNext is a privately held big data analytics start-up backed by Indian Angel Network, one of the largest angel investing groups in India.

Founded by Dhruvil Sanghvi and Manisha Raisinghani in 2014, LogiNext was a part of the first batch of GenNext Innovation Hub, an incubator set up by the Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries along with Microsoft Ventures. Currently, LogiNext caters to customers in the medium and large enterprises. The data analytics startup received a funding of $500,000 from Indian Angel Network in April this year. The startup employs technology to provide real-time visibility and optimization solutions to logistics companies.

(Visited 19 times, 11 visits today)

The post Paytm invests $10 mn in logistics analytics start-up, LogiNext appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

A Television Game Show for IT and Analysts

0
0

Television game and quiz shows, like Jeopardy, are now in abundance. I have an idea for a game show that probably would not achieve high viewer ratings, but it might be appealing to those interested in how truth is proven with analytics, research and fact-based data.

True or false? Good or bad?

My idea is for a game show where three competing teams of contestants are given a business problem involving choices. They are given one week to design and test their hypotheses through experiments and return to the show with their answers. A panel of CEOs would judge the winning team.

Before I provide a few examples of business problems for this game, I will explain how this idea popped into my mind. Although I am not a university professor or PhD, for the past 15 years I’ve attended an annual conference with about 300 professors. The majority of the conference’s sessions are parallel tracks where PhD candidates and faculty present their research findings. It is part of the publish-or-perish world that academics live in. The process is fascinating. Each researcher has 20 minutes to present his or her problem, hypothesis, tests and findings. Next, an older and seasoned faculty member has five minutes to critique the paper as the “discussant.” The final five minutes is for questions and answers. There are three papers presented each 90 minutes – it’s very intense for everyone attending the session.

The research topics vary widely, such as how to determine the correlation of CEO compensation incentives with the company’s financial performance and the presence of bias in in a manager’s performance evaluation of subordinate employees.

Game on! Sample business problems

  • The marketing function is becoming more scientific in determining which types of customer microsegments are more attractive to retain, grow, win back and acquire customers, and how much to optimally spend on each customer type with deals, offers, discounts and marketing campaigns. Increasingly, measures of customer profitability and customer lifetime value (CLV) – not only sales volume – are accepted as the means to make the determination. However, the growth of social media (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, blogs) is revealing that some customers have large followings and might influence the purchasing behavior of others. Test question: Is it worth the marketers’ effort to spend extra time with these influencers to induce positive messages from them even if the influencer has low profit lift potential?
  • Capitalizing on impulsive customer behavior is an opportunity to increase sales. In the book Thinking, Fast and Slow by Dan Kahneman, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his seminal work in psychology that challenged the rational model of judgment and decision making, he describes an observation that people buy more cans of soup in a grocery store when there is a sign on the display that says “Limit 12 per customer.” Test question: In which other industries might this ploy work best? Rank the industries.
  • Psychologists observe that rather than shaping an individual’s behavior with fines (e.g., a traffic ticket) or punishment (e.g., grounding children who fail to clean their bedrooms), rewarding good behavior with positive reinforcement may work better. Test question: Assume that software engineers who support salespeople anonymously grade and score the salesperson following each sales call. The salespeople scoring in the top X percent will receive an additional cash bonus. What should be the percent cutoff of salespeople, and how much should the cash bonus be to achieve the maximum measurable improvement of the software engineer’s behavioral treatment from salespeople?

The thrill of discovery with fun added

My observation of business analysts and researchers is they can be ingenious in the way they formulate and test hypotheses to prove or disprove an idea or to determine an optimal solution for a business problem or opportunity. However, executives receive relatively more visibility than analysts, who are typically tucked away in a sea of desks.

Why not provide analysts, and the important role they perform, more visibility to the public? Make it fun. The popular TV show The Big Bang Theory highlights physicists. So why not have a TV game show for analysts and IT specialists to show off their investigative and discovery skills? We might call it The Big Data Theory!

