Tag Archives: Business executives

I   recently wrote an article in which I spoke about the three options available to any organization embarking on an analytics initiative. The three options are:

1. Buy a readymade product
2. Build the solution in-house
3. Simply get your job done by the external experts

While the article discusses these choices specifically in the context of a business intelligence initiative, an incident happened about a fortnight ago reinforced my belief about focusing on ‘getting the job done’ while approaching any problem or a new purchase.

Let me share that incident with you.

That Monday early morning, I woke up with the ringing of my cellphone. It was my good friend who had recently shifted with his family to a new flat in the same suburb where I live presently. The place was new to them so I was glad to help with little things during their shifting. Sounding a bit flustered, he asked for phone number of some ‘reliable plumber’ who can solve the water leakage problem in their shower. I was surprised to hear that, as I thought he had already got it resolved by installing a brand new faucet in his shower. On inquiring about it, he reluctantly mentioned that the previous plumber had advised to replace the faucet but apparently it hadn’t solved the leakage problem. Not wanting to agitate him further, I quickly shared the contact details of our regular plumber without getting into more details.

Later that day, my friend called back to explain how the dirt in the overhead water-tank drifted into the shower-pipe, which was out of use for some time, and clogged it. That caused the pressure to build-up near the joint where the faucet was connected to the pipe, and that’s where the leak was. Apparently, the root cause of the problem was something else and it had nothing to do with the faucet at all. My friend was frustrated and felt cheated by the first plumber who dazzled him with the stylish-looking faucet and ended up selling him the expensive spout which was obviously not required in the first place. He was now relieved that the second plumber had fixed the leak by cleaning the whole line including the dirt in that tank.

This is what usually happens with many of us in different contexts. Whether it is a plumbing or a business problem, we usually prefer a quick-fix solution to it. It is astonishing how time and again we forget a simple fact of life: that each problem is unique and the right solution involves addressing the root cause rather than applying the standard quick-fix.

When my friend was narrating the steps which solved the problem, I was thinking about the jobs-to-be-done principle.

Get Your Job Done – The Principle

My first encounter with this principle came from a lecture I attended while at Oxford. It was delivered by Prof. Clayton Christensen, the Harvard Business School Professor who is recognized as the number 1 management thinker in the world. He put forth that customers often buy a product or a service because they find themselves with a problem they would like to solve; so they “hire” a product or a service to do the job that will solve their problem. He gave examples of many successful businesses, like IKEA, P&G, and FedEx to name a few, to bring home the point that companies need to think about the customer jobs-to-be-done whenever they are selling a product or a service.

The above incident is an example of looking at this principle as a buyer. Whenever you are purchasing something, buy only that product or service that satisfies your true needs.

But how will you decide which one is best for you?

Think about the job to be done!

Are you buying a car? Think about whether it is for daily office-commute, or for long cross-country family outings, or for transporting your small-business inventory? You will need a different vehicle (not necessarily a car) for each of these jobs.

As a business executive, are you thinking of buying that off-the-shelf product that churns out impressive and colourful charts? Think about what is the job you want to get done with it. Are you looking to solve your (one-time) business problem? Do you want some tracking dashboard tool to see ongoing business trends? Or is it because your boss is breathing down your neck to get ‘the most popular product out there’ just because your competitor has it? Each business has unique problems and needs. You may buy a branded, matured, and sleek but a very expensive product that addresses 80% of your key requirements; or you may go for a simple, convenient, and a very useful service at a cost-effective (but not necessarily cheap) price. Both options would work if it helps you to do your job; and neither would be useful if it doesn’t.

That’s why every buying decision must be made with a keen eye on what job you want to get done. This is especially true for businesses because business decisions cost shareholder money and are not easily reversible. So next time you are out to procure something, think about the job-to-be-done.

Related Posts:

• Buy, Build, or Get the job done?
• Is business strategy really indispensable?
• How Deliberate Strategy Can Be the Working Strategy!

