Industry news

In recent years the importance of streamlining businesses, uncovering hidden revenue and growing a company has become ever more apparent. The ways in which businesses tackle these issues has therefore evolved and adapted to what is needed from the data available; which could crudely be summarised as ‘minimum input, maximum output’.

EXISTING BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE AND ANALYTICS

Business intelligence and analytics play a huge role today in many business, be it retail, corporate or even the NHS. An infinite amount is available, yet remains wholly redundant until sense can be made of it and information extracted using business intelligence and analytics. As David Parcell of Verint highlights: “with technology now available to consolidate and analyse large disparate datasets, the contact centre can become the organisation’s front line in the fight to turn data into actionable insight.”

Gary Angel, President of Semphonic, points out that the issue experienced by many using early business intelligence and analytics that use only a small set of key metrics (such as Site Conversion Rate, Total Visits Trend etc.) is that the reports deliver neither understanding nor actionability. The data set of the report spans the entire site and is essentially useful for looking at the population of the site at any given time, as opposed to specific parts of the site and the reasons behind how long the visitor stays, or why they leave, therefore offering very little in terms of how organisations can maximise their output.

WHY BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE AND ANALYTICS?

Convergys, a Cincinnati based organisation dealing with smart revenue solutions, use analytics extensively for customer solutions. John Georgesen, Senior Director of Analytics, Convergys Corporation highlights the need for analytics: “In today’s world of customer demands, companies are facing increasing pressure to enable more holistic yet simplified interaction channels; in this environment, business analytics really takes centre stage. By integrating and analysing all data available, businesses are better able to provide services that customer’s want, in the way they want them.”

CASE STUDIES

Business intelligence and analytics play a particularly useful role for retail companies, as the well-known saying goes ‘the customer always knows best’. Information derived from data can give organisations a better understanding of how they are perceived by the end customer as well as what to do to improve performance.

Among the many retail companies already profiting from the correct use of business intelligence and analytics is JD Williams, a £719 million internet and catalogue home shopping company. In recent years they have seen internet sales grow to 46% of annual turnover, thus creating new and exciting opportunities to transform the customer experience. Neil McGowan, CIO of JD Williams, explains, “The online channel offers the chance to capture not only what the customer has purchased online, but what they have looked at, which products they have put in the basket and then failed to purchase, or items they have searched for that are out of stock. With this level of insight, JD Williams can transform the relevance of customer offer to transform the buying experience.”

JD Williams found the solution for capturing online customer level insight in 2009 with Celebrus Technologies. The software could capture clickstream information and incorporate that data within the Teradata TCRM system creating a customer data hub to support ongoing marketing campaigns. Since the pilot roll out of Celebrus Technologies, JD Williams has rolled it out across all of its online brands.

Business intelligence and analytics have also found their place throughout many trusts and projects within the NHS. Scarborough Acute NHS Trust required a tool to process data from different systems into far more manageable information for its clinicians, managers and consultants to make reports to aid day-to-day decision making, improve clinical care and ultimately lower mortality rates. They already had an established relationship with Trustmarque, who were approached to help them find solution. The answer came in Qlikview. They proved the perfect solution for the Scarborough Acute NHS Trust due to the flexible pricing options according to the budget available, the customisable demo of the software, the induction and training courses provided to ensure best practice, and the adaptability of the software with its capability to create multiple bespoke dashboards.

FUTURE OF BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE AND ANALYTICS

The need for business intelligence and analytics is evident, however, the bar is constantly being raised and the markets and spaces are ever-changing. How will business intelligence and analytics remain relevant?

Stewart Hill, Director of Product Marketing ClickSoftware predicts that business intelligence is heading towards real-time, and not just in the contact centre or dispatch centre. The use of tablet PCs and smartphones is making real-time dashboards available out in the field –thus driving immediate efficiency improvements as the data can be reacted to there and then.

Subhash Gaitonde, Programme Director from MindTree’s Data & Analytics Solutions (DAS) practice, sees the next generation of business intelligence and analytics as being as real-time as possible and as accessible as possible via mobile, whilst drawing in the new-generation channels like social media and exploring their relevance to business and spheres of influences, and incorporating new data types (such as geo-spatial, machine data, location data, RFIDs, sentiment, social, streaming etc).

With the rise of ‘big data’ organisations are striving to become far more dynamic, innovative and profitable. The marriage of big data to business intelligence and analytics will lead to a marked change in corporate culture and produce numerous next generation models to help businesses harness the power hiding within their data.

The Superyacht Group is looking to expand into three new market segments with the help of Netsuite Cloud services.

The Superyacht Group has employed Netsuite Cloud’s services for the company’s sales, marketing and financial operations. The streamlining and consolidation afforded by the cloud will result in accurate, real-time financial and customer information, thereby increasing The Superyacht Group’s efficiency and productivity.

The Superyacht Group Strategy director Pedro Müller highlighted the benefits of using cloud services such as being able to spot trends and measure performance, "[…] in addition, we now get invoices out in minutes, compared to weeks, and we cut our receivables backlog by 70 percent thanks to improvements to our financial processes. The productivity of our sales representatives has increased by as much as 80 percent due to NetSuite."

