The Spread of Analytics

Analytics today can be very much associated with Karma – wonder why? Well it help us to evaluate past actions and to estimate the potential of future actions, so to make better decisions and adopt more effective strategies as organizations or individuals. Analytics allows us to take our decisions based on evidence and facts rather than myth, prejudice or anecdote.

 The World Wide Web is celebrating its 24th anniversary this year and not one can deny the revolution it has brought in our present day web analytics solutions. A number of key events in the web analytics industry and developmental milestones are part of an ongoing collective effort to make the internet a better place for a global community of users. Initially the use of analytics was very much limited as not

all had the data and system in places. However with every passing day, analytics has become an important part of a number of organizations owing to the increased availability, detail, volume and variety of data from the extensive use of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) throughout all facets of our lives. This aspect has definitely caught the media attention but can data alone reap a lot of benefits from analytics? Not particularly.

Another important yet less known factor that contributed to the growth of analytics is the broad list and effectiveness of techniques for data analysis. Also, the increased pressure on business and educational organizations to keep up with the growing world of data adds the third leg to the stool: data, techniques, need.

“In one of his articles, Adam Cooper quoted -“The diversity and flexibility of some of the techniques lined up under the analytics flag is evidenced by the numerous different applications of analytics: financial markets, sports analytics, econometrics, product pricing and yield maximization, fraud, crime detection, spam email filters, marketing, customer segmentation, organizational efficiency and even tracking the spread of infectious disease from web searches.”

Generating Financial Services Impact: Analytics

The financial industry today is facing a tough challenge dealing with maintaining profitability and addressing a host of new regulatory requirements and market changes. Banks and financial

services firms are moving towards big data, using insights from daily transactions, market feeds and customer records to transform their operations and build new business models. “A whopping 71%of banking and financial markets firms are now using big data and analytics in order to gain competitive advantage.” Analytics today has spread its wings across a wide range of banking and finance services, including retail, corporate and investment banking and even securities and commercial leasing and lending. The primary reasons are

• Risk reduction
• Customer growth is enhanced through cross-selling and up-selling
• Not only are the collection efforts optimized but also the legal regulations are met

Data Analytics: Fraud Prevention.

We all know that IT runs at the heart of every business in today’s world. With more and more business data piling up from internal and external sources, organizations tend to believe more on automated controls to both prevent and detect fraud. While analytics has enabled companies to organize data

in a more structured form for further analysis, it has been found that many organizations are not utilizing this to the best for preventing their business data from potential fraud. You must have heard of the famous proverb

– “Prevention is better than cure” – well analytics plays that role too and bars the occurrence of fraud.

Why Data Analytics?

Analytics, being an automated method, increases efficiency

• Multiple number of fraud tests can be repeated on the data for a detailed analysis
• Covers a wide range of data analysis across different departments and not only the conventional ones more chance of finding the irregularity
• Acts as a warning tool to prevent the fraud from actually occurring.

Marketing Analytics – Success through Analysis

The Internet has connected the businesses to the common mass at much faster speeds and lower costs than major traditional advertising methods. Simply having a Web presence and using the right keywords will drive search engine users to a website. Unfortunately, not everything has a positive effect.

With more and more brands joining the competition, the businesses start finding it difficult to cope.  Marketing analytics used along with big data will help many organizations gain insight into their clients' purchasing habits, properly evaluate their marketing performance and make more concrete marketing decisions. The evolution of Big Data has completely revolutionized the industry and enabled marketing executives have a better accessibility to internal as well as external information thereby making more informed decisions. These big data strategies include the following: 

• Customer sentiment and its analysis
• Consumer behavior in retail stores is monitored
• Open communication channels with clients
• Predictive analytics (to ensure on time product availability)
• Purchasing habits of the customers are tracked

The Future of Analytics – The Road Ahead

The heart of business analytics beats primarily with data.

It is what companies rely upon for their competitive advantage and it is becoming more and more important with each passing day with multiple enhancements in technology and increasing availability of analytical tools from hardware to software to data collection.

We are already in the third phase of data analytics –we’ve been through Analytics 1.0 and 2.0 and now we stand on the edge of Analytics 3.0. This new shift towards Analytics 3.0 is a resolve that applies data to a company’s offerings instead of just its operations and processes. What’s new? – Focus is on creating new products with tangible benefits rather than just helping the company building its strategies. The amount of data that is generated in the business world is doubling every year and the key today is to make one ready to this vast eruption of the volcano of data.

~Ankit Periwal Information Management PGDM 2014