<– Most important thing in analytics

Strategic Transformation Part-1 –>

You can also subscribe to our blog – Our Perspectives – to receive interesting articles and tips in email. We would love to read your perspectives and comments on that.

Do follow Veravizion on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, or Google+ to receive easy updates.

L  ast Friday, I was having a very productive give-and-take with a group of business people on the benefits of business analytics. During our conversation, I had an interesting observation about what those people considered the most important thing in analytics. They seemed to think that data is the most important element in any (business) analytics project. I am sharing here the gist of that conversation. Hope you too find it interesting.

I believe data is the second most important thing in analytics or data science.

The most important thing in analytics is ‘the question to be answered’.

Let me explain why.

Typically analytics initiatives are undertaken to achieve one of these four objectives:
1. To solve a problem
2. To accomplish a specific (business or non-business) goal
3. To prove or disprove a hypothesis
4. To answer a question

Unless you have a specific question that needs answered, any analytics initiative will at best be a random analytical study with no direction. The specific question or the problem statement gives it a definite goal. More importantly, the goal will determine what data to use to arrive at a fact-based conclusion.

I like to think of it as ‘a ship sailing in an ocean’ analogy. An analytics initiative making way through the huge organizational data is analogous to a ship sailing in an ocean. If the ship has a pre-determined destination, then it takes the intended route to reach that destination and achieves its objective. To a bystander, mere existence of a ship creates a perception that it is going somewhere. However, if the destination is not clearly defined, the ship might just have a fun time cruising the ocean and figuring out what the ocean has to show. Worse, it might just flounder in the huge ocean and may not reach any meaningful place.

A ship like that is like a holiday-cruise-liner – expensive to sail but not tasked with any objective to reach a place.

Likewise, many organizations launch their analytics initiatives without any specific target. They just start with a tentative goal of let’s figure out what the data shows along the way. In the absence of any pointed objective to pursue, the analysts running the initiative either have great fun cruising with unbounded data or they just lose their way in it. Such an initiative renders no meaningful results.

An analytics initiative like that ends up becoming an expensive proposition like a luxury cruise-liner.

That’s why the most important thing in analytics is the question to be answered. The question determines what data to use to reach a definitive answer.
For example, to determine an organization’s target customer profile and their buying habits, the customer data will need to be analysed. Similarly, the sales history data will be required to ascertain a company’s sales trends.

The data serves as the route to finding the answer to the question.

The data to be analysed will change with the question to be answered. In our analogy, it is the route taken by the ship to its destination. Different destinations will warrant different routes to be pursued.

The selection of the right data becomes important after determining the objective(s) of the analytics initiative. The right prioritization will not only help you reach your destination faster, but it will also be very cost-effective as you save yourself from expending time, money, and manpower in analysing needless data.

In a nutshell, make sure that you do not end up getting lost in the ocean of data with wrong prioritization. Data-cruising is an expensive way to have fun at the expense of an organization’s usually scarce resources.

Related Posts:

• 3 Lessons Every Executive must Learn from Wimbledon Centre Court
• How can we make difficult decisions?
• Is analytics all hype and no substance?

<– 2015 analytics trends

GYJD: Belief Reinforced –>

You can also subscribe to our blog – Our Perspectives – to receive interesting articles and tips in email. We would love to read your perspectives and comments on that.

Do follow Veravizion on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, or Google+ to receive easy updates.

2  015 arrives on a promising note for analytics – both as a technology and as an industry. 2014 proved favorable for analytics in getting wider acknowledgement as a serious strategy to adopt for long term competitive advantage. In that sense, 2014 was the year of acceptance and 2015 augurs to be the year of growth.

In this paper, we take note of the emerging trends in analytics with a pointed focus on their applicability to SME businesses. We began by collecting the trends data released by leading publishers. Our analysis of the aggregated information revealed some interesting bytes about the direction of these trends. Here we share with you our own perspectives on the top trends predicted by the external industry experts.

SMEs embrace analytics to deepen customer understanding.

