EDITOR ’ S QUESTION
Business Analytics is not anything new to the Middle East and Africa ( MEA ) as companies in the region have long been using technologies which enable businesses to analyse their performance . The difference largely has been with the shift towards using cloud platforms such as AWS , Google Cloud Platform or Azure . The ability to collect data from multiple sources and push in a central cloud data warehouse has introduced a robust set of new possibilities . A lot of companies in MEA are still using older business analytics tools which restrict real time analysis of Internet services . The newer , Internet age , companies in the region are natively setup with these cloud technologies and equipped with flexibility of utilising the latest and greatest functionalities offered by the global cloud providers . This pattern is not just limited to the MEA region but globally we see companies that are yet to move over their data warehouses into the cloud are limiting themselves .
In all this , business analytics is critical to any business . Think of it as your eyes and ears on what is happening in your business at any given point in time . You can request for automated reports to arrive in your inbox every morning and it would give you the snapshot of the previous day . How many sales happened in a particular region ? Who is your top sales person ? Why was there a sudden drop in users ? It starts getting interesting when you can build correlations with third party data , for example , did the sales in a particular area drop due to heavy rains happening over the course of the past week ?
If we look at today ’ s online businesses like e-commerce , food delivery , taxi-ride hiring – the business analytics they look for are daily usage of their apps , number of transactions , repeat users , time spent on the service , etc . For an organisation in the oil and gas industry , these metrics will vary and will be more in line with how the companies in this industry looks at their business .
One of the common CIO pitfalls is keep acquiring more technology and not have the right understanding of how to structure the architecture and the business rules from the start .
One of the common CIO pitfalls is keep acquiring more technology and not have the right understanding of how to structure the architecture and the business rules from the start . The technology is only as good as the business logic that is provided to it . You cannot expect the data to be accurate if you have the wrong business logic setup from the start . There needs to be a strong sense of business understanding among the technical data team . Hire someone who is well aware of both the technical and business side .
Given the huge challenges that CIOs face when tackling the skills challenges , it is imperative that they identify and hire skilled analysts who understand the technologies and business . Data is a field that is growing really fast and it is a constant challenge to hire the right skillset with the right experience for your business . There is a lot of input of new resources entering this field and even veterans of this industry are reskilling themselves on the newer cloud technologies . AWS Data Architecture certifications are becoming the go-to certifications in this field which equip people on how to use the latest and greatest cloud data functionalities offered by Amazon ’ s AWS . p
NAUMAN QURESHI , VP , PRODUCT , STARZPLAY
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