July, 2014

As You Like It: Make BI/Analytics Deliver

7 pitfalls to avoid

Make BI/Analytics Deliver

Aaum Confidential Page 2 7

Billion needs vs Gazillion products

There is a plethora of basic and advanced analytical BI solutions out in the

market. According to Gartner, the market for BI and Analytics platforms will

remain one of the fastest growing software markets.

The Advanced and Predictive Analytics (APA) software market is projected grow from $2.2B in 2013 to $3.4B in 2018, attaining a 9.9% CAGR in the forecast period1. IDC commented that simplified APA tools that provide less flexibility than standalone statistical model tools yet have more intuitive graphical user interfaces and easier-to-use features are fuelling business analysts’ adoption.

A.T. Kearney forecasts global spending on Big Data hardware, software and services will grow at a CAGR of 30% through 2018, reaching a total market size of $114B2.

“But which solution best serves the

needs of a business?” - An important question

with which a number of decision makers are

struggling today.

A big part of the business runners equate simple reporting tools with advanced

analytical tools. Sometimes businesses opt for highly advanced tools from the

biggest solution providers in the hope that the solution will definitely benefit

their profits. They fail to realize the costs involved in implementing such

solutions without doing in depth analysis of their requirements and the tools’

offerings; and end up disturbing the balance between their business

operations. They land themselves in a catch 22 situation and despite of healing

the old pain areas, they develop new ones.

2 http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2014/06/24/roundup-of-analytics-big-data-business-intelligence-forecasts-

and-market-estimates-2014/

Make BI/Analytics Deliver

Aaum Confidential Page 3 7

Exhibit A: The 7 Questions to ponder while opting for Analytics

Whether you are a manufacturer or a marketer, all the businesses are now undergoing a transformation,

away from traditional tactics to analytics. From getting insights into streamlining production, reducing time-

to-market and increasing product quality to financial services firms seeking to upsell clients, analytics is now

essential for any business looking to stay competitive. Here are the 7 BIG questions which needs to be

addressed before going forward with a BI Solution.

1. Is it exactly your product? The businesses need to understand that the tool which they are opting or have opted, should exactly be the

one required by them. There are tons of tools available and marketed by the big guns in the software

industry. Sometimes they are so sophisticated that you don’t even know how they can be used efficiently. So

if businesses get stuck with such irrelevant solutions, they become an injured race horse, who has to run

despite all the pain.

2. Is the investment giving returns? Some businesses don’t get bothered with the amount they spend on activities like marketing and sales

promotions but when an investment goes bad in enterprise level solutions, the businesses become unable to

stop the bleeding cash out of the operations. So a check on the ROI becomes an integral part.

3. Is it customisable? The next problem can be the customization. A business has already in place some system which keeps record

of the transactions, but when it is in need for something more sophisticated and intelligent but easy to handle

at the same time, customisation becomes a problem. Not every solution is capable of sitting on top of the

existing platforms.

4. Is the storage/access-to-data good enough? With the fast paced developments in technology, Cloud storage has come into the picture where you don’t

need to actually store your data in physical disk drives but your solution provider does this for you on the

cloud. You can access anything and everything in real time. The thing to watch out here could be the hassles

which one can face while accessing data.

5. Does it have advanced analytical capabilities? If a business is going for a simple reporting tool then anything with some basic features can do the job but

when there comes the question of in depth analysis of the data, then some tools lag behind the others in

terms of their data handling capabilities. With the amount of data created and stored today, there is certainly

a need for something with BIG Data handling capabilities and that too with ease.

6. Is there a dedicated support team? Not all the people in a business know every tiny bitty-bit of the solution implemented. And in such situations

one needs someone to train or to guide one through the technicalities. And if a dedicated support team is

there, then the tasks become easier. Almost all the big solution providers have support facilities through

phone, emails or personal chats but what matters here is the response time to a particular problem.

7. Is it easily scalable? Sometimes when a business opts for a solution, it works well till a particular level, but when a need arises to

implement the same across business domains or at other locations of the same business, it becomes a tedious

task to do so because not always every segment of a business functions the same way or captures data in the

same manner. So scaling the solution becomes important.

Make BI/Analytics Deliver

Aaum Confidential Page 4 7

A quick reality check:

Below is a checklist encompassing 15 criteria which are expected out of a good BI

Solution. You can give these parameters scores out of 5 (5 being the highest and 1

being the lowest) on the basis of importance these parameters holds in a BI Solution

in sync with your business and requirements

Give score only to those parameters which you consider relevant in your business

setup

Compute the Total Score

Divide the Total Score by the number of relevant features

Arrive at the Absolute Score

Let us understand this with help of a hypothetical product ‘Best BI’ which has

got the following ratings.

How does your current BI/analytics solutions fare against the questions in Exhibit A?

Make BI/Analytics Deliver

Aaum Confidential Page 5 7

Below is a table encompassing various capabilities of tools offered by some vendors:

Vendors/Products geniSIGHTS SAP (Crystal Reports)

IBM Cognos

Tableau Zoho Reports

Birst OBIEE Qlikview Jaspersoft

Information Delivery features

Ad Hoc Reporting Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Scheduled Alerts/ Alarms

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Customizable Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Dashboarding capabilities

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Ad Hoc Analysis Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Advanced Analytics Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

BIG Data Support Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Support Features

Email Support Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Phone Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Online Chat Yes Yes No Yes Yes No Yes No Yes

Free Trial Yes N/A Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Mobility Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Cloud Capability Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Deployment Mode SaaS, On premise, client Server

SaaS, On premise, client server

On premise, client server

On premise, client server

SaaS

On premise, client server

SaaS, On premise, client server

SaaS SaaS

User Levels As per requirements

Restricted Restricted Restricted Restricted Restricted Restricted Restricted Restricted

(DISCLAIMER: This table is based on the information available online)

In the above chart, the respondent doesn’t consider

parameter 9 (Phone) and 10(Online Chat) to be of

important factor in evaluating a BI solution in sync

with his business.

The Absolute Score of ‘Best BI’ is arrived at by

dividing the Total Score (40) by the number of

relevant parameters (13) is 3.08 which falls under

the OK category.

Likewise you can also compute your Absolute Score

and see where you are. On the basis of that you can

frame your further strategies to opt for a relevant

solution.

Make BI/Analytics Deliver

Aaum Confidential Page 6 7

Understanding GeniSIGHTS

Aaum’s geniSIGHTS is built in a way to scale from simple reporting to advanced analytical

solutions.

geniSIGHTS Advantage:

Extensible across Technologies, Platforms, Devices

Precanned advanced analytics solutions that fit common business needs

Report Generation at ease Interactive reports at affordable price User Levels: As required

geniSIGHTS is offered in three modes:

geniSIGHTS Reporting – basic customer

needs like reporting

geniSIGHTS Analytics – intermediate

requirements like reporting, data analysis

geniSIGHTS Analytics+ – advanced analytics like prediction, big data analytics, etc.

There is a wide gap

between too generic

and too specialized BI

solutions. The key here

is to decide what works

best for your business

setup.

Make BI/Analytics Deliver

Aaum Confidential Page 7 7

The need of the hour is not to have a bloated solution bundled with features that may not be desired. Such solutions would often be priced higher to justify the research, product development. The much desired solution is the one that would fit exactly to the requirements and would scale as the businesses mature; thereby significantly improving the ROI.

geniSIGHTS EXCEEDS the customer requirements.

AAUM Research and Analytics Private Limited Tel: +91 44 4203 4478 | Tel: +91 44 4201 7047 | Email: info@aaumanalytics.com | Web: www.aaumanalytics.com