More businesses are starting to anticipate their customers’ needs and act on it proactively. Personalization is the key. New technological advancement is making it possible to allow metrics to be tracked across even more areas for each customer, thus enabling SMEs to understand their profitable customers like never before. More screen time per consumer is creating even more data to be analysed and mined for deeper insights. Smart SME businesses looking for growth and customer loyalty are going all out to invest in cost-effective analytics solutions to get closer to their customers, drive cost efficiencies, and improve their product and service offerings. Larger organizations are implementing it to improve their customer service and call centre processes. B2C businesses like the consumer product, retail, and wholesale companies predict the fastest growth in the use of analytics to help improve customer insights and meet real-time customer demands. SMEs are implementing analytics to transform their marketing approach to connect with more prospects and customers, to provide them with the right information at the right time in their buying journey, and to create favourable perceptions about their offerings. After all Marketing is a battle of perceptions, not products.

Use of customized analytics becomes pervasive.

More and more human actions are generating Exabytes of data today. To get a sense of the amount of data, let’s just say that we will need around 50 billion trees made into paper to print 1 Exabyte of data. That’s roughly 9 huge stacks of papers, each touching Mars from Earth. So we now have developed massive capability of data generation; and the rate is only increasing with the advent of wearables, smart machines, and the ‘Internet of Things’. But this enormous amount of data will be of no use if not analysed and utilized appropriately. Anytime anywhere analytics will be the only way forward to satisfy the pressing need to analyse this vast pools of structured and unstructured data inside and outside the enterprise. Data analytics will soon become so ubiquitous that it will be deeply and invisibly embedded everywhere.
For SMEs looking to break away, micro-segmentation and micromarketing at the consumer level can provide a big competitive advantage. You can’t compete, if you don’t have competitive advantage. Information week survey reveals that there is fall in the trend to standardize analytics. For SMEs, this means they are not seeing competitive advantage in standardized analytics products. Instead, more companies are now hiring customized analytics to satisfy their unique needs. SMEs across all industries cited ‘ensuring information accuracy and reliability’ as a top concern. 2015 is likely to see a democratization of data throughout the organization, meaning that more departments will become adept at using the insights generated by experts. Day-to-day activities will be based on data and the insights created from it.

Rise of sensor-originated data from wearables and the ‘Internet of things’.

Wiki defines the Internet of Things (or IoT) as the interconnection of uniquely identifiable embedded computing devices within the existing Internet infrastructure. For example, your smart watch continuously measuring your pulse while you are running, and prompting you to stop when it senses that your pulse is beating abnormally. The ‘internet of things’ has facilitated the innovation of wearables that can capture data using sensors and communicate it instantly over the internet. A few examples of wearables are fitness trackers, heart rate monitors, and smart watches. These wearables and IoTs will empower humans to take predictive (not just proactive) actions in a timely manner. The sensor based data collection will further boost application of analytics to analyse all these data. However, in the context of wearables and IoT, we are still in the stage of figuring out its possible real-life applications to individuals and businesses. In 2015, the IoT is expected to venture beyond wearables into your homes and surroundings.

Cloud becomes main-stream with greater cloud-based ecosystem.

Cloud has already crossed the stage that IoT is currently in. It has made deep inroads into datacentres, data warehouses, centralized storages, and servers. The cloud ecosystem is likely to penetrate further with the growth of centrally coordinated applications being hosted on cloud infrastructures around the world. 2015 will see horizontal spread of cloud-usage in device convergence and application portability across devices. Strictly focusing on SMEs, companies like Amazon and Google have rapidly matured their cloud-based offerings to SMEs with freemium and usage based models. However, monetization models of cloud based services remain complex. Despite that, cloud adoption is likely to increase among larger businesses as they strive to contain their infrastructure costs. Whereas the smaller businesses will (and probably should) expect the cloud-offerings to improve in terms of security, pricing-models, understanding of its benefits, and real ROI, before jumping the cloud bandwagon.

Better acceptance of open source technology like Hadoop and NoSQL databases.