(Visited 94 times, 3 visits today)

The post A Television Game Show for IT and Analysts appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

The Richness in data of Poors

0
0

Without denial, Data Science has brought a paradigm shift in the way business use to happen. Be it B2B or B2C, business have come much closer to their customer than before. It won’t be wrong when I say that each one of us experience some or other kind of data science algorithm daily in our lives. Be it your facebook recommendation of people you would like to add, or the SMS campaign you receive daily or customised offers from our banks, telecom service provider or online shopping portal. Almost daily, some or other machine learning algorithm decides our day. And why only life revolving around online medium, even our offline lives is also not left untouched by such algorithm. From the kind of offers we encounter when we walk into a retail store or a billboard advertisement we see on the roads or print advertisement on magazines/ newspaper, all these may be result of some or other kind of statistical model. However, all these attempts of reaching the customer efficiently and effectively is confined to corporates and retail giants who are crunching numbers in petabytes to understand our buying behaviour. Amidst all these, there is one section of society that has been largely ignored: the poor and the deprived.

On the hindsight, it seems there is not much to do when it comes to the bottom of the pyramid population but then if one digs deeply and combines consumerism with policy making, the entire Pandora box would open.

Analytics techniques could be leveraged to come up with strategies for the welfare of the poor and needy.

Conjoint analysis, the most widely used quantitative method, is used to measure preferences for product features, to learn how changes to price affect demand for products or services, and to forecast the acceptance of a product if it’s taken to the market. It includes surveying the poor and the needy what they prefer in a product, or what attributes they find most important to buy them. Moreover, conjoint analysis employs the more realistic context of respondents evaluating potential product profiles ranging from simple mobile phones to tractors. The pricing of the products/services could be moderated by understanding the preferences of the destitute.  The results of such analysis can be considered and incorporated into the state policies such that the prices of the products sold to the impoverished will not be augmented with addition of fruitless fanciful features. To make the essential amenities affordable to the poor, analytics techniques could be of great help.

Natural Language processing(NLP) is looked at as combination of computer scienceartificial intelligence, and computational linguistics concerned with the interactions between computers and human (natural) languages. NLP is human –computer interaction.  Sentiment analysis employs NLP for mining and extracting the attitudes and opinions of people across the blogs, articles, reviews and social media portal. It is widely used to discover how people feel about a particular subject. This would prove effective when applied to understand the opinion and the sentiments of the downtrodden towards a say a loan waiver plan or a development and a relief scheme. Their needs could be catered accordingly if this sentiment analysis technique is utilized.

Network analysis is a phenomenal technique to understand how social relationships influence the purchase behaviour and loyalty of people. Though this can be effectual in improving campaign effectiveness and retention of high-value, this technique can also be used to understand the way people are connected in a village or small town and how they influence each other’s decisions. Who are the influencer and who has highest closeness or between ness or hold high Eigen vector value. Thus the information about the influencers can be used to promote healthy lifestyle and behaviour among the impoverished. This works the best in educating the poor by bringing an awareness among the people on deadly communicable diseases, social responsibilities, the merits of social activities. This can be further extended to educate them on Women empowerment, prevention of anti-social crimes like theft, rape and trafficking. Self Help Groups and Rural Employment schemes can be created through the influencers completely towards the upliftment of the society altogether.

Predictive modelling is another powerful technique that can be used for fatal disease management in rural areas. Moreover, predictive modelling techniques provide with the strategies for stopping the spread of deadly diseases. Effective strategies can be obtained for stopping the spread of deadly diseases through building a realistic contact network, predicting the spread of disease through the network, and quantifying the impact of intervention. Also, understanding of the frequency of each degree and the ways and means of disease transmission in the population can be successfully achieved with Predictive modelling. The Probability that an infected individual will transmit the disease to another individual can aid in predicting epidemics based on socio-economic parameters, lifestyle, data from local health clinics and pharmacy outlets, geographic and weather conditions and demographics. A contingency as well as a mitigation plan can be created well in advance by analysing and interpreting the results of prediction.  Network analysis coupled with Predictive modelling can thus be used to educate and warn the people about upcoming threats and also promote remedies and precautions toward the fatally communicable diseases. This would promote a healthy living among the impoverished there by raising their standard of living.

Classification technique proves useful to classify people into variegated social classes. Sub classification of poor into smaller classes can be done in order to customise poverty eradication plan for each class. The needs and the preferences of each class of the society would vary from one another. Not everyone requires loan waiver, not ever one requires subsidy, not everyone needs farms loans and not everyone needs health insurance schemes. Classifying people into the right sets of groups and then making customised poverty eradication plans (bundle of few plans considering the behaviour or attributes of the group) would not only make the plan effective but also would make the right plan reach the right set of audiences.

