Business Analytics In India

Business Intelligence and Analytics in India 1
Business Intelligence and Analytics in India
Growth, Trends and Challenges
Susan Philipose and Tushar Kumar

Abstract
Increasing amount of data and emerging technologies have triggered the growth of the
worldwide analytics Industry. This growth can also be seen in India with old players starting a
new domain called business analytics and many new showing up. It has now become a known
fact that analytics can boost the Indian economy, thus making it essential to identify the
challenges faced, ongoing trends and growth drivers of the industry.
Biography
Tushar Kumar - Student DCE India, Tusharkumar101@gmail.com
Susan Philipose - Manager CSITM, IIM Bangalore, Susanp@iimb.ernet.in

Business Intelligence and Analytics
Business Analytics refer to the use of advanced tools and statistical techniques on the historical
as well as real time data, which may be structured or unstructured, to investigate past
performances and develop new business models to facilitate the growth and management of the
organization. While traditional BI was only about dashboards, standard reports and Ad hoc,
business analytics involves optimization, predictive modeling, forecasting and much more. It
finds applications in all industries and functions including financial/insurance services, Retail
and consumer products, healthcare, telecom, governance and technology to provide analytics
services such as text, web, network, mobile, and social media. Here, they will be studied together
as BI&A (business intelligence and analytics).
BI&A has evolved from BI&A 1.0 to BI&A 3.0. While 1.0 is based on DBMS based structured
content, 2.0 is about web based unstructured content. The former used mainly for RDBMS, data
warehousing, OLAP, data mining and statistical analysis and the latter for social media and
network, web analytics and intelligence, opinion mining and information retrieval and extraction.
BI&A 3.0 deals with mobile and sensor based content location aware, person centered or context
relevant analysis (Chen, Chiang & Storey, 2012).
With revenue of $13.1 billion in 2012, BI&A is evolving as the fourth-largest software segment
accounting for a 6.8 percent increase from 2011 revenue of $12.8 billion. Despite tough macro-
conditions and world-wide currency crisis, the market is expected to reach $17.1 billion by
2016(Gartner, 2013). As more and more data is generated, organizations are realizing the need to
spend in analytics to improve their decision making thus acting as a driver for the growth of
industry.
BI&A in India - current scenario
Geographically speaking, Asia/Pacific accounted for about 8 percent of the total global revenue
of the BI industry in 2010 with America being the world leader securing 52 percent (North
America - 48 and Latin America- 4) followed by Europe which had 36 percent of the market
share. Asia/pacific is emerging fast registering a growth of 23 percent from 2009 to 2010 in
comparison to Americas which grew by 17 percent (Sommer&Sood, 2011).
India a major player in this region hasmany companies operating in the analytics industry.
Bangalore, the IT hub of India has 29 percent of the companies followed by Delhi, Hyderabad
and Mumbai (Analytics India Magazine, 2012).These companies provide analytics services in
various areas such as IT/ITES, consulting, market research, media and advertising, financial and
human resource.

Indian analytics companies including Musigma, Inductis and Fractal are performing well with
Musigma in the lead providing analytics services to at least 75 companies in fortune 500(Gage,
2011).Indian IT companies have also realized the opportunities in the analytics industry and
started investing in technology and workforce.
The current Indian Business intelligence software industry generates revenues of $122 million
spread across the 3 major sub segments – BI Platforms, Analytic applications and Performance
management, and CPM Suites. American research and analytics company Gartner predicts that
Indian Business intelligence software revenue will reach to $140 million in 2014, a 16 percent
increase from 2013 revenues (Gartner, 2013).The fact that this industry will be a major
contributor to the Indian economy makes it a necessity to keep a track on the growth of the
industry and provide solutions to boost it.
Challenges
Big data is influencing organizations at all level which are struggling to analyze and transform
the data into some usable form. Though it is a major challenge to these organizations, it is
helping the growth of analytics industry which is providing with customized solutions and
services in return. But for the sustenance of the industry, it is important to identify the challenges
that it face.
Data collection and availability
With the advent of internet data collection and transmission became much easier but the
questions arise on the credibility, relevancy and sufficiency of data. According to a survey by
analytics company domo, only 25 percent of the CEOs agree that they have the information they
need in their reports and less than 15 percent of business leaders find their reports reliably up to
date. Many analysts also say that there decision making capabilities are strongly affected due to
unavailability of reliable, timely and relevant information (Eddy, 2013). This coupled with the
inadequate infrastructure makes the work of Indian analysts a tough job.
Lack of people
Gartner report says that 4.4 million IT jobs will be created globally to support the big data but
the same report also mentions that only one third will be filled(Gartner, 2012). The industry will
suffer a major set-back due to the availability of the data scientists in the coming time. The same
issue is also reflected from another report from McKinsey & Company which predicts that there
will be shortage of about 140,000 to 190,000 people by 2018 creating a 50 to 60 percent gap
between the supply and demand of people with deep analytical talent(McKinsey, n.d.). The low
mean employee count of 76 of the Indian analytics companies clearly indicates the urgency of
the problem (Analytics India Magazine, 2012). If the industry has to grow this issue needs to be
addressed.

