Marketing Analytics 2012 - 0

Marketing Analytics
An Oppor tuni t y for I ndi a to Lead

absolutdata
Intelligent Analytics
International Youth Centre, Teen Murti Marg, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi - 110 021, India
Phone: 91-11-23010199, Fax: 91-11-23015452, Email: research@nasscom.in
Website: www.nasscom.in
Marketing Analytics: An Opportunity for India to Lead
2
Copyright 2012
International Youth Centre, Teen Murti Marg, Chanakyapuri
New Delhi - 110 021, India
Phone: 91-11-23010199, Fax: 91-11-23015452
Email: research@nasscom.in
Published by
NASSCOM, New Delhi
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3
Over the past decades marketing has played a critical role in the success of companies. No one questions
its impact on iconic brands such as Coca Cola, Apple, Kraft Cheese, Nike and Disney. Marketing has not
only helped sell products but also inform companies about what consumers want and what they do not
want. Marketing Analytics has played a pivotal role in doing so, by helping marketers take informed
data-driven decisions. This study by NASSCOM and AbsolutData is an efort to highlight the pivotal
role of Marketing Analytics, and the opportunities, challenges and future trends associated with it for
Indian service providers.
Marketing analytics enables C-Level executives to make data driven decisions in a complex environment
where the speed, volume and complexity of data have increased exponentially over the years. We have
seen marketing analytics solutions evolve from being used for post mortem analysis (Descriptive analytics)
to being used for real time decision making (Executive analytics).
Though Marketing Analytics is poised for exponential growth, there will be some teething problems,
such as shortage of trained talent, high attrition, and rapid changes in the technology landscape. Players
need to be inventive and forward looking and look to devise new strategies to counter these problems
while continuing to innovate solutions.
India is the cynosure for analytics players and has a head start over other outsourcing destinations such
as China, as a number of analytics rms started operations here much earlier. India also has a signicant
advantage due to its inexpensive labour, which is malleable and can be trained easily in analytics skills.
With the advent of new technologies and myriad sources of consumer awareness, the scope of marketing
analytics will be vast and India will be one of the foremost forces leading the analytics revolution. By
the help of this study, we hope to display the potential of this sector to client organizations, analytics
players and prospective employees and hope that it will pave the way for constructed eforts to further
the cause of marketing analytics in India.
Foreword
Anil Kaul
CEO
AbsolutData
Som Mittal
President
NASSCOM
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Marketing Analytics is a strategic necessity for CXOs
Companies are increasingly using the insights derived from marketing analytics to gain competitive
advantage. This has made CXOs realise the necessity of using marketing analytics in building strategy.
CMOs and Business heads are struggling to deal with the increased complexity in the current consumer
environment. This has caused them to utilize marketing analytics for their strategic and tactical decision
making.
Marketing analytics is viewed as an enterprise wide function which interacts with various departments
across the organization. Organizations are looking for analytical solutions which can be integrated within
their IT infrastructure.
India is scaling up rapidly as a Marketing Analytics delivery Hub
India has a distinct advantage in delivering analytics with an abundant supply of trainable, cost efective
analytics talent and extensive analytics delivery experience. The Indian marketing analytics industry is
expected to grow from USD 200 Million to USD 1.2 Billion in 2020, at a CAGR of 25%.
Players are faced with enormous challenges and opportunities due to the rapidly evolving consumer
landscape
Due to the rapidly evolving consumer landscape, digital and big data analytics are becoming increasingly
relevant in decision making. These advances enable real time analytics, which is becoming a necessity in
modern marketing landscape. This presents enormous challenges and opportunities for industry players.
Players need to develop new skills and solutions to service client needs.
There is a shortage of analytics talent globally. According to a Mckinsey report on Big Data, the shortage
for deep analytics talent within US alone is expected to be around 140,000-190,000 by 2018. To overcome
this, players need a disaggregated approach to leverage talent with optimal onshore-ofshore mix. There
is a need to train and retain talent to keep attrition costs under control.
Government and players need to be proactive for India to realise its marketing analytics potential
The fast growing analytics industry needs the government to set up better academic institutions and
programs for analytics to help it in its burgeoning talent requirement. Additionally, the analytics industry
needs nancial assistance similar to what as was ofered to IT players in the past decades.
Indian analytics players need to be competitive and scale up operations to service global analytical
demands. They need to build distinctive IP and productized solutions to obtain competitive advantage.
Rigorous training programs and efective employee engagement programs should be set up for faster
on-boarding and talent retention. Additionally, Indian players need to come together to increase Indias
brand awareness and positioning globally.
Executive Summary
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Acknowledgements 6
Marketing Analytics Overview 7
Key Trends: Marketing Analytics Increasing in Importance 17
Key Challenges for Industry Players 41
Way Forward 53
Company Proles: Solution and Service Providers 61
Case Studies 81
Contents
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This report was co-developed by NASSCOM and AbsolutData through a comprehensive two month study
to understand the marketing analytics industry within India and how service providers could prepare
better to exploit opportunities in the long term.
We would like to thank various people for their valuable contributions without which this report would
not have been possible. First, we would like to thank member companies of NASSCOM, who went out
of their way to provide detailed inputs and perspectives for their companies and clients/markets.
We would like to acknowledge inputs from Cognizant, Fidelity, FMR, Forrester, Frost and Sullivan, Genpact,
HCL, HP, Mu Sigma, Thomas Davenport and company websites. A special thanks to the panel members,
including Arnab Chakraborty, Pratul Chopra and Subinder Khurana.
We would also like to thank AbsolutData leadership and subject matter experts including Abishek Sawhny,
Anil Kaul, Sudeshna Datta, Suhale Kapoor, and Sundar Ramaswamy for their constant guidance, market
insights and support on this project.
We would like to acknowledge the contributions of the AbsolutData working team led by Sundar
Ramaswamy including Aviral Mathur, Guha Athreya, Heather Kluter, Hem Chander, Imran Saeed, Kunal
Jain, Sayan Banerjee, Shayak Roy, Titir Pal, Vamsi Krishna, Yaamini Sharma and the NASSCOM team led
by Achyuta Ghosh, in their eforts and contribution in putting this report together.
Acknowledgements
Marketing Analytics
Overview
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Marketing Analytics Overview
1 Marketing Analytics enable CMOs to make data driven decisions
2 Marketing Analytics provide solutions to a range of business questions
3 Marketing Analytics solutions have evolved from Descriptive to Executive
4 Global Analytics Marketplace is still evolving
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Marketing Analytics enable CMOs to make data-driven decisions
In todays competitive landscape, where customers can make informed decision regarding their
purchases, there is a steady increase in the amount of data that captures these purchase patterns.
A large quantum of data is also being generated through the web and the internal IT systems. These data
play an integral part in understanding the psyche of the consumer, which helps organisations develop
the most saleable products and market them efectively. Given the widespread availability of data, the
need to make data-driven decisions is no longer just a competitive advantage, but a necessity.
Marketing Analytics can be applied across various Marketing sub-functions
In sales and marketing functions, there is a range of strategic and tactical issues that need to be
addressed and the CMOs need more than just gut feeling and experience to do that. Today, CMOs are
left with no choice but to apply Marketing Analytics at all levels across various sub-functions of the
marketing domain such as branding, pricing and promotions, CRM, sales and distribution and product
development.
