30 Minute Interview

Applying intelligence to your business

Venkatesh Anant, Director, Business Development, Intellicus Technologies, shares his views with Neeraj Gandhi on the trends in Business Intelligence space and the need for collective intelligence.

Venkatesh Anant

BI in India

BI is new to India and only big businesses are using it at the moment. However in the last 3-4 years, there has been considerable adoption of BI even by SMEs. This presents a huge opportunity for us as a BI solution provider targeting SMEs. Today BI is based on data-driven intelligence rather than on information-driven intelligence. Whereas the need is to separate information from the accumulated data first and then use it intelligently for the growth of business. Intellicus is primarily focusing on this aspect.

What also needs to be noted is that BI is being misunderstood as an expensive technology meant only for large enterprises. However this is not the case. Implementing a BI solution does require a certain amount of investment, but the ROI is worth the amount spent.

Implementing BI

BI is being adopted both at the department and the enterprise level. According to me, the adoption should start from the department level gradually rising towards the enterprise level. This is the correct channel. But in India the channel of adoption is from top to bottom. It’s a trend here because it is important to make a mark at the management levels first, and then move toward the department level.

BI as a business enabler

BI acts as an asset for the enterprise. It helps in understanding the business better and brings you closer to your business. BI is the sole tool that can analyze the data and offer as set of solutions that are desirable for the business. The ROI is high.

Until last year the level of adoption of BI was not that high. But with the amount of digital information increasing, particularly due to increase in business, we expect that the adoption level of BI will increase. Increasing data if not managed properly can be detrimental to the growth of a business. The awareness with regards to BI is increasing. Companies are realizing the technological as well as the business aspect of BI. This will help increase the acceptance of BI.

BI 2.0

BI 2.0 is all about providing power to the people and to the software. It is the adoption of the software in a way the user wants it to be. It is the synergy between the software and the human. BI has traditionally remained with the analyst who reported to the CEO. The time has come to provide BI to the user. Intellicus is intensely focusing of creating this interface between the software and the user. We are also trying to patent this synergy between software and humans.

BI 2.0 does not correspond only to real time data sharing. That is being offered even by the solutions that are presently available. It is more about collective intelligence. There is not much innovation happening in the BI space. Collective intelligence is the need of the hour. It’s essentially an amalgamation between AI, BI and the human intelligence.

Future plans

BI is an untapped market in India. A closer look reveals that large enterprises are aware about the concept and advantages of BI. This is not the case among the small and medium businesses. Also adoption of a proper IT infrastructure is needed before the enterprises proceed towards BI. We estimate that by 2010 the implementation of BI will increase in India.

We are in active discussion with the government departments for the deployment of our products. We are looking at verticals like BFSI, healthcare and security and compliance segments, and are also in talks with ISVs in India. In addition we will also target product companies to interpret data.

neeraj.gandhi@expressindia.com