Business Intelligence, Datawarehousing ... the whole 9 yards

One would assume that these tools would rapidly grow, given ones own experience in implementing some of these. I believe that the current swell of analytics is still only at the surface, at least in telcos. Banks and insurance firms are well up the curve on this area, which would be understandable. Some of the industry dynamics of extreme competition and the low switching cost between products is making banks go the whole hog with regard to BI tools. It is a testament to the need & utility & complexity of such tools that has led SAS to create its BICC (BI Competence Center) to facilitate clients in their BI forays/journeys. This raises in my mind the question as to whether a BI implementation should be led by the warehousing partner or the Data mining partner, each would come with a very different approach indeed.

But the real power of analytics does lie in Telcos, given the extensive and vast data that lies in here. A true in depth implementation of an analytics solution, right from warehousing to mining, could change the entire rule of the game in this industry. This wonderful article speaks out issues close to my own heart and probably voices some of the concerns that these lips often speak of, but none really listen to - which, if one agrees with the article, is what one can expect - tautological circularity (pardon the brief digression). The headline reads as "The secret to being better at BI than others – not just being like others – lies in actually knowing what one is doing and thus what else is needed in order to further drive the business". Now isn't that so absolutely accurate! Another brilliant insight into the current state of BI adoption within telcos, its flaws and the need for a dedicated senior level BI team is brought out in the initiatives taken in the Middle East area as documented here. Most telcos and probably firms end up making the errors spoken of in this short article, viz. spending more time generating reports than using them to make decisions. It would indeed be naive of Indian telcos to not take a leaf from these lessons and give BI the teeth it needs in organizations to truly provide information to enable transformational leadership to engage the organization.

One of the easier starting points of any BI implementation should probably be the budgeting-dashboards like Host Analytics provides. This would be of relevance and need across the organization and giving increasing cost cutting pressures, the advantages of adoption of a tool that enables effective transparency would not be missed out by decision makers. Yet another opportunity is being exploited by Rockwell, which is using BI tools to enable online predictive monitoring of issues - the same can easily be integrated into most current call center applications, without having to invest in, or wait for miracle-complex-total solutions!

The concept of MDM (Master Data Management) is getting focus from the B-Eye network, with the research they are conducting & opening for sponsorship. It would behoove serious Indian telco's to get onto this bandwagon at the early stages with senior management involved directly in the same, to leverage the potential of BI through its vendors.

Also, the cost structure of a BI implementation would need to cover post implementation costs too as this article points out. It would seem that SAS once again is the leader of the pack and/or is definitely has one hell of a PR company managing its public face in news articles.