Marketing Analytics helps solve problems related to branding to cut through the clutter of me-too
competitive brands, helping organisations conceptualise new products and service oferings to target
the untapped market gaining an edge over competition in the process. It is helping the CMOs understand
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and prole their customers and cater the right ofers for each of them by cultivating the data. Also, it
helps drive sales in diferent channels by optimising trade incentives to suppliers and distributors.
Marketing Analytics answers tactical and strategic business questions
Decisions taken by a CMO lie on a broad spectrum, ranging from tactical to strategic in nature. On
the tactical side, decisions are generally more reactive than proactive, and help improve marketing
performance in the near term. Strategically, they are proactive and sophisticated in nature and
have a much greater impact on marketing performance. It is not limited to the current marketing
vision or activity but takes a more expansive view of what type of marketing can be used to obtain
favourable results.
Sales and Marketing Analytics can be applied more efectively these days, not only to understand
consumer behaviour but also to inuence it. Online retail websites are leading the way by conducting
real-time analysis on the customer data to inuence their decisions. Their recommendation engines
utilise complex statistical algorithms and customers browsing patterns to predict products that may
be of interest to them.
Marketing Analytics impacts both top line and bottom line
In the modern competitive markets, CMOs need to develop stronger, deeper relationship with their
customer base. Marketing Analytics is a tool CMOs use to understand their customers and the choices
they make in a holistic fashion. This increased understanding helps them make better decisions directly
impacting the top line.
With increasingly stagnant markets focus has shifted on RoI; CMOs are being measured against the
monetary impact of their marketing eforts and spends. Quantiable results is the new rule for them,
across all the sales and marketing sub-functions. Marketing Analytics can be applied to optimise
external and internal spend which has a direct impact on an organisations bottom line.
Applying Marketing Analytics in branding gives a deep insight into the composition of the customer
base, their needs, optimal messaging and required spend on branding. This knowledge can be used
to carry out targeted branding campaigns and build strong brand equity. Strong brand equity directly
results in increase of revenue and subsequently the top line. On the other hand, application of Marketing
Analytics in sales and distribution provides insights on the optimal trade channels to distribute products,
which and how much trade incentives are required, and how to distribute. This helps the organisation
optimise their expenses and increase the bottom line.
Marketing Analytics can also be used internally within the organisation to optimise the workforces
eforts. For instance, sales force efectiveness analysis understands the gaps of the sales force, helps
formulate strategies to overcome gaps, improve productivity and sales, track RoI of the sales force
and helps formulate strategies for constant improvement of the workforce. This helps in increasing
the bottom line of the organisation by increasing internal ef ciency.
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Marketing Analytics solutions have evolved from Descriptive
to Executive
Marketing Analytics solutions help understand past as well as predict future. These solutions range
from simple reporting to complex optimisation
To devise marketing strategy and tactics, it is vital for CXOs to know two things. Firstly, a thorough
understanding of the past is vital in understanding the success or failure of the marketing tactics.
Secondly, ability to accurately predict the future consequences of the actions would help in devising
the ideal strategy for the organisation.
While the marketing sub-functions are very diverse, there are common trends as far as the analytical
lifecycle goes. The entire lifecycle can be broken down in four progressive steps what happened
(Reporting), why did it happen (Analysing), what will happen next (Predicting) and how to maximise
results (Optimising). While reporting and analysing helps CMOs understand what happened in the
past, predicting and optimising helps predict and plan for the future.
For instance, in the CRM sub-function, a typical requirement is promotional campaign analysis. CMOs
are interested in knowing the efectiveness of the campaign in garnering additional sales as well as
in improving brand visibility. Data obtained is in the form of customer response to the campaign and
increase in volume and sales due to the campaign.
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The campaign data is reported using dashboards (Reporting) which would provide a picture of what
transpired. Thorough examination of the data would provide insights on what worked well, what didnt
and the RoI of the campaign (Analysing). Analytics is like a crystal ball for CMOs as it can enable them
to view the expected future results as a consequence of the campaign (Prediction). Critical questions
like what can be cross/up-sold to the present customer base are answered on the basis of the campaign
responses. Lastly, analytics can help CMOs gain the most out of the campaigns by either optimising
the campaign ofers or the segments of people to be contacted (Optimisation).
Solutions are delivered through a combination of technology, technical and domain skills
There are three main stages in the execution of Marketing Analytics understanding business
problem(s), executing statistical analysis and implementing the solution. Understanding business
problem(s) is a key step to help determine the best analytical approach and typically the most dif cult
one. One needs to have a thorough understanding of the client domain and the market, in order to
generate the best analytics solution in context of the business problems.
The next step of execution involves data manipulation and running statistical analyses on them.
Typically, players use of-the-shelf software solutions like SPSS, SAS, etc. to run analyses. With the
advent of big data, there has been an exponential increase in the availability of analytical technology
platforms. Hence, one needs to have a deep knowledge of statistics and technology in order to develop
robust analytical solutions. Also, increasingly technology is being used to implement Marketing Analytics
solutions across the enterprise. This is discussed in detail in later sections.
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Marketing Analytics solutions have evolved from the descriptive
to the executive
Marketing Analytics solutions have evolved in line with underlying business challenges
Marketing Analytics solutions have grown steadily over the years, both in terms of the robustness,
variety and the complexity of analysis. Before 2000s, the data volume was such that analytical
needs were restricted to reporting and summarising data. Players ofered basic solutions such as
dashboarding to cater to these needs. In 2000s, data volumes started to grow steadily due to the
explosion of web/digital space, and there was a need for solutions to help in prescribing actions. To
address this need, Marketing Analytics solutions became increasingly predictive in nature. The later
part of the decade saw the emergence of social media and the sheer velocity of data associated with
it. This has forced the analytics world to move from predicting to executing real-time. In todays digital
world, the customer sentiments go viral instantaneously. CMOs have lesser time to react to such
situations. Therefore, there is a need for ability to process data real-time and reduce human intervention
in decision making. As a result, many providers have been utilising big data technologies to build
real-time-analytics capabilities.
Traditional focus has been on B2C industries. Lately there has been some interest in B2B verticals
The Business to Consumer (B2C) sector is highly mature in terms of implementing analytics. The
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consumer universe is large and diversied. The demand and purchase patterns of consumers vary
vastly depending on their demographics and psychographics. Therefore, there was an immediate need
for the B2C sector to understand their customer base in order to grow their top line. The organisations
realised this and turned to Marketing Analytics to provide solutions.
CPG organisations have been one of the pioneers when it comes to implementation of Marketing
Analytics. They leveraged customer segmentation to segment their customer base according to their
needs, attitudes and demographics. With a better understanding of their customer base, their marketing
campaigns and subsequently RoI were impacted positively. The biggest factor in for the success of
analytics in the CPG vertical is the rich and voluminous data available for robust analysis.
