SigmaWay Blog

Whether it is elections in India, or a service delivery model of a market leader in any sector, the incumbent is always at a disadvantage. Be it their government, their services like banking or healthcare, or their retail experience, the consumer wants them to continuously evolve in a direction which they perceive as beneficial to them. As time bound service contracts become passé, disruptive technology becomes available at affordable prices (think 3D printers, e-books, digital content, Google fiber, multi-core smart phones) today’s consumers and clients are exposed to a plethora of choices. With lowered exit cost barriers it is becoming imperative that a business does all it can to retain their customers.

Organizations realize that they not only have to ward off direct competitors but also cope up with tangential attacks from substitutes powered by disruptive technology. The choice between a successful well proven business model and a new idea is never easy. In the first case the organization risks its immediate client base by diverting significant funds and effort for turning an innovative idea into a winning product. This strategy has a high probability of failure which might cost them a significant market share. HTC lost a large portion of its small-medium priced phone market share in its bid to create a premium flagship smartphone model. In the second case, it believes in its business model and tries to take incremental steps to make it more robust till it is too late for them. Blockbuster, Blackberry and Borders are examples of organizations which could not counter the threat of new market players like Netflix, Android (Samsung, LG etc.) and Amazon. There is also a third case of the likes of Barnes & Noble and Nokia where the incumbent tries to play it safe by not going all out for the new technology but yet has a back-up plan to survive. So what’s the magic mantra? To me it remains the quintessential quest.

Though one thing I firmly believe in, is that the fickle consumer / client has become even more choice aware and will try out the new flavor of the month if they feel that their implicit or explicit objectives are not being met in the vendor-client relationship. Thus it is essential that organizations know the pulse of their clients and consumers and be geared towards meeting their changing demands. Analytics can play a key role here. Predictive analytics can help organizations preempt attrition by taking mitigating measures while social media and web analytics can help them know what some of their consumers are thinking and provide insights into their future behavior.

While the objective of analytics i.e. to provide actionable insight, remains the same, the demands of the information consumer have drastically changed. They want a lot more data crunched in much shorter time frames and yet presented with all the bells and whistles. With today’s scalable cloud computing infrastructure like AWS available and tons of reporting packages which play well with them it’s almost possible. It is also possible for the security conscious to invest and manage the requisite infrastructure in-house. The JIT (Just in time) lean principle applies here as well. An organization should only generate information and insights at the speed which it can take action on. Anything more could be a waste of resources.

Thus at the end of day, know the customer’s pulse, make an informed choice between evolutionary and revolutionary changes to your business model and be prepared to be blind-sided by someone your organization may have never heard of. To be or not be is an incumbent’s curse but making an informed choice and being prepared for change must never be a dilemma.

In this era of advanced analytics, there are many new challenges involving privacy and security of individuals, as computing power allows nonprofits, businesses, and researchers to gather ever-larger troves of information. Though it can be observed that there is a colossal increment in the amount of available data, we still only have two eyeballs and one brain! How a traditional library will look without a librarian, or an encyclopedia without an index? Scale that prospect up to the realms of web analytics, astronomy, high-speed finance, or even basketball statistics, and the problem becomes clear.

Research scientist Fernando Pérezof, University of California, Berkeley, recently spoke about it at a symposium titled “Weathering the Data Storm: The Promise and Challenges of Data Science,” hosted by the Institute for Applied Computational Science (IACS) at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).

To read more, Please visit Harvard university article link given below:

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2014/01/the-promise-of-big-data/

Communication is an absolute essential entity to allow successful improvement in healthcare industry. Effective communication will allow relevant and correct flow of data through the organization. With more relevant data, analysis will also be more accurate and will automatically lead to improvement in the healthcare industry.

Please go through the link for more details http://healthcareanalytics.info/2012/03/successful-healthcare-improvement-requires-analytics-and-effective-communications/#.UyhlIqIyX4s

With the advancement of new technologies, big data and internet, young professionals are getting opportunities for new career options. With the growth of facebook and twitter, different organisations of BFSI sector require more professionals for their work like collecting data, prediction and forecasting revenue. So doors for new jobs are being opened in front of the young pool of talents.

For more information, please go through: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/jobs/rise-in-demand-for-social-media-experts-in-fmcg-bfsi-pharma-companies/articleshow/29500508.cms

Balancing privacy, policy, and innovation is important to achieve harmony in health care, but, it is also difficult. While both population health and patient centered care seek to improve health care, at some level they are fundamentally at odds. Managing the health of population in a sustainable and scalable way requires uniformity of care across large groups for prevention, wellness, resource utilization, etc. Often, the most predictive clues about our health, exist in information that lives outside of traditional health care. This can be unearthed with the help of new innovations in Big Data. With the right policies and safeguards in place, trust can be established that will give individuals greater comfort and confidence to share information with their healthcare providers.

Harry Greenspun, MD and Senior Advisor for Health Care Technology and Transformation at the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions talks more about it here: http://blogs.deloitte.com/centerforhealthsolutions/2014/03/balancing-privacy-policy-and-innovation-to-achieve-harmony-in-health-care.html?id=gx:2sm:3tw:chsblog:awa:chs:032214:deloittehealth#

Big data is the buzzword and messenger, but not the whole story. Yes, tons of telecom use cases will fit the so-called 3 V’s of big data: volume, velocity of analysis and variety of technologies. But today, a rise of fourth V can be observed in the big data equation: Value, referring to optimizing performance, maximizing revenue & monetizing the telecom business in more sophisticated ways.

