Adding Intelligence

Business Intelligence (BI) and analytics market in India is growing significantly with adoption rate taking strides in several verticals for informed decision-making. But public sector enterprises, government organizations, and healthcare institutions are still stuck in the round one-wary and confused on the usage of BI tools in their respective organizations. A number of PSUs have not been able to move further from the legacy ERP and CRM applications. We had a chance to understand the hiccups of PSUs from different sectors recently. Interestingly, majority of the PSUs were seen debating with queries which are normally perceived in the first stage or used to be the talk of town a couple of years back.

Prasanto K Roy of CyberMedia who moderated the discussion bringing basic questions to the fore that might arise in any IT head's mind while making a choice for BI platform for their organization. Responding to his query in the first place was Tarun Anand, General Manager IT at Mother Dairy. "Today's fast-moving global economy demands us to take decisions in near real-time. Certainly decisions made after the proper analysis of data would enable companies such as ours to improve productivity," says Anand. He further puts emphasis on mobile analytics for marketing intelligence. He, however, expressed concern on the tools which could understand the processes of, for example, a dairy business.

In order to compete globally and make informed decisions, it is more than important for government organizations and PSUs in India to utilize their data lying redundant. Encouraging a culture of data-driven decision making will play a critical role in the growth of the company. However, PSUs need to learn ways to treat data arising from every interaction, transaction, process, and channel. Big data is only growing bigger.

BI Delivers Results Late?

As opposed to many views in the panel, SC Mittal, CIO, Indian Farmers & Fertilizers Co-Operative, questions the role of several BI tools and sees them as a deterrent for making quick decisions. "Speaking from a personal experience, I'd disregard the role of BI tools in quick decision-making. BI tools deliver result a bit late while CEOs need to make decisions faster. In our case, BI is not able to show analytics at a pace we want them," opines SC Mittal.

The roundtable brought to spotlight issues related to vendor negligence that might arise while using the BI tools. One of the panelists jumped in the fray to address SC Mittal's concern. "Since the flow of data is high, it might take a while to analyse data and then serve results as you need them. But BI tools are capable of delivering accurate results. During these turbulent times, analytics is empowering companies to transform data into knowledge, take fact-based decisions, enhance customer engagement, manage risk and curb fraud," says one of the panelists who represented Microsoft.

When asked about the issues, Mittal's organization faced, he brings into focus the lack of skillset to handle these applications in a said organization. Similarly, he underlines that employee resistance is also a key element while deploying BI applications.

As the discussion moved, a number of organizations from healthcare and PSUs shared their problems and sought solutions. Arun Goyal, Director IT, Quest Diagnostics was one of them who sought solutions which could address the challenges a laboratory business faces. Since data flows differently in a lab chain like Quest Diagnostics, Goyal gave examples of current tools their organization is using to manage data. "Quest Diagnostics is using Laboratory information system to manage data and make decisions. Yet we want a system that can real-time benefit our line of business," Goyal remarks. His query prompted to the need of an implementation partner who has experience in the particular industry.

A healthcare business needs to work with a partner who understands the domain and make changes to the solutions to suite a business. In addition, it brought into focus predective analytics. Historically, businesses have been using analytics to derive hindsight and insight.
Predictive analytics can enable businesses to derive foresights and take forward-looking decisions. The model would help measure patterns to identify risks and opportunities using transactional, demographic, web-based, historical, and unstructured data.

HEALTHCARE ANALYTICS

The role of BI tools in healthcare is also becoming important. Predicting trends based on the flow of patients has become simpler than ever. However, Indian hospitals are still not connected and do not use analytics to handle information. Panelists looked at the need for healthcare analytics for disease management, supply chain management, and predict the disease trends and take measures. "Choosing a BI solution becomes difficult given the nature of processes in a healthcare center or a hospital. At Batra Hospital, we feel the need to process information generated from different departments such as ICU, OPD, diagnostic center, etc. Solution providers need to train people in the ecosystem such as doctors to extract information and use BI tools. Asking IT departments to deliver information lengthens the process," says Dr Pavan Gurha of Batra Hospital.

The delegates and panelists had a healthy exchange of ideas during the discussion. Primarily, the role which smartphones and tablets can play in delivering analytics real-time was also discussed. Overall, there was a general agreement on the importance of BI and analytics in PSUs and healthcare institutions in India.