Due to the limited universe that the Business to Business (B2B) sector caters to, there hasnt been a
great volume of data. The sector has always conducted basic analysis like sales force efectiveness
and revenue cycle planning. But, with the growth of analytics in the past few years, the sector has
identied some oferings which can be of use to them. For instance, B2B sectors have identied pricing
as a key area of interest. Analytics providers are now ofering services such as price optimisation and
conjoint to the B2B sector.
With increasing digital focus there is interest from the B2B sector as well
Digital channels have emerged as a major source of brand awareness in the recent past. organisations
carry out extensive marketing campaigns online in order to drive awareness of their brands and
products. Digital channels enjoy great penetration, with almost one-third of the global population
using the internet. With the advent of digital channels, the volume, variety and velocity of data have
increased immensely.
Digital channels have greatly impacted B2B marketing. Organisations have increasingly leveraged blogs,
social networking sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. to put across their messaging. Increased usage of
such digital channels is generating enough data required to conduct robust analytics. Key decision
makers/inuencers can be identied much more easily through social networks. Hence, there is a new
interest in conducting analytics for B2B sector as well.
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Global Analytics Marketplace is still evolving
India has a distinct advantage in delivering analytics infrastructure and data management
services
A robust IT infrastructure and data management capabilities are the foundation of the analytics
ecosystem. Global analytics players have invested signicantly in developing them over the years.
Indian players have not been too far behind either. IT in India has contributed signicantly to the
development of these capabilities. The IT industry led to the creation of trained and experienced IT
talent in India. Indian analytics players bought this talent in order to establish their own infrastructure
and capabilities. Gradually, as the analytics technologies grew in number and complexity, Indian players
have a smooth sailing in adapting to them. Although, these capabilities are in a mature state globally,
India has signicant advantages like cost efectiveness and large trained talent pool. Also, these
services are commoditized and are and greatly encourage the companies to consider outsourcing. Indian
analytics players have used this to their advantage and have emerged as global leaders in analytics
service providers.
A new trend in the India analytics eld has been emerging. Some of the leading IT/KPO/BPO rms
have included analytics services in their portfolio. With a deep knowledge in handling IT infrastructure
and data management services, they have a signicant advantage over some of the other players. This
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move will encourage the pure play analytics rms and product rms to vamp up their IT infrastructure
and data management capabilities too. This will result in healthy competition which will ultimately
benet the Indian analytics landscape.
India is leveraging R&D to deliver increasingly sophisticated services and products
Traditionally, Indian analytics players have been focused on execution rather than development of
solutions. Players have leveraged the established analytics tools and algorithms developed by various
global software companies, universities and analytics rms. Indian players have customized the
established solutions as per their clienteles requirements. Although this approach is presently working
well for players, there is an increased need for players to develop indigenous solutions.
As companies worldwide have begun to embrace analytics, there is a greater need to create a more
diverse set of analytical solutions. Companies are looking for players ofering cutting edge analytics at
an efective cost. Indian players have realized that increased dependence on global rms and university
for solutions and software might eat into their value proposition. Therefore, players have begun to
invest signicant capital in research and development.
Key Trends: Marketing
Analytics Increasing
in Importance
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Key Trends: Marketing Analytics Increasing in Importance
1 Marketing Analytics is top on the agenda of CXOs
2 CMOs are dealing with increasing complexities in the current environment
3 Marketing Analytics solutions interact with organisation-wide functions
4 Newer digital platforms are increasingly becoming relevant for marketing
decisions
5 Marketing Analytics is increasingly being leveraged real-time for execution
support
6 India has an advantage to deliver Marketing Analytics services
7 Indian industry has an opportunity to grow to over USD 1.2 billion at 25 per cent
CAGR by 2020
8 The Marketing Analytics industry in India is well-balanced, ofering a variety of
services
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Marketing Analytics is top on the agenda of CXOs
Marketing Analytics engagements are likely to increase in number (more clients) and size
(organisation-wide implementation)
CXOs have realised that Marketing Analytics is one of the key diferentiators between them and their
peers in terms of enabling superior performance. According to an MIT Sloan report, Analytics: The
New Path to Value, the organisations that employ the usage of analytics in the widest possible range
of decisions were twice more likely to be top performers than their industry peers.
There is a steady growth in volume, complexity and variety of data across the levels of the organisation.
The CXOs are looking to leverage that to generate insights to help them make informed decisions and
build strategies. Therefore, the number of Marketing Analytics engagements is bound to increase in
number and size over time.
Players need to focus their sales eforts to CXOs, in addition to BU heads
Marketing Analytics helps CXOs optimise the current spends and eforts as well as predict future
customer trends. Marketing Analytics has the ability to combine historical evidence with current trends in
order to predict the future landscape. Hence, Marketing Analytics has become a vital tool in the strategy
building arsenal of CXOs. On a tactical level, Marketing Analytics helps in answering questions which
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have an immediate impact on the marketing plans. This attribute of Marketing Analytics is particularly
of interest to Business Units Heads who are in charge of devising tactics for their unit.
An increased level of awareness regarding the necessity of Marketing Analytics amongst CXOs and
BU heads has led to a great demand in its implementation. Players have to build their sales strategies
focusing on this customer segment.
Solutions are no longer only judged on technical parameters but also on business
impact potential
Today, personnel who traditionally relied on their experience and gut to make business decisions
are looking to leverage Marketing Analytics in their decision making. Their primary concern is to
understand the potential scale of impact that analytics has on their business rather than its statistical
nitty-gritty. Analytical solutions are not solely judged on their statistical robustness but also on their
business impact.
Marketing Analytics rms need to make their solutions more intuitive and self-calibrating to convey
signicant business impact while maintaining the statistical robustness of the models.
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CMOs are dealing with increasing complexities in the
current environment
Solutions need to adapt to the new realities of larger volume, velocity and variety of data that are
increasingly available in marketing
With the advent of myriad channels like internet, mobile and social networking, there has been an
explosion in the amount of information that a customer is exposed to in a short period. This has led
to two things Firstly, dispersion of audience and secondly, generation of large amount of various
data in a very short time frame.
This dispersion of audience has forced organisations to try creating a homogenous customer experience
across channels. CMOs are nding it dif cult to communicate a unied value proposition across these
channels efectively. Additionally, due to the viral nature of customer opinions and sentiments, CMOs
realise that they need to act in a time bound manner to convey a positive and unied brand message
across channels.
This situation creates an opportunity for analytics service providers and consultants to build on this
need and develop quick, scalable and accessible solutions which can be implemented by CMOs in their
decision making process.
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Players need to develop solutions that are simple to understand and use, to ensure wider adoption
within organisations
Marketing Analytics has gained an increased prominence in the strategies and tactics building for the
organisations. However, one of the major handicaps faced by players is the reservation of business
users to embrace analytics. They are concerned about the complexity of the analytical solutions, and
their ability to comprehend and implement it. This is a prominent situation in smaller markets where
there is little to no usage of analytics.
Players need to develop solutions that are intuitive in nature and whose applications can be easily
comprehended by the business users. Furthermore, the solutions themselves should be easy to
comprehend so that the BU can understand its signicance in their operations. The solutions also need
to be scalable across geographies for widespread implementation.