Domain Specific Education
Indian education system is reforming with more advanced and professional courses showing up
which were nowhere in the picture few years back. But this is not in concordance with data
science. While about 15 schools in US offer Masters in Analytics and another 20 in business
analytics (some of which have recently started), no such extensive course is available in India
(Institute for Advanced Analytics).Some notable b-schools like ISB and IIMs are offering
certificate courses but with low intake (Gupta, 2012). Post Graduate courses for data analysis are
also emerging in a lot of European universities which set an example for the Indian Institutes.
Lack of solution verticals
Analytics industry has made its mark on every segment of the industry be it retail, finance, risk,
marketing, supply chain or pricing. New segments such as fraud, discount, talent and behavioral
analytics are also emerging. Indian analytics in its evolving stage relies mainly on retail, BFSI
and utility.Healthcare and governance due to lack of skilled force are already lagging. Another
challenge is to provide services like model development, consulting and proprietary IP based
services .Cloud based services as well as text analytics alsorequire some time to evolve (Vohra,
2013).
Highly-Fragmented Market
The Indian analytics industry is highly fragmented having large number of small vendors with
most operating on revenues less than USD 10 million. The low scale investment is preventing
them from expanding their portfolios and increasing their workforces. This is also restricting
them from high-budget clients due to lack of technology, expertise and most importantly name in
the market
Other Challenges
There are other issues as well which need consideration like SME’s still relying on traditional
methods of decision making due to lack of awareness and confidence in the industry.
Communication gap between tool – developers and end users needs to be eradicated so that
developers have a better idea of the behavior and understanding of the tool user. Migration to
others countries due to better pay is also a problem to be looked into.
Trends
The Indian IT-BPO sector touched new heights when it crossed aggregate revenues of USD 100
billion in fiscal year 2012, generating direct employment for over 2.8 million people
(NASSCOM, 2013). The effects could also be seen in the analytics industry. Some of the key
trends of the analytics industry are
Industries
Thoughthe Indian Business analytics is new in the market, it has spread its roots across several
industries like retail, banking, insurance, telecom etc. It is finding applications in areas including

sales analytics, marketing analytics, risk analytics, supply chain analytics, equity and finance
analyticsetc.
Mobile BI
Due to widespread availability of smart phones and tablets, the number of analyst accessing BI
reports and dashboards through mobile devices or tablets is increasing. Due to high competition,
Indian organizations are trying to invent new ways to provide their workforce mobility and
access to data anywhere and anytime thus promoting mobile BI. Tools like Cyfe, IBM’s Cognos,
Jaspersoft and Microstrategy are readily available for mobile platforms (Silicon India). A recent
study published by Dresner Advisory Services also indicates that users have aggressive plans for
adopting mobile BI through 2015 (Dresner Advisory Services). Though setbacks like security
and implementation will be there but Mobile BI is expected to perform well and will be adopted
by more enterprises in coming years.
Cloud BI
Cloud Business Intelligence includes applications whose data are hosted on virtual networks
such as internet and can be accessed in form of dashboards, KPIs and other tools. It has both
financial benefits like cost reduction as well as non-financial like improved management,
reduced redundancy, shorter access time (Menon and Rehani, n.d.). A number of smaller
companies in India which could not previously afford to build huge server farms to process mass
amounts of data are turning to providers like Amazon and Google to support large-scale analysis
efforts which offers them unlimited processing power and storage thus allowing any business to
cater to its increasing information stack while keeping the IT related costs under control (Gurjar
and Rathore). Cloud computing also has similar issues of security, speed of data access and
integration which are overpowered by increased flexibility, reduced cost and increased storage
capacity, thus making it superior over on premise servers.
Predictive Analytics
Predictive analytics though a part of BI family is emerging as a distinct new software sector. A
number of organizations have already implemented or are in the process. As ChanduMukkavalli,
director at deloitte consultancy frame it “ The key is to not debate whether predictive analytics is
right for your organization, but how to implement it, and how to define the evolution process for
the organization embracing the change.”(Mukkavalli, n.d.) Industries are successfully integrating
various predictive models with business models with high ROI. It is gaining importance in many
Indian organizations which are exploring the possibility of improving their decision making.
Data Visualization
Data visualization makes the process of decision making easier by presenting statistics and
figures in form of consolidated, illustrated and interactive graphics. Many new companies
including Gramener, Visual-Data, Edifixio have emerged in last 2-3 years in the Indian Data
Visualization market. These are offering visualization platforms, custom tools and services. In

