Analytics and Big Data, and how it has started helping organizations today

When we say big data, the thing that first comes to mind is huge volume of data. Yes, in a nutshell that's true, it is huge volumes of data, but consider this as organizational data with volumes of both structured and unstructured data. This could be data from different databases, shop floor data, marketing data in excel or other formats, data coming in from social media or any other source.

With ERP applications now being adapted widely by organizations, companies have their day to day operations streamlined. Managers can get specific reports to view data as per their needs. However churning out a report from an ERP system is often a time consuming affair. ERP applications are extremely complex transaction processing systems and most of the ERP systems are great at getting data in rather than getting good information out.

Most of the reports pulled in from ERP systems are static reports considering a certain set of parameters. However a dynamic change in request of parameters or some other information is to be seen then considerable time and effort is spent by IT staff to compile and create the report which would fulfill the specific information request.

So in reality you have huge amount of data available, but it becomes cumbersome and at times difficult for top management to get a birds eye view of the data to make intelligent decisions. Management wants to spot trends say in production, quality related data, or want to spot trends in sales of a particular market over a period of time, which of the product line is performing best, which product is low on sales, how to spot trends to reverse this and boost sales. Most of this data is present in the organization, but there is no intelligent system showcasing this data in a visual format with the flexibility to choose parameters on the fly and correlate them with other parameters to spot insights and trends.

This is where the gap in information can be filled in with a good business intelligence and analytics solution. Most BI solutions provide a single platform to extract and prepare the data for businesses to create intelligent visualizations and analytics on the same. Irrespective of the data source, a robust BI solution implementation would involve creating a multidimensional OLAP based cube which forms a base to handle complex business queries and churning reports within a matter of seconds.

An organization can then create personalized dashboards suiting to the day to day information needs of managers from different departments and also for the top management. As we live in an information age where most of the information around us is available on our fingertips, then why should businesses not use the technology if it is available to create intelligent, fast, ready information to make the right business decisions, reduce costs and improve profitability.

Inflation woes and controlling price rise among few major concerns for the new Government

Ever since there has been a comprehensive mandate for the new government with absolute majority, there has been positive sentiment among the people. Most of the businessmen are happy and confident on markets improving, slack industries reviving and better business opportunities on the horizon.

Sometimes I think what is the common man thinking or hoping most. Some of the most important factors that our earlier government couldn't address at best were price rise, large scale corruption, bureaucracy, infrastructure problems to name a few. One of the reasons for such an overwhelming mandate is probably hope winning over odds, hope for a better economy, better standard of living.

The common man hopes that Modi Sarkar would implement some major policy changes and decisions to improve their lives. One of the major challenges now faced by new government is the price rise and inflation.
India's wholesale prices grew 7.52 % in November last year, vegetable prices grew 95.25 % in November as compared to 2012 and onion prices shot up to 190%.

Moreover the weak start in Monsoon this year will only add to the difficulty, with even Modi suggesting some tough steps might need to be taken to revive economy. Some analysts expect onion price to rise up to  Rs.100 till October 2014 due to a unpredictable and low rainfall this year.

Some analysts also say our fiscal deficit is high which only add to the challenges. In such a scenario the most common step is to increase interest rates to check inflation. However, as a result companies hurt as borrowings would reduce and this would take a hit on their profitability.

This in turn slows growth and eventually the economy.

We are hoping that Modi government would keep a check on the price inflation, also keeping in mind the economy growth. I am in much anticipation to see what decisions the new government makes. Till then the common man can only wait and hope for the best.