If there is one trend which has high standard deviation with its long term sustainability, we believe it is this one. Hadoop is becoming popular because of “its ability to store and process semi-structured, unstructured, and variable data”. With the burgeoning unstructured data (from social media), it is no surprise that Hadoop is getting good acceptance among (larger) customers. But we hasten to add that Hadoop and NoSQL may not be in the priority list of most SMEs, simply because SMEs, unlike larger companies, have a tight purse to operate. They already have other higher priority strategies to undertake leaving not much scope for investment in the likes of Hadoop. It would be interesting to monitor and track how this trend pans out in the months to come.

SMEs will incorporate mobile-based solutions in their IT strategy.

A mobile phone is nothing short of a computer these days. Every passing month, millions of consumers are switching to a smart phone and relying on it for their daily chores. Referring a to-do list, searching for a Thai restaurant in the vicinity, buying books or fashion garments, downloading songs, and pretty much every other activity is increasingly shifting to a mobile device. Companies are also reinforcing their online presence with mobile-based solutions. The sale of phablets is likely to grow to 60%; thus SMEs will find it prudent to be in tune with this trend in order to be able to tap tech-savvy consumers.

Optimizing business gains from social media presence.

Businesses see social media as a mechanism to attract more customers, create buzz about their products and services, seek feedback to better customer service, and improve service offerings. Many SMEs seem to employ social media in a disorganized manner rather than design a systematic campaign to deploy a social media strategy for say, digital marketing. They hope that it will help them in some way. Hope is rarely a good strategy. In the coming year, SMEs are likely to rely on social media rather than just use it. However they seem to lack the means or resources to measure the gains from their social media strategy. This is where professional services firms can assist in devising a well-planned strategy to leverage real gains from social media.

Integration woes.

Frankly, we are as surprised (or unsurprised) to see integration woes as an ongoing trend as you possibly are. If there is one trend that has continued over decades, it is this one. Over the years, the ‘entities’ to be integrated have changed but the integration-related troubles continue. In the 1980s and 1990s, integration of legacy systems with open systems gave pain. In the 2000s, integration of different software architectures was cause for grief. Today, analytics tools and techniques are being developed around the Internet of Things, but the integration of these systems is lagging. More specifically for SMEs wanting to embrace analytics, integration of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data is a source of much anguish. Worse, they typically lack the expertise and resources to manage the entire integration process despite employing a team of analysts. This is another reason that in-house analytics teams are increasingly not being preferred because of the need of specialist treatments of data.

Data security and privacy concerns.

Data privacy and security concern has been one of the main reasons keeping SMEs from adopting analytics. All roads to meaningful business insights lead through your data. You need to share data with analysts and service providers in order to get hidden insights that can be utilized for business benefits. However, SMEs have been wary in sharing their data, probably rightly so, in order to protect their customer identities, even at the cost of losing their competitive advantage to rivals. But now, with increasing number of SMEs taking up analytics to secure and grow their businesses, others don’t want to be left behind. Organizations will increasingly recognize that it is not possible to operate in a 100 percent secured environment. Once organizations acknowledge that, they can begin to apply more-sophisticated risk assessment and mitigation tools. They will look to embed security at multiple levels viz. application-level, execution-level, storage-level, and even contract-level. Interestingly, analytics itself is proving to be a great mechanism for security breach prevention.

Organizations moving away from in-house analytics.

Organizations hired staff to set-up their own in-house analytics teams primarily for two reasons: First, they intended to take up analytics as an ongoing business strategy and thought that hiring in-house analysts was the inexpensive way to achieving that objective. Second, they were guarded about sharing data with external service providers. The arrangement of in-house analytics department should have worked had it consisted of the right skilled-resources, such as data scientists and analytics experts, who came from analytics background. In many cases, these data analysts might have delivered some initial benefits despite coming from the business-side. However, companies seem to have realized that they are spending way too high to achieve that purpose. Not only do they not have the ‘right-skilled’ resources to take up the ongoing analytics challenges, but it also takes their focus away from their core business. Moreover, setting up an in-house analytics team is a costly and risky proposition requiring the necessary infrastructure to operate. Therefore, SMEs seem to be moving away from heavy in-house big data infrastructure to external analytics service providers. In some cases, they are even going for big data-as-a-service in the cloud. This allows them to have a lean in-house analytics team of just analytics officers or data officers and get their stuff done through the external knowledge workers.