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Marketing Analytics solutions interact with organisation-wide
functions
Solution scope is now enterprise-wide and that are consistently applicable across business units
across regions
There is an ever increasing need for departments across organisations to be closer to the consumer
and the market realities. Business users of various departments are looking for deeper insights into
the customers psyche in order to develop better products, optimise their sales eforts, etc. The word
marketing in Marketing Analytics can be a misnomer, as Marketing Analytics solutions can and are
applied to functions beyond marketing. Marketing Analytics provide enterprise wide solutions which
can be used by other functions like R&D, supply chain management, sales and nance. For instance, in
CPG sector, for the category business function, customer demand (which can be estimated by Marketing
Analytics) directly afects the number of SKUs that are being produced. Additionally, product portfolio
optimisation analysis afects the entire product category and forces the category managers to revamp
their SKUs accordingly.
Global businesses cannot work in isolation. There is a need for integrated marketing strategies
across geographies. To enable this, models need to be built using data from geographically disparate
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locations. For instance, CPG organisations are building models which focus on providing forward
looking projections and scenarios across categories, business units and geographies. Analytical best
practices derived from the learning are applied across geographies to provide solutions in a timely and
cost-efective fashion.
Solutions need to be embedded in IT platforms that integrate well with existing
client applications
Analytics players have a wide palette of software at their disposal. While it can be an advantage as
far as variety of analysis is concerned, it poses the problem of having to leverage many disparate IT
platforms. Client may have their own existing applications and platforms which have been deployed
across the enterprise and which may or may not be compatible with analytical IT platforms. It is up
to the analytics provider to determine the best analytics software solution while ensuring that the
solution can be integrated seamlessly with the clients existing applications. For enterprise-wide
implementation, analytical solutions need to reside within the existing IT infrastructure.
Players need to upgrade their implementation skillsets across consulting, large scale project
implementation and IT
CXOs are looking to incorporate Marketing Analytics into their day-to-day decision making process at
an enterprise level. This puts high expectations from the Marketing Analytics players to move beyond
just crunching numbers. They need to provide solutions which are highly insightful, streamlined with
the IT platforms of the client and can be implemented across the organisation.
In markets where analytics is still emerging, marketing managers require a great deal of consultative
guidance in understanding the key insights and implementation of analytics into their marketing and
sales ecosystem. This has led analytics players to hire onshore staf with a deep understanding of
analytics and knowledge of the local market. Insights from Marketing Analytics solutions act as an input
to many other functions across the enterprise. A single analytics solution like Market Mix Modelling
can potentially generate insights that can be used across various functions like sales, marketing and
nance.
Players must have a robust infrastructure (manpower and IT tools) in order to implement solution(s)
across the enterprise, in various functions efectively. In order to make solutions scalable for future
usage, the provider needs to make sure that they can implement the solution on the clients existing
IT platforms. Having all these components under one roof will set players apart from each other and
give them a competitive edge.
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Newer digital platforms are increasingly becoming relevant for
marketing decisions
Solutions need to be re-worked ab-initio to ensure optimal results
In todays digital age, consumers product choices and perceptions are changing rapidly due to the vast
amount of information available via sources like social networking websites, mobile, blogs, customer
review websites, etc. The advent of digital channels has caused a distortion in the traditional purchase
funnel (awareness, consideration, preference and purchase). While shopping online, a customers
awareness may be restricted to brands with high visibility. However, the online retailers websites
recommendation engine tends to increase a customers consideration set by suggesting products in
their inventory. Some of these products might not have been in the customers consideration set at
all. Changes such as these represent a paradigm shift in fundamentals of marketing itself.
There is a growing need for organisations to understand the digital channel phenomenon in conjunction
with the traditional channels of information like print, TV, retail promotions. Digital data is very diferent
from the traditional sources of data like transactional, point of sales data, etc. in type and structure.
Hence, adopting a one size ts all approach in modelling might not deliver robust results.
Organisations have been experimenting in calculating the RoI of their investment in digital channels.
This may be attributed to the fact that players are adapting existing analytical solutions to understand
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digital channels. Existing analytics approaches have been built according to the traditional marketing
paradigms. However, as the modern marketing paradigm has been changing, players need to look at
new models which incorporate huge volume of unstructured but rich digital data. Hence, players need
to re-work on their solutions from scratch.
Players need to upgrade their IT and data handling capabilities
As the world of analytics is moving towards executive analytics, technology has become a key enabler.
The organisations which have used analytics successfully to make data-driven decisions have one thing
in common, a robust IT infrastructure. This enables them to capture data in an accurate and timely
manner. Analytics players who have combined a good understanding of the traditional IT infrastructure
with their data handling capabilities have managed to be extremely successful in implementing robust
analytical solutions.
However, the advent of digital channels has posed a fresh challenge to the players. Not only do players
have to learn how to handle data that is voluminous and fast, but also their back-end IT infrastructure
which is largely separate for each channel. Players need to upgrade their skills quickly and learn to
leverage digital data sources (and tools) like Radian6, Webtrends, Klout, etc. for analysis and integrate
those results with those derived from traditional channels.
Players need to be exible in leveraging the various technology platforms as the landscape is
still evolving
Due to ever increasing and rapidly evolving consumer channels such as web, social and mobile, the
demands from clients are changing are ever changing. Many players are still adapting to the myriad
platforms brought forth due to these channels. As the number of consumer touchpoints and channels
increase rapidly over time, there are going to be many new data sources emerging, subsequently
resulting in the introduction of many new technology platforms. Players need to build robust internal
systems which will enable them to adapt to various technology platforms quickly and easily.
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Case examples: HP uses e-Commerce analytics solutions, leading
to top line growth
28
Case examples (contd.): Business impact of delivered
analytics quantied
29
Marketing Analytics is increasingly being leveraged real-time for
execution support
Solutions are increasingly expected to be intelligent and actionable at the hands of non-technical
end-users
Primary users of these solutions are business executives who require insights that are easy to
comprehend and can enable quick decision making. As the volume and variety of the data is growing,
the analytical procedures employed to deliver solutions are becoming increasingly complex. Solutions
need to be developed which are intelligent enough to handle the complexity with minimal human
intervention. Additionally, business users who are primarily concerned with the commercial aspect of
the business cannot be bothered by statistical complexities of the underlying models.
Many Business Intelligence (BI) players have been quick to realise that and have put out BI solutions that
enable end-users to manipulate data easily and derive discernible insights and entail quick decisions.
Some of the solutions are of-the-shelf products, while some of them have been customised according
to client needs. These BI solutions are plug n play in nature and allow business users to derive key
insights without needing to know the working of the model.
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Solutions need to be more plug n play and embed well in existing client IT systems
Data mining tools, models and simulators need to be portable and platform independent. This saves
precious time that would otherwise be used in integrating the solutions to the present IT infrastructure
and can instead be utilised in deriving key insights and devising strategies.
Large organisations typically tend to make their IT structure uniform throughout their organisations so
as to enable speedy deployment of solutions across their organisation. While this is benecial to the
client, this poses a problem to the analytical players. They have to ensure that the analytical solution
proposed by them is compatible and deployable to their clients IT systems.
One instance of versatile solutions is a simple dashboard that links to common data sources. This
enables business users to spend lesser time guring out from where to pull/extract data, and focus
on how to best manipulate data. Dashboard ensures availability of data in an organised, palatable and
easily accessible format.