the coming years the segment is expected to evolve with more companies emerging and more
services offered.
Social Media Analytics
A comScore report shows that an average Indian spent 25 percent of his/her online time on social
networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn (Comscore). This fact has not
gone unnoticed by Analytics Industry. In fact, Social media is one of the most widely adopted
segments of the industry. It is not only useful in maintaining relationship with customers but also
to develop understandings of market trends, customer preferences, recommendation systems,
lead generation, Identifying Influential factors, product marketing and much more. As the
number of social media users is increasing daily, the demand for social media analytics is also
increasing.
Growth Drivers and Opportunities
The Indian Business analytics market is growing at a phenomenal rate over the last few years
registering a growth rate of 25 percent annually and it is expected to increase in future. This
raises the question that what are the factors that are helping the industry to grow. Some of them
are discussed here.
As already discussed the Indian IT industry has touched new soaring heights and this has a
prolific impact on the analytics industry. The Big Indian IT market has set up a platform for the
analytics business. The reputation of being the IT outsourcing capital of the world is also
working in favor in getting off-shore analytics business. Online/E-Commerce websites are
emerging at a tremendous rate and they are turning their attention to social media and web
analytics. Companies like Flipkart and Yebhi are already using recommendation systems
according to the customer profile. As Indian IT industry will grow, it will take analytics along
with it.
Second factor supporting the growth of Indian Analytics Industry is the availability of advanced
tools. Modern user friendly and interactive tools have made the task of data analysts much easier
by providing them with better visual interfaces, figures, dashboards, dials and gauges,
geographic maps, time-series charts, spark lines, heat maps, tree maps and
detailed bar, pie and fever charts(Rouse, 2012). Relationships which earlier went unnoticed are
now easier to derive.
Thirdly, data storage cost in the recent times have gone drastically down making it possible for
the businesses to store and collect more data. In the duration of 10 years from 2000 to 2010, the
cost per GB has gone from USD $20 to USD $0.07 i.e. almost reduced by 300 times (Mkomo,
n.d.). An IBM report claims 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is created every day and 90 percent of
the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone (IBM). This is again
promoting the BI&A industry as organizations are relying on them to provide with solutions as
well as services to manage this “BIG DATA”.

Next is the increasing awareness of the advantages of the Business Analytics among the top
professionals of the industry. They have now started to use BI&A as business platform and now
started to take decision on factual basis which earlier were based out of experience. A survey
from Gartner even shows that improved decision making is one of the top success drivers of the
BI industry (Gartner, 2011).
Another factor aiding the growth is Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). As per PWC’s Global 100
software leaders report, SaaS accounted for about 4.9 percent of the total software revenues in
2011 and a steady and significant shift towards SaaS is expected in coming years (Information
Week). Organizations now find it easier to outsource their analytics work and take decisions
based on the final reports from SaaS providers.
There are other factors as well like mass acceptance of social networking, support for extreme
data performance including in-memory technology, social content analytics and emergence of
mid-size markets.
Discussion and Conclusion
In this study, we examined the current scenario, challenges, trends and growth drivers of the
Indian BI&A industry. The Indian Business Analytics industry is growing at a tremendous rate
and will become a major economic contributor of the Indian GDP and will also generate large
scale employment. More organizations will realize the benefits and will show their interest in
analytics.
Data collection and availability will be a major challenge due to poor infrastructure of the
country. Quality and reliability of data will also be a matter of concern. Job generation will be
there but only one-third of these will be filled due to non-availability of trained data scientists.
Lack of solution verticals, market fragmentation and absence of specialized courses will also be
challenging for the industry.
With time cloud BI, social media analytics, mobile BI will expand and segments like healthcare,
BFSI will draw more attention. The booming IT industry will act as the key reason for the
growth of analytics industry. Advanced user-friendly tools will make analysts work simpler.
While the amount of data will increase due to decrease in storage costs, it will also make
business for the analytics firms.
If the challenges encountered are properly tackled and the same growth rate continues, the future
outlook of the Indian Business Intelligence and Analytics industry is highly positive.
References
Analytics India Magazine. 2012. Analytics India Companies Study 2012. Retrieved From
http://analyticsindiamag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Analytics-India-Companies-Study-
2012.pdf

