Business Intelligence is "mission critical"

By siliconindia | Tuesday, 02 August 2011, 00:43 IST

Bangalore: Business Intelligence, in recent times has emerged as a $12 billion market, and almost all companies are using it to help their business acquire a better understanding of its commercial context. BI has bagged the top position in most of the company objectives that has to be met. The Business Intelligence Conference, organized by Siliconindia on 30th July, discussed the challenges, solutions and future of BI with top industry experts and leading-edge peers. Some of the best speakers made their presence felt, and the networking was of highest order. The event kick started with the inaugural keynote by Bhavish Sood, Research Director, Gartner, who shared his views on Business Intelligence. Bhavish explained the trends in the market of BI for the year of 2011-2014. Lack of self service, lack of visualization stands out to be the main problem with business industries. He said that the BI market demanded innovation, especially for the buyers. Bhavish summed drew attention on two major points - Standardization and Business Buying. He said that mega vendors will have 75 percent of the total BI platform by 2011.Business units will control at least 4 percent of total budget that is spent on BI. While Bhavish took us on a journey of market trends, we had another set of experts, who led us into a panel discussion about implementation of BI into work. The panel had top industry experts like Muthu Ranganathan, Director- EPM, Global Center of Excellence, SAP ; Venkata Phani Kumar Veluri, Head- MIS and BI- EWD, IBM Global Technology Services ; Sai Belaganti, Solution Architect, Dell Services ; and Bhavish pooled in to become the moderator for the panel. The delegates, as well as the panel members interacted among each other to give a better view regarding implementation of BI. "Forecasting is the key to implement BI into work," said Muthu. He also added that there should be focus on building BI Technologies. As Social Networking being the most hyped factor in the market, the next session addressed its importance in context to Business Intelligence. The session was taken over by Chandu Mukkavalli, Director, Deloitte, Deloitte Consulting Private Limited, who spoke about Social Network Analysis. He explained social relationship in context of networking theory. 15 percent of BI development will influence social decision making environment. The Power of social networking has grown so strong that even U.S. President Obama is also clinched to social networking sites in order to connect with people. The recent blockbuster movie Avatar, was also a rework after it went through the reviews of the viewers on social networking sites. Social intelligence is an important aspect, as it works on customer's expectation and will yield good results for the company. Chandu stressed on the importance of customer feedbacks. He said that listening channels, measuring feedbacks and measuring volumes are the main steps to convert social media into business profit. He addressed social media as a "Listening Post" for customers. The conference winded up on a conclusion that the business intelligence market is heating up. Well-established vendors are trying to throng on to this large market by getting others to fill in portfolio gaps, and thus we see a series of mergers absorbing some of the longer-standing independents. This is wonderful news to all BI vendors.

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