In sum, most trends are pointing toward ‘ubiquity of analytics in business’. Which of these trends will realize in a big way in 2015? Our guess is as good as yours! Meanwhile, we would love to know your thoughts on how analytics has contributed to your business in 2014, and more importantly how do you perceive it to perform this year. Please do share!

Related Posts:

• Top Analytics Trends 2016 for SMBs
• Top Analytics Trends 2017 – An INFOGRAPHIC

<– Buy, Build, or Get the job done?

Most important thing in analytics is not what you think –>

You can also subscribe to our blog – Our Perspectives – to receive interesting articles and tips in email. We would love to read your perspectives and comments on that.

Do follow Veravizion on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, or Google+ to receive easy updates.

A  s a CxO considering analytics solutions for your organization, whether to buy or build is invariably the first perplexing question you will face. There are many reports out there that evaluate these options and propose one of them.

For a business, it is of paramount importance to get a system designed and developed that meets the organization’s strategic goals. On the Buy↔Build spectrum, ‘buying a solution and twisting it to force a fit with your requirements’ is rarely an ideal way for most clients to meet their real requirements. On the other hand, it is often costly to ‘build your own thing’ in terms of time, money, and effort.

We would like to look at the buy-or-build decision from a broader perspective.

We believe that this decision depends upon two main questions:
1. Who is making the decision? The size and type of organization making the decision.
2. What is their purpose? The benefits for which the organization is making the decision.

The business needs of a multinational corporation are vastly different from those of a small and medium enterprise (SME) or those of a neighbourhood store. Moreover, the purpose for which such a solution is required by these businesses is also very different. While a large corporation may be willing to invest huge amounts of resources in such an initiative to seek strategic benefits, an SME might just want to implement it as a one-time project with tactical benefits in mind. In short, it depends on what job each business wants to get done. Therefore, we have identified a third option, which is becoming more popular, to acknowledge the real needs that most corporations have but tend to think only in terms of ‘Buy’ or ‘Build’. We call it the ‘Get-the-job-done’ option. So before we delve deeper into the details of buy, get-the-job-done, and build, let us start on the same page in terms of what each of these decisions mean:

A] The ‘BUY’ decision: Buying a product off-the-shelf or buying a license to use a product with little or no customization. In general, the product is licensed by the vendor or a subscription-fee is charged for its recurrent usage.

B] The ‘BUILD’ decision: Setting up an in-house team of technically skilled resources to develop a product yourself from scratch. This decision entails upfront investment in terms of recruiting the right-skilled resources, training them, deploying the necessary technical infrastructure, and having an overhead team of managers to supervise the development efforts to ensure that the product is developed as envisaged.

C] The ‘GET-THE-JOB-DONE’ decision: This decision involves hiring an analytics services provider to achieve your specific requirements, be it strategic or tactical. Such initiatives usually begin as a tactical project but go on to become strategic in nature once the initial results are visible.

In order to make this decision, you need to evaluate your requirements on the following five mutually exclusive but collectively exhaustive parameters:
a. Scale of operations
b. Benefits sought
c. Total cost of ownership (TCO)
d. Availability of resources – skilled people, time, infrastructure
e. Risk tolerance

So let us look at each option in detail.

A] When and why should you consider the BUY decision?

