Coming of Age...

The world is rapidly moving towards convergence and a new business and

connection paradigm is emerging–c-commerce. Here, intellectual capital will

move to the mainstream of enterprise assets. Technology and services for

enterprise knowledge management will evolve to support the extended,

collaborative enterprise. Surviving the information flood and effectively

managing it will be a critical success factor for enterprises to survive and

have a distinct competitive edge.

In a c-commerce business world, ‘knowledge and information’ will be the

basis for giving an enterprise its competitive edge. This is where Business

Intelligence (BI) comes in. But what is Business Intelligence? Currently, in

India, BI as a concept is not clearly understood, typically being limited to

either traditional data base analysis tool or mistaken for a concept similar to

market intelligence.

In brief, BI solutions strive to manage the onslaught of data flood and

eliminate ‘gut feel’ with empirical data analysis. It is a broad category of

applications and technologies for gathering, storing, analysing and providing

access to data to help enterprises make informed business decisions. Typically,

BI applications include decision supporting systems, query and reporting, OLAP,

statistical analysis, forecasting and data mining.

BI therefore is the foundation on which c-commerce rests. It offers focussed

solutions for current front-end applications as CRM, SRM, Risk Management, EPM

et.al. It is not a technical tool for tactical implementation but a strategic

decision that makes sense of business data.

BI in the near future will be profoundly different from the way it is viewed

today. According to Gartner, the Business Intelligence market has transformed

significantly in 2002. New technologies have emerged and merged with existing

ones, changing what the market thinks is BI and forcing vendors to deal with a

different marketplace.

This is clearly reflected in the Frost & Sullivan report on the Business

Intelligence market in India, wherein BI has been categorised to include query

and reporting tools, data warehousing and mining technologies and business

performance management. As per the report, the BI market is estimated at INR 26

crores for Jan-Dec 2001 and is expected to grow by 40-45% in 2002, i.e. approx

INR 37.5 crores. This is an indication of an increasing level awareness of BI,

even though implementation at a strategic level is yet to pick up.

At the outset, a majority of BI solutions has continued to be implemented on

an "as needed" basis, and at a departmental level. And as enterprises

continue to move toward risk aversion, it is evident that the vendor success in

the last quarter of 2002 will be based on financial and product stability and

service excellence. In keeping with the underlying market dynamics, BI market in

2002 has experienced a limited/flat growth with enterprises expecting more from

their vendors than ever before. The result is a tough market in which

consolidation is inevitable in the immediate future — one in which only the

fittest will survive.

BI solutions are thus in an evolving market that has immense potential for

growth, albeit slowly. Further, innovation has continued although at reduced

levels. The key reason for this has been the blurred understanding by the target

audience of the concept itself and its scope and benefits thereof. Compounding

the problem has been the huge past investments made by these enterprises in

enterprise applications with negligible return on investments.

Thus, the ‘wait and watch’ approach continues unabated–with enterprises

in no mood to invest and deploy new applications as BI. So despite the

temptation to rush to the "next greatest thing," most enterprises are

continuing to focus on improving the use of the applications they already have.

Year 2002 has marked the beginning of the age of BI. Going forward, failure

to begin leveraging the growth in analytic capabilities will place them at a

competitive disadvantage — a situation that will make the difference in

survival in a world gradually but surely moving towards c-commerce.

GOURISH HOSANGADY



The author is managing director of SAS India.