Solutions need to self-correct with minimal human intervention
With the velocity of data increasing exponentially, the need for implementation of real-time analytics is
increasing more than ever. For organisations like Amazon.com and New York Times, real-time analytics
is helping them to increase customer click-throughs on their website by ofering them a personalised
usage experience. Timely access of data can help make quicker decisions and subsequently save time
and money.
Due to the sheer amount and velocity of data, there isnt any time to validate the recommendations of
the analytical model of ine and derive insights. Therefore, the models need to be robust enough and
self-calibrating so as to generate accurate results with minimal human intervention. e.g. Amazon.com
developed their recommendation engine algorithm in over a decade through much iteration and now
have a self-calibrating model which can accurately recommend products for cross-sell/up-sell.
31
India has an advantage to deliver Marketing Analytics services
India is poised to be a global analytics giant
With the global demand for analytics steadily increasing, India is quickly gaining a reputation of being
the hub for Marketing Analytics. Before the 1990s, organisations had in-house analytics teams which
took care of their limited analytics needs. But as the scope and the need for Marketing Analytics grew,
there was an increasing need to either grow the analytics team internally or to partner with external
experts. Ofshore analytics delivery started in India in 1996, far ahead of other countries, where pure
play analytics rms were established at a much later date.
Leveraging Indias value proposition of a large, yet cost-efective talent pool, many analytics organisations
such as Mu Sigma, Fractal and AbsolutData have been successful in establishing their operations base
in India. Over the years, regions of Eastern Europe and China have emerged as competitors to India in
providing cost-efective analytical support. However, to quote the CEO of a leading Indian analytics
provider, Not a single credible analytics company has risen from China or Eastern Europe. This may
be attributed to an insuf ciently trained analytics talent pool in these regions.
Although India also faces this problem, what primarily sets the Indian talent pool apart, is its deep
roots in technical and math skills, and it willingness to embrace analytics as a viable career option. This
32
has enabled analytics players to conduct robust in-house training programmes. Talent is groomed to
provide cutting-edge analytics support while streamlining it with the clients business issues. Other
major advantages possessed by India are robust IT infrastructure and English speaking skills. India
already has a sizeable lead in supplying global analytics talent and needs to build on that advantage
if it is to become a global hub for analytics delivery.
With the growth of analytics talent in India, players have been able to build a sustainable delivery
model. The only drawback in the current Indian analytics landscape is the lack of productisation and
developing Intellectual Properties (IPs). However, Indian players have become conscious of these facts
and are making earnest eforts to invest and generate more IP.
33
Indian industry has an opportunity to grow to over USD 1.2
billion at 25 per cent CAGR by 2020
The current growth rate of the Indian Marketing Analytics industry is poised at a Compounded Annual
Growth Rate (CAGR) of 25 per cent and is valued at USD 200 million. Going by these numbers, the
Indian Marketing Analytics industry has the potential to grow up to being approximately USD 1.2 billion
by 2020. With concentrated eforts by the indigenous players and the government, the industry can
aim to achieve higher growth gures.
34
The Marketing Analytics industry in India is well-balanced,
ofering a variety of services
Players difer in their breadth and depth of analytics oferings
India is the worlds leading ofshore analytics service provider. The analytics delivery was started in
India in 1996. Since then, the analytics industry has grown exponentially in volume and value. India
has seen a huge spurt in the number of Marketing Analytics players consisting of pure play analytics
rms, IT/BPO services rms, Global in house centres and product rms.
Pure play analytics rms specialise in providing analytics services across diferent functions such as
marketing, risk, supply chain management to global clients across industries and geographies. The
rms have a large pool of specialists across functions and focus on deep domain skills as well. Larger
rms with scale and breath of services are able to leverage cross functional knowledge to serve clients
better.
A variety of IT, BPO and Knowledge Services rms ofer analytics services as a part of their bouquet.
These rms are typically large in size and operate across industries and countries. Though IT/research
maybe their main oferings, analytics services play an important role in servicing key clients.
Recognising the value of cost-efective and scalable operations in India, many global Fortune 500
rms have set up their captive centres in India. These centres focus on providing leverage and scale
35
to their internal teams spread across diferent geographies and functions. The activities range from
simple reporting to solving complex business issues to innovating ideas to be embraced by their
global teams.
Lately, there has been an increased interest in the usage of of-the-shelf products. This has led to the
genesis of product rms which specialise in ofering niche product oferings in their solution portfolio.
Their primary focus is to build products which can solve the various analytical needs of the enterprises
with limited customisation.
Few of the signicant players are pure play analytics rms
Some of the very early players in the analytics outsourcing industry of India were BPO/Knowledge
Services rms which started expanding their bouquet of oferings. It emanated from the need that all
the solutions need to be outsourced to one vendor instead of multiple vendors. This resulted in lot of
operational and cost ef ciencies. The success in delivering analytics led to a number of new pure play
analytics rms. However, only a few signicant organisations have emerged amongst the pure play
analytics players. Also, from the pure play analytics organisations which emerged, a few got acquired
e.g. MarketRx by Cognizant Technology Solutions, Inductis by EXL Services Holdings, etc.
Focus of most players is on delivering services rather than products
Indian industry has been so successful in pure play services model that it had never felt the need to
invest in IP. Majority of the analytics set-ups are geared towards ofering services across domains. But,
there is increasing automation, of most of the manual, repetitive analytical tasks done today. Also,
clients are asking for ready to deploy solutions. Hence, we are seeing services rms starting to build
products. There is a realization that products are more protable and a necessity in the increasingly
competitive analytics industry landscape, which is driving the investment in this area.
36
CPG vertical Marketing Anlytics solutions entrenched across
the value chain
As stated earlier, CPG has been one of the pioneers of Marketing Analytics. Listed above are some of
the popular analytics models and solutions available to marketers across the various functions within
marketing sub-functions.
37
Case Examples: AbsolutData develops a novel Consumer
Segmentation methodology for a major global brewer
38
Case Examples: Genpact implements Trade Promotion
Efectiveness for a large food manufacturer
39
Retail vertical- late entrant but quick uptake of Marketing
Analytics
Retail organisations have been leveraging Marketing Analytics quite efectively. They are helped by
the fact that they have voluminous and ever growing sales and purchase data within their internal IT
systems. Listed above are some of the popular analytics models and solution available for marketers
in the retail domain.
40
Case example - Marketing Analytics delivering quantiable
business impact
Here are some of the popular solutions being implemented by analytics players within India. They have
delivered quantiable business impact to their clients.