The Telecom Analytics & Big Data Market, a breakthrough analysis report by Dan Baker, editor of the Black Swan Telecom Journal & research director of Technology Research Institute, gives us new insights about telecom big data analysis. In an interview with Craig Galbraith, Mr. Baker speaks about competition, barriers of market entry, customer experience, network analytics, integration with cloud, outsourcing & big data.

Read more at...

http://www.billingworld.com/articles/2014/03/telecom-big-data-analyst-report-explores-solution.aspx

Big Data was the talk of the town in 2013 and the trend is likely to continue in 2014 as well. Though Big Data has been used in the finance domain earlier, it has been limited.But this year it is expected to take a giant leap in terms of its applicability.

Using the power of social media and analyzing the vast amounts of data generated by them, financial companies can directly interact with their retail clients to provide them with an insight to the customers’ experience. Finance sector being data-centric, Cloud technology will help companies store large volumes of data which was otherwise not feasible given the cost and technological setup constraints. The sophisticated mobile technology will help in generating more data from the customers within an exceptionally short span of time. And finally, Analytics will do the most interesting part – forecasting and predicting results with the help of Predictive Modeling and beyond. Together, the Social, Cloud, Mobile and Analytics (SMAC) will close in and will redefine the financial sector operations.

Additionally, Big Data and Analytics will be used more and more in solving different financial cases and also studying investment practices with the help of Semantic Analytics.

 For more information,read http://www.wallstreetandtech.com/data-management/big-data-use-cases-across-financial-serv/240165075 to know on how Big Data is about to change the Financial world.

In USA, approx. 8o% of hospitals are using electronic health records, due to which it is possible to gather useful information for research & development. Now healthcare industries are actively looking for transformation of its major areas by meaningful use of analytics.

To know about its challenges and impact, please go through the link: http://ehrintelligence.com/2014/03/17/for-healthcare-analytics-you-need-to-have-goals-in-sight/

 “The future is like a corridor into which we can see only by the light coming from behind”, well said by Edward Weyer Jr..  Like that, to analyze anything, the first step is to collect relevant data and develop predictive score for each element, the second step is to assess these predictive score and then implement it into a model. Finally prediction and conclusion can be made accordingly.  The book, Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die by Eric Siegel explains how predictive and other insights associated with predictive analysis work.

Please go through the link for more details:

http://www.amazon.com/Predictive-Analytics-Power-Predict-Click/dp/1118356853

Max De Marzi, software field engineer with Neo Technology, inspired by Facebook’s graph search, talks about how use of graph search adds value to the enterprise by making practical use of big data. He also indicated how this technology can be applied to solve business problems.

For more information follow

http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/news/2240215892/Facebook-inspires-enterprise-to-use-big-data-graph-searches?asrc=EM_NLN_27254566&utm_medium=EM&utm_source=NLN&utm_campaign=20140317_Facebook%20inspires%20enterprise%20to%20use%20graph%20searches_cdelacvivier&track=NL-1839&ad=892421

Steven Rust, Ph.D., “the Battelle’s Inventor of the Year”, developed and demonstrated a very useful analytical tool which can predict risk associated with a patient in such a way that it can be prevented in an early stage.

 Please go through the link for more details:http://www.battelle.org/media/press-releases/rust-is-battelle-inventor-of-the-year

The biggest challenge for any insurance company is  to capture, store, search, share, analyze and visualize big data. Moreover, handling these data is also very challenging for the insurers. Étienne Castonguay, partner and co-founder of InEdge, suggests that Predictive Modelling in insurance can help them in solving the problems.

For more information, please go through: http://tdwi.org/Articles/2013/02/26/Insurance-Analytics-Trends.aspx?Page=1

To find new opportunities and minimize current problems, it is important for an organization to collect and use big data efficiently. On a day to day basis, Excel is a common tool. But when it comes to analyze huge data, sometimes Excel becomes inefficient. The probability of errors are always there in spreadsheet, especially when data set is more complex. A blog by Renat Stewart, Banking Officer at M&T Bank, talks about how to utilize Excel spreadsheet in an efficient manner.

Please follow this link : http://www.riverlogic.com/2013/05/data-complexities-prove-excel-spreadsheets-difficult-to-maintain/

Imagine, in this IT enabled world, different departments of a bank are operating on a standalone framework, managing millions of customer data. So it’s obvious that they will not have a clear picture about customers’ demographic pattern, their preferences and their account usage patterns.

Thanks to Analytics, these problems are now being solved. Omar Sohail, Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP and Banking & Securities, Business Analytics & Information Management Leader, writes how structured, unstructured and semi-structured data can help the banks in reaping benefits by getting more insights about customer data.

For detailed information please go to http://www.baselinemag.com/analytics-big-data/banking-on-big-data-and-analytics.html .

A report by McKinsey & Company talks about how usage of data analytics is transforming organisations. It also conveys that information on niche segments can also be important.

For more information follow

http://www.forbes.com/sites/mckinsey/2014/01/15/new-ways-for-turning-data-into-dollars-now/

Nowadays army and navy are using analytics to identify energy saving opportunities. Boston based Retroefficiency has developed an automated energy audit which automates the entire process of an auditor. It also helps in depicting the amount of energy used by each specific building.

For more information, please go through: http://fcw.com/articles/2013/12/11/army-navy-energy-audits.aspx

With the advancement of technology, business analytics helps to analyze huge number of data and create predictive models. It also helps in the areas like data mining, statistical sampling and forecasting. The main objective of business analytics is to cluster data from different systems into a common storehouse. Using Business Analytics, smart enterprise set up can be built that benefit businesses to combat the volatile demand.

For more information please follow 

http://dreamfireinteractive.com/industry_insights/accelerating-business-analytics