Skill development plans and methodologies can be based on various statistical models that talk about how to teach, when to teach, whom to teach and finally what to teach rather than teaching everything to every one at a blanket level. Not everyone would be inclined to learn or know sewing or farming or any other activity for that matter. The inferences from the statistical modelling techniques that were discussed earlier can be collated to derive fruitful insights to identify and map the needs and the interests of the destitute and the downtrodden in any set up. This would definitely instil in them a sense of responsibility to work hard and earn and thus to raise their standards of living. Similarly, the primary education in villages show how handicapped our students are. It is really distressing to see when an eighth grader can’t read or write or perform a simple mathematical calculation. The quality of education can be improved by classification technique based on machine learning algorithms that would help identify the pain points and thus recommend a solution. Even Artificial Intelligence techniques play an important role in determining the weightages of the factors that have contributed or affected the current education level of the students from the downtrodden society in rural areas.

Data is required to do all the aforementioned analysis to draw meaningful insights on an issue and make smart decisions. Big data, which is the buzzword today, offers for example the possibility to predict food shortages by combining variables such as drought, weather conditions, migrations, market prices, seasonal variation and previous productions. Kenya is one of the pioneers in Africa regarding opening up their data. As the World Economic Forum report says that in 2009 they opened the Open Data Portal where the government shares 12 years of detailed information regarding their expenditures, household income surveys as well as health facilities and school locations. The portal can be accessed by anyone via the web or via mobiles. This could serve as a good data source for doing analytics to understand the current status of different social groups and thus frame strategies to eradicate poverty.

Author

Sray Agarwal, Chief Manager-Business Analytics,

TimesPro (Times Centre for Learning Ltd.)

(Visited 100 times, 15 visits today)

The post The Richness in data of Poors appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

S P Jain School of Management launches Certificate Program in Big Data and Analytics

0
0

Analytics and Big Data are the hottest skillsets in the current market. As companies plan to adopt Analytics, there has been a sudden surge in requirement for analytics professionals. To meet this supply side talent deficit, several courses are being introduced by leading institutes and B-school worldwide.
Leadership HallSP Jain joins in by introducing full time and part time Certificate program in Big Data and Analytics (BDAP) at its Mumbai campus. The course is being offered at S P Jain’s spanking new campus at Lower Parel, which boasts of State of the art facilities, in the heart of the city’s business center.

BDAP is designed to explore, analyze and unravel the complex, unstructured data-driven world. The program kicks of with 10 core courses that build a strong foundation for the second stage of the program, which incorporates more in-depth and application-based learning. Given the need for specialist knowledge, it provides a range of courses in topics like data mining, machine learning, visualization techniques, predictive modeling, and statistics.

Learning CentreThe programme content builds on basic concepts, teaches tools and technologies that are currently prevalent in industry and progresses to cutting edge-topics like machine learning and Natural Language Processing.

On completion of the program students would have learned to apply quantitative modeling and data analysis techniques to solve real world business problems, successfully present results using data visualization techniques, demonstrate knowledge of statistical data analysis techniques utilized in business decision-making, apply principles of Data Science to the analysis of business problems, use data mining software to solve real-world problems and employ cutting edge tools and technologies to analyze Big Data.

The program is delivered by a faculty that is an equal mix of academicians and industry practitioners with a key proportion of overseas instructors thus lending the course a global perspective.

“Big Data & Analytics is set to become the next game-changer in IT and will have a revolutionary impact on every business, whether big or small, in more than one way since it can provide inputs to improve businesses on all key dimensions.” – says Dr. Mahendra Mehta (Managing Director, Neural Techsoft), program director of BDAP.

Simulation RoomThis program equips students to fill the need for sophisticated expertise in varied domains such as IT, Consulting, BFSI, Telecom and Media and in specializations like data mining, data modeling, data architecture, extraction, transformation, loading development and business intelligence development. The acquired techniques are increasingly essentially required for roles like Data Scientists, Analysts, Developers and Consultants.

The programme is being offered in two formats. The full time format will have a total classroom contact hours of 400 and will be delivered on Weekdays for duration of 6 months. The Part time format will also have a 400 contact hours but will be delivered only on weekends for duration of 12 months.

Participants can apply online:

http://www.spjain.org/big-data/apply_online-mumbai.aspx

For more information refer:

http://www.spjain.org/big-data/index.aspx

Watch the workshop conducted by SP Jain at CYPHER2015, Analytics India Summit

(Visited 429 times, 46 visits today)

The post S P Jain School of Management launches Certificate Program in Big Data and Analytics appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Viewing all 17517 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images