Key Challenges for
Industry Players
42
Key Challenges for Industry Players
1 Players are nding it dif cult to scale up their analytics capabilities due to a
global shortage of talent
2 Delivering analytics solutions globally needs a balance in solution consistency
across regions while retaining a degree of localization
3 Industry faces a high cost in attrition as analytics is a combination of complex
skills that are hard to nd and takes time to build
4 Clients are demanding plugnplay solutions that can be setup faster and are
more cost efective
5 Leveraging BIG data requires players to have new skills especially in technology
and business integration
43
Leveraging a disaggregated approach to talent can help ofset
the global shortage of analytical talent
Disaggregate the analytics role into three sub-components that are widely available in India
business/domain specialists, technical experts and data scientists/engineers
When it comes to Marketing Analytics, organisations typically tend to look for the renaissance person
who is typically a PhD with over 10 years of experience and has a very holistic understanding of the
macro business environment, marketing, and prot & loss issues and the relation between them, as
well as deep analytical skills. However, such a prole would not be cost-efective and would not be
easy to scale or to ofshore. It is also dif cult to nd the right person for the job at the right place and
time. Deep analytical talent shortage is a worldwide trend. According to the Mckinsey report, big data:
The next frontier for innovation, competition and productivity the shortage of deep analytics talent in
US alone would be around 140,000-190,000 by 2018.
To overcome this shortage, organisations can explore a simple disaggregation of roles and employ
specialised personnel for each of the roles that are required to deliver a successful analytics programme.
Analytics delivery requires industry context within engagements. A domain expert, with 5+ years
domain experience helps add this context. He/she also helps data scientists to understand data in a
better way. The context may be vertical (insurance, CPG, banking) or horizontal (marketing, nance,
supply chain) in nature. Obviously, context changes according to the project being delivered. For the
44
actual number crunching, the team consists of numerous data scientists and a project manager who
along with handling the team also works with the client in communicating insights.
Increase the employable talent for analytics by increasing or improving skills in areas like consulting
and business/domain understanding
India has always been viewed as having abundant and inexpensive talent pool. Over the past 10 years,
there has been an increased interest amongst engineers and statisticians to venture into the analytical
world which has helped build Indias ofshore operations. Organisations like Mu Sigma, AbsolutData, and
Fractal Analytics have used this to their advantage to build up strong analytical capabilities. However,
as the business world is embracing analytics, the need of the hour is to have resources who can convert
the insights ofered by analytics into meaningful and scalable business answers.
Indian analytical rms tend to position cost efectiveness as their primary value proposition but there
is a need to change that mindset and graduate to being knowledge experts and trusted business
advisors. With the analytics industry growing in India, clients would expect them to develop and
nurture analytics talent. Indian players need to invest more in rening skills, and inculcating business
skills within talent. Only strong business or domain along with relationship building skills will help
in Indian analytical organisations graduating to trusted advisors of client businesses. One way to do
that is to deploy resources onshore on a rotational basis in order to expose them to the local details
of the business.
Opportunity to get a larger share of the global pie by setting up centres in various geographies
Indian organisations have the opportunity to tap into global talent pool by setting up delivery centres
across the world especially in nearshore locations. The opportunity becomes even more signicant
given the global shortage of analytics talent.
45
Optimal onshore-ofshore talent mix will enable an efective
global delivery model
Players need to build a well-coordinated global delivery model with a mix of onsite talent (for solution
localisation) and ofshore talent (for solution consistency)
Currently, a lot of analytical players dont have an optimal onshore, ofshore resource balance. While
some players operate purely out of India, some have a larger presence onshore who provide support
throughout the duration of the project. Organisations need to reach an optimal ratio we believe to be
15-20 per cent onshore strength. As mentioned before, onshore resource is typically a domain expert
with vast experience and usually comes at a higher price.
In a project lifecycle, an onshore resource is primarily active in the initial and nal stages of the project
donning the hat of an analytics and domain expert. In the initial stage, the primary role is to understand
the business questions and deciding what type of analytics is most suited to derive a solution. Whereas
in the nal stage, the role graduates to that of a domain expert helping the CMOs in understanding
and implementing the results in their marketing practice. In the middle stage of the project, the
onshore resource is dormant, as most of that stage involves data analysis which can be done by the
ofshore resources. Having an onshore resource for 100 per cent of the time in a project can be very
expensive, while having a completely of-shore team may make CMOs a bit uncomfortable. Therefore,
it is extremely essential to nd a ne balance between onshore and ofshore resources.
46
Players should invest in building onsite/nearshore delivery centres to house talent sourced locally
This problem can be seen as a two-fold problem 1) For an analytics rm, with its primary delivery
centre at an ofshore location, where should they locate their onshore of ces; 2) How to make sure
that the ofshore team is able to cater to the needs of the clients in a timely manner.
Some 20 years ago, 90 per cent of the analytics needs used to emanate from the US, but now less
than 50 per cent needs are from the US and majority of it is from the rest of the world. Since majority
of the markets outside of US are still nascent in the implementation of analytics, it makes it prudent
to have local presence wherever possible. The analytics players are faced with a conundrum regarding
the placement of their onshore delivery of ce(s) around the globe. A very simple solution to this is to
divide project types into two short-term projects, low ticket size client for whom onshore deputation
would work (ofshore resources sent onsite for a short duration) and long-term projects, large ticket
size client for whom local support is provided by hiring or ofshore resoures with long-term visa.
Time diference is an extremely vital factor in speedy expedition of work as most of the work can be
done overnight (from POV of a client). The only drawback of this model being that should the client have
any query regarding a solution, support is seldom available. Players have worked around this drawback
by implementing the shift system which has their employees to have rotational shifts during the day
or the night time. By having both day and night shift employees on a project, the client is presented
with an advantage of speedy delivery as well as day time support.
47
Organisations need to be proactive with their training and
engagement programmes to keep the highly costly attrition
under control
Players need to invest in employee engagement beyond rewards and focus on meeting individuals
aspiration on accelerated career development/progression
Attrition is a huge problem for analytics players mainly due to two reasons Firstly, attrition is a huge
monetary loss for an organisation (costs incurred to hire and train fresh employee) and secondly, loss
of an employee who might be very well aligned with the organisations needs and growth plans.
Today, an employees needs have evolved far beyond monetary compensation and recognition within
the organisation. Players have to realise that and come up with employee engagement levers beyond
tangible rewards and recognition. Organisations could:
Chart out a career path for the employees: Having a denite idea of ones career path in the
organisation helps one set long-term personal goals aligned with those of the organisations
Expose to diferent streams of work: Internal job postings can go a long way in ensuring that an
employee retains interest in his/her line of work.
48
Players need to reduce the time and cost of onboarding by setting up learning academies (similar
to what IT players have done)
Data analysts in India are primarily hired from engineering colleges and business schools. However, the
present curriculum provides very little analytics exposure. Its left up to the analytics rms to train the
campus hires through a mix of extensive classroom and on-the-job trainings. A direct result of this is
an extremely lengthy onboarding period (lasting for typically 6-8 months) wherein a fresher is exposed
to the entire gamut of analytics software, techniques and their applications.
A typical training programme consists of some classroom sessions wherein freshers are taught the
basics of tools, techniques and their application in various analytical domains like CRM, marketing
efectiveness, etc. In parallel, they are stafed on live client projects and are expected to apply their
learning from the classroom sessions. The biggest aw of this approach is that the fresher is burdened to
start performing from Day 1 on the job with whatever rudimentary skills they have acquired. This results
in inaccuracy and slow execution of their work and eventually frustration and attrition. Organisations
spend a lot of money on training, and attrition results in signicant monetary loss for them.