Comscore. 2013. India digital future in focus 2013 : Key insights and digital trends shaping the
online Indian space.
Chen, H., Chiang, R.H.L., and Storey, V.C.2012.”BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE AND
ANALYTICS: FROM BIG DATA TO BIG IMPACT”, MIS Quarterly (32:4), pp. 1165-1168.
Dresner Advisory Services. 2013. Mobile Computing / Mobile Business Intelligence Market
Study. Retrieved from
http://www.fairsquare.it/Media/Default/Docs/BigData/2013_Dresner_Mobile_Computing_Mobil
e_BI.pdf
Eddy, N. (2013, September 30). Business Intelligence Data Collection a Challenge for
CEOs.Eweek.Retrieved from http://www.eweek.com/small-business/business-intelligence-
collection-a-challenge-for-ceos.html
Gage, D. (2011, December 29). Mu Sigma Lands Big Money for Big Data.The Wall Street
Journal. Retrieved from
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970203899504577126720815824762?mg=r
eno64-
wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB1000142405297020389950457712
6720815824762.html
Gartner. 2013. Gartner Says Worldwide Business Intelligence Software Revenue to Grow 7
Percent in 2013. Retrieved from http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2340216
Gartner. 2013. Gartner Forecasts Indian Business Intelligence Software Revenue to Reach $140
Million In 2014. Retrieved from http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2611515
Gartner. 2012. Gartner Says Big Data Creates Big Jobs: 4.4 Million IT Jobs Globally to Support
Big Data By 2015. Retrieved from http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2207915
Gartner. 2011. Gartner Forecasts Global Business Intelligence Market to Grow 9.7 Percent in
2011. Retrieved from http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/1553215
Gupta, B. (2012, August 8). Top 10 Analytics Courses in India. Analytics India Magazine.
Retrieved from
http://analyticsindiamag.com/top-6-analytics-courses-in-india/
Gurjar, Y.S. and Rathore, V.S. 2013. Cloud Business Intelligence – Is What Business Need
Today. International Journal of Recent Technology and Engineering.(1:4)
IBM.(n.d.). What is big data? Retrieved from http://www-01.ibm.com/software/in/data/bigdata/
Information Week. (2013, May 24). Retrieved from

Business Intelligence and Analytics in India
10
http://www.informationweek.in/informationweek/news-analysis/179939/social-media-mobility-
analytics-cloud-redefine-indian-software-industry-pwc-report?utm_source=referrence_article
Institute for Advanced Analytics. (n.d.).Survey of graduate programs in Analytics. Retrieved
from
http://analytics.ncsu.edu/?page_id=4184
McKinsey & Company. (n.d.) Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and
productivity. Retrieved from
http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/business_technology/big_data_the_next_frontier_for_innovat
ion
Menon, L. and Rehani, B. (n.d.). Business Intelligence on the Cloud: Overview and Use Cases.
Tata Consultancy Services.
Mkomo.(n.d.). A history of storage costs. Retrieved from http://www.mkomo.com/cost-per-
gigabyte
Mukavalli, C. (n.d.). Predictive analytics: A shift from traditional BI. Silicon Indian BI
City. Retrieved from http://bi.siliconindia.com/bi-expert/Predictive-analytics-A-shift-
from-traditional-BI-eid-51.html
NASSCOM. 2013. Indian IT-BPO industry. Retrieved from
http://www.nasscom.in/indian-itbpo-industry
Rouse, M. (2012, May). Data Visualization. Search Business Analytics. Retrieved from
http://searchbusinessanalytics.techtarget.com/definition/data-visualization
Silicon India. (2012, July 19). 10 Mobile BI apps for better Decision making. Retrieved From
http://bi.siliconindia.com/news/10-Mobile-BI-apps-for-better-Decision-making--nid-
123928.html
Sommer,D., and Sood, B.2011.”Market Share Analysis: Business Intelligence, Analytics and
Performance Management, Worldwide, 2010”, Gartner Dataquest Research
Vohra, G. (2013, August 5). Portrait of analytics industry in 2012 and the future.Analytics India
Magazine. Retrieved from http://analyticsindiamag.com/portrait-of-analytics-market-in-2012-
and-the-future/

Business Analytics In India

Recomendados

Recomendados

Más contenido relacionado

La actualidad más candente

La actualidad más candente (20)

Similar a Business Analytics In India

Similar a Business Analytics In India (20)

Business Analytics In India