Marketing Analytics expected to play a pivotal role in the Indian IT Industry

NASSCOM in association with AbsolutData Research and Analytics, released a report titled, ‘Marketing Analytics - An opportunity for India to Lead'. The report highlights how companies are increasingly using marketing analytics insights to gain competitive advantage in the market. With increased complexity in the current consumer environment, CMOs and business unit heads are utilizing marketing analytics for their strategic and tactical decision making.

Better purview

The report further highlights that India is at the cynosure for delivering analytics solutions, which are being used for post-mortem analysis to real-time decision making. India has a distinct advantage in delivering analytics with an abundant supply of 'trainable', cost effective analytics talent and players with extensive analytics delivery experience. The Indian marketing analytics industry is expected to grow from its present value of USD 200 Million to USD 1.2 Billion in 2020 at a CAGR of 25%.

Speaking about the report, Som Mittal, President, NASSCOM said, "Over the past few decades, the evolution in traditional media and the emergence of digital media has revolutionized the way products are sold to the customers. Marketing analytics play a pivotal role in helping marketers take informed data-driven decisions and effectively reach out to the audience. The marketing analytics industry is poised for exponential growth and India will be one of the foremost forces leading this revolution. This report is an effort to showcase potential of analytics to organizations, analytics players and prospective employees and will help pave the way for concerted effort to increase the usage."

Dr. Anil Kaul, CEO, AbsolutData, said, "This report is the first ever to explore the Marketing Analytics business opportunity. We thank NASSCOM for choosing us as their partner for this important initiative. As we went deep into our research efforts for this report, it reaffirmed our core faith at AbsolutData that Marketing Analytics is an exciting opportunity for Indian players and for India. Also, as we spoke with clients and thought leaders in the US and Europe, it became apparent that India has a leadership position and is well ahead of the curve in Marketing Analytics. Given that the industry is abuzz with Big Data, this report gains additional importance, since Marketing is one of the first functions to adopt big data into its daily functioning."

Support angles

The catalysts that can play a very important role are as follows-

• Talent: In the recent times, with deviating consumer mindset, the consumer landscape has changed greatly. The current talent pool which mainly consists of mathematicians/statisticians, have little insight into the consumer mindset required to personalize analytics. In addition to other skills like domain and consulting knowledge, players would also need additional skills, primarily consisting of computer science and psychology graduates. These will complement the requirements of data-mining and understanding the in-depth behavior of individuals and incorporate them into analytical models and tailoring solutions that cater to individual needs/preferences.
• Robust and advanced analytical techniques: With an exponential increase in the amount and velocity of data, implementation of advanced technological platforms to utilize complex and extensive algorithms to generate insights and develop analytical solutions is paramount.
• Industry Consolidation: The present marketing analytics domain is extremely complex and fragmented. The call of the hour is to consolidate analytical services and products under one roof and offer "one stop shop" to the clients, which in-turn would eventually lead to a highly competitive environment amongst similar sized companies.
• Government Support: Government will have to recognize analytics as the next big revenue stream after IT and support the rapid growth of the industry by setting up better academic institutions and programs for analytics to help the industry in its burgeoning talent requirement.

 

 

Indian angle

With the advent of myriad channels like Internet, mobile and social networking, there has been an explosion in the amount of information that a customer is exposed to in a short period. This has posed a challenge to organizations to create a homogenous customer experience across channels and communicate a unified value proposition effectively, and in a time bound manner. Such a situation creates an opportunity for analytics service providers and consultants to build on this need and develop quick, scalable and accessible solutions which can be implemented in the decision making process. Also, the solution scope will have to be applied enterprise-wide, across global regions.

Indian analytics players need to be competitive and scale operations to service global analytical demands. They need to build distinctive IP and productized solutions to obtain competitive advantage. Rigorous training programs and effective employee engagement programs should be set up for faster on-boarding and talent retention. Additionally, analytics players from India should come together to spread awareness among companies on the infinite benefits offered by analytics which will increase India's brand awareness and positioning globally.