The BUY option should be pursued whenever the focus is on acquiring a product with standard specifications, quickly.

a. Scale of operation is very small. For a small business operating in a neighbourhood, the requirements are usually generic. If you are running a corner-shop, like a coffee shop or a sandwich-bar, some standard products are generally available. These ready-made solutions address most of your broad requirements. Level of customization sought is low. So you can run your business effectively with least modifications in a standard product as it matches most of your needs. Your customization requirements are not high enough to warrant investment for a customized product.
b. Benefits expected are generally (but not necessarily) tactical in nature. A small business, like a fashion accessories corner-shop, is generally looking for a quick turnaround of inventory or brisk sales during festival season. As time is of essence, you do not have the luxury to build a custom solution. In such cases, you should go for a ready-made product.
c. Lack of skilled technical resources may be the key factor in deciding against going for a custom solution.
d. Micro businesses typically have budget constraints. As a result, it is not economically feasible for you to build a proprietary solution. You may find it more logical to buy a cheaper commercial off the shelf (COTS) product instead.
e. Risk tolerance is not high. A couple of wrong decisions might result in big setbacks to a micro-business hence it is always prudent to go for a well-proven solution that does not cost a lot of money.

B] When and why should you consider the BUILD decision?

The BUILD option should be pursued whenever the focus is on addressing the strategic objectives of the large organization and cost is not the immediate concern.

a. Scale of operations is enormous. A multinational corporation with global operations, like a financial institution or a telecom company, generally has numerous product lines targeting multicultural consumers worldwide. These businesses require a solution that has functionalities appropriate to satisfy the disparate needs of their diverse customer segments. So a high level of customization is required by large corporations. COTS products with standard specifications are rigid to modifications and cannot meet these specialized needs. Hence a proprietary solution may be better equipped to address your business scalability concerns.
b. Benefits expected are predictably strategic in nature. As a CEO of a large corporation, like a multinational retail chain or a consumer products company, you are constantly looking for distinct competitive advantage to outperform your rival(s). To gain that edge, you cannot rely on the same off-the-shelf product bought by your competitors; you need an analytical solution that is tailor-made to optimize your business specific processes and operations. Devising your own customized system is likely to give you the competitive advantage in the long run.
c. Availability of resources – people, infrastructure, and time – is pivotal to building a truly productive solution. You must recruit right-skilled people viz. data scientists, analysts, and analytics experts, and train them to form a cohesive team. This team will have to be deftly led by able managers in order to build great analytical systems and tools, in a timely manner. In today’s fast changing world, the development team will have to be agile in incorporating changes in the system to keep with the technological pace in order to outplay the competitors.
d. Total cost of ownership (TCO) in case of custom-built solution is typically high. A large organization going for the build option will need to invest heavily in order to extract the strategic benefits to the fullest. These big companies are able to do so thanks to their deep pockets. That’s why the in-house ‘build’ option is suitable primarily for the large corporations.
e. There is a discreet risk involved in heavy upfront investment. Large corporations deploy an in-house team of developers expecting large gains at a later date. However, many things can go wrong, say, the technology may itself become obsolete, or the actual gains may not be worth the time and efforts. Moreover, in-house analytics team may distract the company away from its focus on the core business. Nevertheless, large cash-rich corporations acknowledge these risks and have a high tolerance to bear them.

C] When should you decide to just GET THE JOB DONE?

This option is fast emerging as the preferred alternative among SMEs and even some large organizations as it takes away the complexity and enables you to compete on analytics in a cost effective way. You should decide to hire analytics service provider whenever the focus of your organization is on getting results – cost-effectively and with lower risk.

