INM MAGAZINE VOLUME 8 | FEBRUARY 2016
#Analytics
The art of modelling a problem, finding out the best
solution and successfully implementing the solutions
are the hallmarks of business analytics and business
intelligence. In this context, what should be the role
of analytics education in Indian institutes that offer
analytics programmes?
The key drivers of analytics education are:
1. Software
2. Domain knowledge
3. Statistics
4. Operations research
Indian colleges must introduce new training
programmes to help students improve their skills in
the data-driven decision making area. They should be
designed to enhance analytical reasoning power. A
massive amount of structured and unstructured
information or 'Big Data' has flooded the marketplace
in recent years. It is important for institutes to
recognize that businesses need a solution to manage
this information, ultimately delivering valuable
insights. Data visualization is a powerful tool in
analysing large data sets and must play an important
role for students in B-schools.
“Data visualization is a powerful tool in
analysing large data sets and must play an
important role for students in B-schools. “
Before examining the role of analytics education in
businesses, it is important to establish the skill sets
that make a good data analytics professional and how
these can be imparted by premium institutes.
According to Cognizant, the 3 main qualities that are
preferred for professionals to have expertise in are:
1. IT/Software engineering
2. Mathematics/Statistics/Algorithmic
3. Business communication/Story-telling with
data
Institutes must train keeping in mind the fact that
analytics is a core function of the top management
and it has to marry somewhere with the business
objective that is finally the return.
BIG DATA SUCCESS STORY: AADHAR
Aadhar number is a 12 digit unique, lifetime,
biometric based identity.
There are 600 million Aaadhar identities in India
today, processing 1.5 million a day. Moreover, it
boasts of having captured over 8.5 billion biometrics
and matched over 900 trillion biometrics every day.
The size of data is about 3 MB per resident, mapping a
total of about 10 PB of raw data. There is about 50 TB
I/O every day. All of this, with a 2048-bit PKI
encryption.Besides being big data, Aadhar is also a
big enrolment ecosystem, with 50,000+ enrolment
stations, 100,000+ trained operators, 200+
enrolment agencies and 40+ registrars.
Once the data from Aadhar is combined with any
other data obtained from government agencies, it is
possible to build beautiful e-governance products for
citizens. Unfortunately, this possibility is some
distance away from catching popular imagination and
is confined to a few people/organisations which have
a deep understanding of data analytics.
FUTURE OF DATA ANALYTICS
· Technologies are going to bring more intuitive
data cleansing and data preparation abilities.
· Technologies will enable businesses to state
the problem that is to be solved and let the
data speak for itself rather than deciding the
course of analysing the available raw data.
· Online Analytical Processing will deservedly
be given a go-by because the fundamental
premise of this model is that the subset of
features to be analysed has already been
decided, not leaving any room for serendipity.
The whole point of big data, however, is that it
is not possible to accurately determine where
exactly the data lies.
· Companies that have not even invested in
traditional information architecture will start
investing in data analytics, exploring new
technologies.
The issue of big data and the subsequent solutions
can be segregated into two:
1. Data should not be captured opportunistically.
It should be stored and kept available in a
cheap manner so that it can be accessed
whenever it is required.
2. Companies do not have to invest in the most
expensive algorithm libraries or high
performance machines that can do a lot of inmemory processing. The first priority has to
be to get the business problem right.
Frank Buytendijk, Vice President of Garnter, rightly
stated that we're in two worlds at the same time, one
foot in each world. There is an old world where
companies are trying to improve the organisation
with business i