With effective management of data becoming increasingly critical, the need for gathering, storing and analyzing it is also gaining momentum. In this scenario, business intelligence (BI) is being adopted by organizations that are looking at optimizing their data

The world is rapidly moving towards convergence and new business paradigms are fast evolving, breaking the traditional quantitative factors in corporate governance. With the fast evolution of 'collaborative commerce' (c-comm) optimizing the supply and pattern of distribution channels, a critical factor of data manageability, has come to the forefront. Effective data administration has always given companies a competitive edge over others and it is here that business intelligence (BI) comes into play, which stands as the foundation of c-comm.

BI can be defined as a broad category of applications and technologies for gathering, storing, analyzing, and providing access to data to help enterprise users make better business decisions.

ERP or BI?
When talking about data management, one tends to confuse between the variants in this sphere-Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and BI.

Sairaman Jagannathan, VP and Business Head-Business Solutions Division, Wipro said, “ERP is the backbone of an organi­zation, which enables smooth functioning on day-to-day basis. On the other hand, a BI solution is the brain, which gives insights into the organization by linking micro constituents into the larger picture. ERP applications are designed to serve large number of transactions which are short spanned and do not consume large system resources, while BI applications are designed for small number of queries.”

Pallavi Kathuria, Director-Server Business Group, Microsoft India, added, “By definition, ERP is a planning tool and BI is a solution focused on deriving intelligence from data within an organization to make it actionable by the business. The two may sound similar and do have areas where they overlap, but the purpose, the context and the 'IT maturity' of organizations for using these tools are very different.”

Discussing the primary reasons for the confusion between ERP and BI, Kathuria added, “ERP vendors now offer basic BI functionality within their products, as they realize that this is key for business users to use ERP to drive business decisions. But if an organization has multiple core systems, say like an ERP and a CRM, then the organization would need a true BI solution, which can extract data from both these systems, unify it and then provide the information to a business user in a fashion that is easy to understand and actionable.”

The Indian perspective
Commenting on the prospects of BI in India, Sailesh Deshmukh, VP-Business User Group, SAP India elaborated, “BI delivers the greatest immediate impact for Indian enterprises with instant RoI. The need for real-time information analysis and the ability of BI to respond accurately to the same with the need to adapt to changes in business environment and to make well-informed business decisions is giving it a boost in the Indian market.”

In the Indian context, sectors like IT, banking, telecom and manufacturing have been the early adopters of BI technology. While these verticals are expected to continue to lead the implementation, there is an enormous line of opportunity in other industries such as retail, financial services and insurance.

The overall BI market in India is at a nascent stage, with a huge up-tapped opportunity for vendors. BI can deliver on this promise if deployed successfully because it can improve decision making and operational efficiency, which in turn drives the topline and bottomline. Also, infor­mation generated from enterprise applications is at an all-time high and will continue to increase. BI platforms can turn that information into an asset on which better business decisions can be made.

Vendors also see embedded products as the ideal platform for catering to the burgeoning SMBs. Several vendors have been modifying or extending their product range, pricing and partner strategies to reach this key group.

The future
According to Gartner, worldwide BI platform revenue is forecasted to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.1 percent through 2012, to reach $7.7 billion in 2012. Analysts expect BI platform revenue to be less affected by an economic downturn than other technologies because of the high priority in which BI platforms are held by CIOs.

According to a report by AMR Research, it has been estimated that global spending on BI and ERP applications will be reaching $57.1 billion by the end of this FY with a growth rate of five to 10 percent.

Optimistic about the future of BI in India, Kathuria stated, “According to Gartner, the rapidly growing BI market in India underwent a growth of 35.6 percent in 2005-06. However, it is important to note that the Indian market represents less than four percent of the total APAC market. This clearly shows the market potential for BI in this market.

The next evolution
It is often said that the future of BI lies with the futuristic predictions based on the real-time analytics. In the present economic scenario, customers expect BI firms to partner with them to address real-time business issues, including more efficient management of information on cash flow and liquidity, maximizing a global workforce through change and how to optimize procurement and supply chain processes.

“Business users across the organization will demand intuitive access to all information and BI firms needs to develop new tools for accessing information. Information overload has always been a pressing concern for Indian companies. BI companies must be able to provide accurate and timely data to help management gain insights required to develop dynamic business strategies,” said Sanjay Mehta, CEO, Maia Intelligence.

Avishek Rakshit
avishekr@cybermedia.co.in

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