a. Size of operation varies between a micro-scale and a global business; small and medium sized enterprises (SME) fall in this category. For an SME operating at a regional or a national level, the business needs vary tremendously because the target customer segments differ a lot. An off-the-shelf product that is rigid to modifications is invariably unsuitable for your needs. A ready-made product only means you have to forcefully fit your requirements to the features provided by it. Hence buying an off-the-shelf product is not a sensible approach because you do not want to end up paying your hard earned money for features your business does not want. If you are running a small or medium sized enterprise, like a retail furniture store, a retail consumer goods shop, or a B2C services company, level of customization required by your business is quite high. You need a solution that is flexible to frequent changes. Therefore, an analytics partner is ideal for you to help meet your true needs.
b. Benefits are expected quickly and in a cost-effective manner as the focus is to win quick results. As a business leader running an SME, you want to keep your focus on your core business. You really need a partner that provides flexibility, gives option to customize your requirements, and works for your success while ensuring good customer service.
c. Total cost of ownership (TCO) is comparatively low if you are employing an analytics service provider. They will offer customer service in deploying the solution and training your staff, so you save on the maintenance and training costs otherwise incurred in case of buying or building a product. That’s how the get-the-job-done option reduces your total cost of ownership.
d. Resource requirement is minimal for you if you go for analytics services partner. If you do not have a team of skilled resources to develop your own analytics solution, then it would be a wise decision to hire an analytics partner who will have expertise to productively work towards achieving your business objectives.
e. You can choose to share the risk with your analytics partner by opting to outsource your organization’s analytics activities. The get-the-job-done decision is attractive for its feature of sharing the risk between the business and the analytics partner.
Having said thus, it is not written in stone that an SME cannot build its own custom solution or a micro-business cannot opt for analytics services option. There are no stringent rules as such. The following table only illustrates a one-glance view of the merits and demerits of each of these options for most cases. In a nutshell, the decision of whether to buy or build or get the job done depends on your specific requirements and your preference for each of these options.

Related Posts:

• GYJD: Belief Reinforced
• Why do Businesses hire Management Consultants?
• Want to succeed in your venture? Don’t start with planning

<– Shifting focus of universities

2015 analytics trends –>

You can also subscribe to our blog – Our Perspectives – to receive interesting articles and tips in email. We would love to read your perspectives and comments on that.

Do follow Veravizion on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, or Google+ to receive easy updates.

W  elcome all to the first blogpost at Veravizion analytics!

We are very excited to be able to offer our services to you and to make a sustainable positive impact on your business and on the businesses and lives of those you serve. The opportunities are limitless. We are also thrilled to have the opportunity via this blogpost to share our perspectives and your thoughts on topics that are as much crucial for your business as they are dear to our heart.

All these preceding years, I have observed one thing consistently. Like Newton’s observation, this one too is as common as an apple falling down a tree, and one that most of you have noticed too. However unlike Newtonian one, this one concerns matters of business. It is that, the data and time at hand, for a business executive, are inversely proportional to one another; and the proportion is worsening every passing day. BBC cites IBM to say that, “2.5 exabytes – that’s 2.5 billion gigabytes (GB) – of data was generated every day in 2012.” We are already 700-odd days ahead of that.

The enormity of data carries grave implications for a business (and for our business executive). The top three concerns that instantly come to mind are:
1. Additional cost to analyze the data in a rushed manner
2. Risk of missing the main point
3. Impact on bottom-line and business strategy

From my own professional experiences, I have seen C-suite executives asking senior-managers for instant reports on a variety of business parameters. Naturally, the top-guys need it to keep the business profitable and chart future course of the business. The senior-managers – the business executive in our observation – rarely have an easy way out. So under severe pressure, they are forced to employ resources, at times unskilled, to quickly run queries and generate reports. Many a times, the hugeness of data and paucity of time make the analysts churn out some reports to satisfy the top-execs’ invariably urgent requirements. The entire process becomes quite frustrating and traumatic for the managers. Moreover, there is a high risk of such reports being incomplete and/or inaccurate. It will be nothing less than a gamble to base critical business decisions on such reports. Worse, the managers can be accused of misrepresenting the facts for no fault of theirs.

Fortunately, there is a large upside to this situation. The senior managers can put in place mechanisms, like management dashboards, frequently required charts, and a few useful reports pertaining to any and every information on their customers. These proactive actions on their part can go a long way in helping them and their organization institutionalize a new competitive strategy to keep a step ahead of their competition.

Veravizion was born to help executives with these requirements.

The objective is to have something simple, yet something incredibly useful. These tools can not only save the managers from stress but also help them create win-positions for themselves in their organizations. The business executives can actually differentiate themselves and their organization with this strategy.

I look forward to interacting with you in the coming weeks through future posts and your comments.