Capita has raised £290m of funds in preparation for an acquisition period to try and win government contracts.

The company is currently in numerous talks which it hopes to close in the coming months. Capita has already this year shelled out £91m on acquisitions and will potentially spend just as much before the end of this year, with a particular focus on SME acquisitions.

Capita is looking to win contracts worth between £300m and £5bn which would deal with benefit systems and a nationwide contract with the emergency services.

Capita has won £900m of work so far this year, compared with £2bn for the whole of 2011, and was confident of hitting full-year organic revenue growth expectations of about 3 per cent. “We just happen to be going through a period where there is a lot going on and rather than letting the debt increase further we’d rather raise equity,” said Paul Pindar chief executive of Capita.

Infor has partnered with Amazon Web Services to deliver the Infor10 Business Services Cloud to companies across the globe.

Infor will use the infrastructure-as-a-service capabilities of Amazon to provide its CRM, EAM and ERP services to customers via the cloud.

Jim Plourde, VP cloud operations at Infor said “One of the beauties of having these environments in the cloud is that they can be deployed in minutes, used for a temporary purpose, and taken down very quickly.”

The partnership will free up Infor from its geographical locations and allow the company to establish itself across the continents.

The Guardian has reported today that Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude is expected to announce plans to increase the ability of government departments to share private citizen data.

Blair’s 2007 proposal to amend the Data Protection Act in the name of efficiency was met with strong opposition from privacy and civil liberties campaigners. Francis Maude’s latest proposal plans to increase the ability for departments to share data, in order to make it easier for government and public-sector organisations to share confidential information supplied by the public.

The proposal has encouraged the Information Commissioner's Office to produce a Data Sharing Code of Practice, explaining that personal data can only be shared between organisations if it is used for "the prevention or detection of crime; the apprehension or prosecution of offenders; the assessment or collection of tax or duty".

Essex County Council has just embarked on the first phase of implementing a new speech recognition solution.

Eckoh Plc, a provider of speech recognition and payment solutions, and Azzurri Communications, a provider of managed communications services won the contract with Essex County Council, with Eckoh developing and implementing the solution.

Essex County Council has switched to speech recognition technology in a bid to reduce call waiting times, free up contact centre agents and achieve cost savings for the Council which services 1.4 million people.

“What is paramount to Essex Council is the delivery of first class customer service to all our residents in the most cost efficient manner,” said Robert Overall, deputy chief, Essex County Council.

Tech Mahindra and Mahindra Satyam yesterday announced that they have signed a Global Framework Agreement with CA Technologies, a global IT management and security software and solutions company.

The new partnership is aimed at building a business model where shared and managed services can be provided to new and existing customers through a joint and strategic approach, and has been in the pipeline since 2012.

“It is a moment of pride for me as two majors of the IT industry partner to offer superior service offerings for our joint customers. This relationship will provide a platform to co-invest in creating business solutions together to meet next generation needs of global CxOs. This arrangement is closely aligned with our strategy of building an ecosystem of like-minded partners”, said CP.Gurnani, CEO, Mahindra Satyam.

Tech Mahindra and Mahindra Satyam, together with CA Technologies, provide turnkey cloud computing services based on CA Technologies tools. This agreement further creates a growth engine that will make a viable business model to respond to the needs of the market at competitive prices.

Ten outsourcing businesses have been shortlisted to deliver the government’s new Personal Independence Payments (PIP) scheme. PIP is a new benefit that will replace the Disability Living Allowance (DLA) in April 2013, with a target of delivering 20% cost reductions in efficiency.

The government are taking a multisourcing approach, as there will be four regional contracts as well as one national lot up for grabs.

Controversially, French firm Atos have been shortlisted, despite the previous criticism over the deliverance of the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) project. Other shortlisted companies include outsourcing specialists Serco and Capita, global security company G4S and Ingeus Deloitte,

Conversely, A4e, the back to work training agency, have not been shortlisted, pending an investigation by the Department for Work and Pensions for fraud.

The total net worth of the contracts is expected to be around £300 million to £1 billion. The shortlist will be officially confirmed on 30th April, subject to a ten day cooling off period.

Indian IT services provider, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has reported a 24% increase in sales and over 20% increase in staff in the last financial year.

Becaming the first Indian IT firm to post over $10 billion in annaual sales revenue, TCS posted a profit of $2.2 billion. The firm also increased their workforce by 39,969, taking their toal to 238,583 employees.

Aj oy Mukherjee, head of global human resources said: “With business demand continuing to be robust, we have made 43,600 offers on campuses for trainees to join us from the second quarter of this fiscal year.”

“Our efforts to increase retention by engaging with our employees and offering them a progressive career path are paying dividends with attrition rates falling further.”

A survey has revealed that most UK consumers would cease business with or leave an organisation that lost personal data.

The survey by Canon looked at customers in the UK, France and Germany and, on average, 76% of 4,000 customers would leave. The UK had the highest with 80%.

Respondents would be most likely to leave if their bank details were lost, followed by other personal data such as passwords and personal records.

The survey follows reports that 87% of UK businesses admitted they would be unable to identify data breaches within the 24 hour timeframe proposed in new EU legislation.