Indian analytics players have to realise that training and retaining talent is a much better option than
buying talent due to two reasons Firstly, there is a great dearth of trained and experienced analytical
talent, and secondly, hiring and training a fresher is relatively cheaper than buying an experienced
person who can perform the same tasks.
Analytics players can look towards their IT counterparts like TCS and Infosys when it comes to devising
and implementing structured training programmes. The rst 2-3 months of their tenure consists
of rigorous classroom training wherein a fresher is exposed to all the aspects of IT infrastructure,
programming language and implementation. Practical exercises are conducted by giving group projects
wherein the freshers can apply their learning. Regular evaluations are conducted and nally employees
who pass the training successfully are inducted into the organisation. This results in:
Induction of employees most suited for that job
Fresh recruits are productive from Day 1
Increased engagement of the employees with the organisation
Less attrition
49
Developing plug and play solutions will require investments in
IP and knowledge management
Players need to build productised solutions, specic to industry verticals that are proven and can
be congured easily
In the present scenario, where a wide variety of analytics solutions are available, the CXOs decide
whether they want to execute a solution depending on its priority and their timing and budget.
Analytical players have to be conscious of this and endeavour to reduce timelines and cost as much as
possible. Instead of building customised solutions from scratch each time, the need of the hour is to
create analytics products which are scalable and can be used across clients by conguring it according
to their specic needs.
When exercised efectively, the use of products to personalise future solutions allows distribution of
efort costs across multiple clients, enabling each client to utilise analytics in their business problems at
a lower cost. Lessons learnt in the deployment of each solution will accrue positively in the knowledge
centre and consequent solutions can avoid previously recognised errors while exploiting efective
techniques rectied in previous solutions.
50
For analytics players, creating products leads to higher productivity of their organisation. Firstly, creating
products compensates the need for highly qualied and experienced talent who can build services from
the scratch (which is pretty scarce today). Secondly, it allows them to use their time and resources to
expand their portfolio oferings. Lastly, in the long run, it results in a lot of internal ef ciencies which
can be passed onto the client in the form of cost benet.
Indian players need to build contextual solutions (verticalisation) or cross-leverage learnings across
industries
In the present scenario, Indian analytics players are solution-oriented and rely on a one size ts all
approach. But as the diversity across and within verticals are increasing, this approach might not be
very fruitful in every scenario. Indian players need to focus their attention to build solutions which are
vertical-specic. Focusing eforts on vertical solution allows the analytics player to develop sturdy and
all-encompassing analytics product which can be re-used on demand, reducing the time to adapt and
update each solution. This accelerates the learning curve for vertical-specic solutions and allows the
players to expedite building of concrete solutions with ease.
When tailoring vertical-specic solutions, we should endeavour to include and apply maximum relevant
facts, insights and acumen in such solutions so that the resulting product is exhaustive and robust,
delivering optimal value to the client. In turn, the players can implement the best practices and learning
across verticals to develop robust solutions.
Players can increase solution t by co-creating solutions with clients as well as by incorporating the
learning/best practices from their various other experiences
As the awareness of the implementation of analytics is spreading within the factions of the organisation,
clients are more receptive to working with the analytics players to develop tools and solutions which
are customised for their organisations. Players should realise that this presents them with a golden
opportunity to utilise clients existing knowledge banks when developing complex analytics models or
solutions as they will have the data and insights collected over a long uninterrupted period as opposed
to the controlled and ltered data collected by individual analytics teams.
This collaboration can have a number of advantages for the player:
Help the players to have a steeper learning curve of the organisation and industry: Players can
use the knowledge to develop independent solutions for other clients in the same industry.
Client-specic context is built into the solution: This provides greater visibility and subsequently
more condence to the client with respect to the solution.
Better disaggregation of roles, minimal duplication of skillsets: In this scenario, the Service Line
Agreements (SLAs) will be very clearly dened between the client and the service provider which in
turn will facilitate the disaggregation of roles. Referring to the resourcing model suggested earlier,
the service providers team will only consist of project manager and data scientist(s) whereas the
client will be the domain expert. This will in turn also lead to cost efectiveness.
51
Leveraging big data requires players to have new skills especially
in technology and its integration with business
Players need to be exible to adapt to the various big data technologies while the industry continues
to evolve
Big data has revolutionised the way organisations look at their customers. It helps get a granular
view of data and goes a long way in marketing to the individual customer through personalisation
of analytics. Big data technology landscape has been evolving at a rapid space. Players in Marketing
Analytics need to adapt to this evolution. For example, Neiman Marcus, a high-end retailer, has
developed both behavioural segmentation and a multi-tier membership rewards programme, and this
combination has led to substantially more purchases of higher margin products from its most af uent,
higher-margin customers. Similarly, in addition to using traditional market-research data and data on
historical purchases, retailers now track and leverage data on the behaviour of individual customers
including clickstream data from the web. Retailers can now update this increasingly granular data in
near real-time to adjust to customer changes.
52
Players need to invest up-front in building new frameworks/solutions to incorporate big data into
the current traditional solutions
Big data needs investments from analytics players to adapt their existing solutions to leverage big
data technologies. Organisations have leveraged big data into their existing solutions and have
seen tremendous returns. For example Williams-Sonoma, has integrated customer databases with
information on some 60 million households, tracking such things as their income, housing values, and
number of children. Targeted e-mails based on this information obtain 10 to 18 times the response rate
of emails that are not targeted, and the organisation is able to create diferent versions of its catalogues
attuned to the behaviour and preferences of diferent groups of customers. Similarly, retailers are using
big data to integrate promotions and pricing for shoppers seamlessly, whether those consumers are
online, in-store, or perusing a catalogue.
Way Forward
54
1 Analytics way forward is customisable, self-learning, and end-to-end
2 The government can help the industry to further consolidate its frontrunner
positioning in the global analytics market
3 The industry can further help itself by coming together and jointly addressing
some of the key challenges it faces
Way Forward
55
Analytics way forward - Customisable, Self learing, End to End
Due to the need for personalisation of analytics newer proles in analytics will emerge
In the recent time, the consumer landscape has changed greatly. Consumers mindset has deviated
from the what are others buying to what is good for me. Organisations have realised this evolution
and now have started to target each consumer individually. Organisations like Amazon are ofering
product recommendations based on past customer purchases. This has put major pressure on analytics
players to develop solutions which enable marketers to cater to the individual customer.
The current talent pool which mainly consists of mathematicians/statisticians, have little insight into
the consumer mindset required to personalise analytics or the exibility in adapting to the dynamic
IT infrastructure.
In addition to other skills like domain and consulting knowledge, players would also need additional
skills, primarily consisting of:
Computer Science Post Graduates: With the growing need to build self-learning and calibrating
analytical models, players would need to leverage machine learning algorithms and big data
algorithms. This is creating a need to hire computer science post graduates, with a data mining
background to develop robust algorithms
56
Psychology Post Graduates: With the focus of organisations shifting towards individuals rather
than groups, they have realised that an individuals decision making process is deeper than
perceived. Individuals tend to be inuenced by their friend circle, opinions on websites, emotional
perception towards a brand, etc. which are not successfully captured by the traditional models.
Hence, the organisations are required to hire psychologists to understand the in-depth behaviour
of individuals and incorporate them into analytical models.
Robust advanced analytical techniques from computer sciences will increasingly be adopted
Today, there is an exponential increase in the amount and velocity of data and the need to harness
this data to generate insights is paramount. In this dynamic data environment, traditional analytical
techniques may fall short in generating insights in real-time and with accuracy. With the evolution of
big data technological platforms like Hadoop and Map Reduce, there has been a signicant increase in
the processing power which has enabled players to control the data and generate actionable insights.
These technological platforms have also ensured that one can now utilise complex and extensive
algorithms of computer sciences to run statistical analysis and develop analytical solutions. Such
solutions nd their roots in disciplines within computer science such as advanced algorithm design
and analysis, system architecture and data warehousing and mining.
Industry consolidation will lead to competitive environment
The present marketing analytics domain is extremely complex and fragmented. Players are required
to ofer a variety of services across the marketing efectiveness, customer relationship management
and market research domains, some more complex than others. Due to this, there are a large number
of players who ofer specialised but limited services. This is a major cause of frustration for CMOs as
they end up working with a lot of service providers.
The call of the hour is to consolidate analytical services and products under one roof and ofer
one-stop-shop to the clients. IBM has been reasonably successful in this regard with the acquisition
of multiple organisations like Cognos, SPSS, etc. Not only have they expanded their analytics oferings,
but have also leveraged their vast knowledge and experience of dealing with IT infrastructure and
integrated it with analytics, broadening their landscape in the process.
Players who are able to consolidate their services would have the opportunity to grab a larger share
of the pie as organisations would tend to outsource their analytics to a single provider. This would
eventually lead to a highly competitive environment amongst similar sized organisations.
57
The government can help the industry to further consolidate its
frontrunner positioning in the global analytics market
Analytics can be the next big revenue stream for government after IT
India is being recognised globally as a frontrunner in providing analytical support. With various benets
such as large talent pool and cost efectiveness, India has the potential to become a world leader in
analytics support. Given the tremendous growth opportunities within analytics, it can become the next
big revenue stream for the government like IT.
Once investors recognise the potential of the industry in terms of business competency in the country,
they might seek opportunities to invest in this growing industry in the form of FDIs or by funding
individual ventures. Either path will generate revenue for the government through taxes, job creation
and industry enrichment.
Government needs to be proactive in supporting analytics in the same way it did for IT
The growth of the IT sector is one of the shining examples of Indias phenomenal growth in the recent
times. Due credit should be given to the Indian Government which abated in the phenomenal growth by
introducing pro industry laws and ofering nancial support to the start-ups. Same way as IT, analytics
is poised to be the next big growth sector in the market. In order to facilitate the rapid growth of the
analytics industry, the government must recognise areas where it can help the industry and provide
58
the same level of support as it did to the IT industry. Financial assistance in the form of soft loans and
MAT exemptions can greatly facilitate small analytics players to secure IP rights and develop services to
ourish in a competitive landscape. This assistance will pay future dividends to the government once
such small business owners become the backbone of the economy in driving employment opportunities,
delivering unique competencies to Fortune 500 organisations globally and creating a distinct identity
for the country in terms of its global business rankings.
In addition to scal aid, analytics as an industry can benet from the government taking an active
interest in promoting the subject in educational institutions and encouraging its incorporation into the
curriculum in technology courses as well as management programmes. Training and honing the right
talent during the industrys nascent phase is of paramount importance in jump starting the industrys
growth in the country.
One of the major concerns of clients while deciding to outsource their analytics projects are overseas
data protection. Although, players have incorporated robust data warehouses which follow the strictest
of security measures, it may not be enough to assure the client regarding the data security. Government
can help play a helping hand by legislating and implementing stronger data protection and piracy laws
with an iron hand.
59
The industry can further help itself by coming together and
jointly addressing some of the key challenges it faces
Industry needs to make sizeable investments in training of talent
The explosive growth that the analytics sector is facing is hampered by a pronounced lack in availability of
trained talent. This needs to be addressed in a most urgent manner by the industry players themselves.
Players need to develop better in-house training programmes that are good enough to onboard campus
hires efectively and quickly.
While this is a sustainable solution for medium to large-sized organisations, small organisations exhibit
a need for readymade talent. Players can also think of helping establish external training organisations
on the lines of NIIT in IT sector, which can address industry analytics training needs directly and create
a liaison between the rms requirements and their training programmes.
Increasing productisation will enable services-oriented set-up to compete globally
While productisation seems to be a natural commercial evolution for any analytics rm, developing
industry-specic solutions and deploying products across global clientele is no longer an option, but
a competitive necessity. Development of distinctive Intellectual Property (IP) is still in a nascent
stage in India and may hurt its chances against the global players who already have distinctive IP for
their services.
60
An option that Indian players have is, to individually and/or jointly pool resources with academic
institution and develop intellectual property for the industry. Players can hire interns from the
institutions and engage them in creating services which serve as a unique value proposition to the
global clientele.
Build a stronger analytics brand within India itself
While the global giants have moved on to a mature state of implementing analytics and taking
data-driven decisions, Indian organisations still rely on rudimentary market research to generate
market insights on an aggregate level. With the consumer behaving more independently than before,
Indian organisations might sufer due to their global marketing approach. This can be majorly
attributed to two things rstly, a lack of awareness as to how benecial the analytics ecosystem
can be to their business and secondly, lack of budget within organisations to set up robust IT and
analytics infrastructure.
Analytics players in India should step up to the plate and try to spread awareness amongst organisations
on the innite benets ofered by analytics. This can be done by conducting global seminars, writing
industry reports (such as this one), developing IPs and patents in conjunction with the client, etc.
Players should do this not only to further their own business but also to help the organisations realise
their true potential on the global platform by the usage of analytics.
Company Proles:
Solution and Service
Providers
62
Annik Technology Services
63
Blue Star Infotech
64
Concentrix
65
CRISIL Global Research Analytics
66
Cross-Tab Marketing Services
67
CSS Corp
68
Deance Technologies
69
EXL Service
70
Leptonmaps
71
Marketelligent
72
Mindtree
73
Novartis Healthcare
74
Rocsearch
75
Sapient Nitro
76
SAS India
77
Sutherland Global Services
78
Suyati Technologies
79
The Smart Cube
Case Studies
82
CRISIL GR&A- Transformational Impact created for a global
telecom player
83
CrossTab: Business transformation for a Fortune 50 Global IT
Company
84
Datamatics Global : Telecom Infrastructure Analytics
85
EXL: Marketing Analytics Support for a Leading Health Payer
86
RocSearch CPG/Retail Analytics Oferings and their Impact
87
Glossary
CAGR Compounded Annual Growth Rate.
USD United States Dollar
BN Billion
MN Million
R&D Research & Development
IT Information Technology
ETL Extraction, Transformation and Loading
CRM Customer Relationship Management
BPO Business Process Outsourcing
KPO Knowledge Process Outsourcing
NA North America
EU European Union
SKU Stock-keeping unit
CPG Consumer Packaged Goods
MAT Minimum Alternative Tax
IP Intellectual Property
PG Post Graduate
POV Point of View
International Youth Centre
Teen Murti Marg, Chanakyapuri
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