The Trend of Big Data in Asia-Pacific

The IDC Asian Financial Services Congress 2012 (AFSC) brought together thought leaders from the financial services industry across Asia-Pacific. The event enabled more than 500 attendees to network, learn and share best practices to address unique challenges in the 21st Century.

The rise of Big Data was a recurring theme recognised to have major impacts on future business. As a trend, Big Data was discussed in depth at the congress. There was an overwhelming consensus that Big Data and analytics can no longer be left at the fringes. It was clear that organisations had an urgent need to quickly bring it in from the fringes and create the internal mindshare to monetise the true value of Big Data. The region’s financial services organisations made it clear they plan to put Big Data to work http://www.ap.afscongress.com/2012/.

This was a critical factor that everyone understood to rest solely within an organisation’s control. Their success and competitive advantage will ultimately depend on their ability to grow and make data centric capability a core competency.

Many organisations had a very strong reliance on third parties for creating new knowledge and innovating in the data space. The market shift to a data intensive society has caught them on the back foot. Additionally, businesses across a wide range of industries are not aware of the speed at which data centric innovations and digitisation are occurring at born digital organisations disrupting markets (e.g. Twitter, Cloudera, Facebook, Google, FourSquare, LinkedIn, Bitly and many others.).

The old business models that outsourced data centric knowledge and innovations worked well before the global financial crisis (GFC), but they are not sustainable anymore. As the trend of Big Data continues to gain momentum it will expose organisations’ weaknesses and threaten future growth as they will be slow to adapt to change continuing the loss of competitiveness. In essence they will have failed to recognise that Big Data is a by-product of the digital age and, given enough time, it will encompass the entire future world of business. This too was a common theme that reverberated at the World Economic Forum 2012 in Davos Switzerland. In a report it suggests Big Data is a new class of economic asset, like currency or gold http://www.weforum.org/reports/big-data-big-impact-new-possibilities-international-development .

A critical factor highlighted in my presentation at the congress was the importance of staying on trend in this new era. Organisations at the congress understand how significant it is that they figure out creative ways to make use of Big Data. Sustaining competitive advantage will come down to organisations’ ability to monetise Big Data as it has become a critical ingredient for the successful execution of future business models.

For instance, American Express is harnessing social data fom Twitter in creative and disruptive ways. The thinking behind their recent business extension into the twittersphere provides a nice vantage point into how organisations can monetise Big Data and put it to work for growth. They’ve converged Big Data on-premises and off-premises to extend their digital presence across social web channels. This is enabling their organisation to connect with social customers and merchants in relevant ways http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/06/amex-tweet-savings/ .

The various parts of an organisation’s business operations (e.g. marketing, sales, human resources, product development, contact centre and finance) must become tightly integrated across multi-channel touch points to ensure that when decisions are made or interactions happen, all parts of an organisation work together to cohesively and adaptively respond to change.

According to Peter Drucker “a time of turbulence is a dangerous time, but its greatest danger is the temptation to deny reality” (Drucker, 1980). Organisations at the congress recognised they must leave past practices behind and expand upon or create data centric capability that is aligned with the new realities of Big Data. This transformation in thinking will call for new mental models and approaches that will enable organisations to sustain future competiveness. Organisations need to build their business ecosystem for what the world needs today and tomorrow.

The bottom line - organisations need to stay on trend in this new era. They must work through what the Big Data trends mean to future business to determine how best to charter a sustainable course underpinned by a holistic Big Data Strategy and Data Governance. It’s clear the region is looking to further expand its use of data centric capability. This aspiration is further reflected in the recent IDC Big Data Technology and Services Market Forecast that suggests the market “represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 40% or about 7 times that of the overall information and communications technology (ICT) market” http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS23355112 .

This explosion of data is creating a winner takes all market. Given enough time the entire world will head towards digitisation and organisations that are slow to adapt will continue to face extreme headwinds as they struggle to move Big Data from the fringes and build mindshare to monetise it.

Big Data & the Seven P’s: To Advance an Organisation’s Growth Agenda

The data intensive society in which we live, work and play has rapidly emerged as a force influencing radical changes in the competitive landscape. The business ecosystem has become increasingly digital and globally interconnected. As a consequence organisations face challenging headwinds as cycles of change that are much faster create greater uncertainty. Organisations must innovate to grow, creating new business models in this era of “Big Data”. Adaptation is critical because markets react to reality and not expectations.

In this new norm the amount of data generated in society is staggering. Its complexity and the pace at which it is generated are also continuing to accelerate. Among other things, these factors have emerged testing the future competitiveness of organisations. An organisation’s resilience will be challenged and their ability to withstand the headwinds will depend on their ability to capitalise on Big Data.

Organisations that find creative and innovative ways to grow holistically will continue to break away from the pack. As long as they continue with a quickened responsiveness and innovation cycle that keep pace with this new norm – the data intensive society – they will have the advantage over their competitors.

This has left most organisations flat footed as yesterday’s business as usual is not aligned with today’s data intensive reality, and this is a disadvantage. As organisations struggle to understand how data can open up new possibilities in this data intensive society, they remain vulnerable to the sensitive ups and downs of faster change cycles. At the World Economic Forum (WEF) 2012 this theme was recognised as another major challenge that organisations must address http://forumblog.org/2012/01/davos-2012-decoding-the-data-deluge/

Most organisations in attendance agreed the way forward to address such a challenge was to reinvent business models to ensure they align with the market and societal expectations. In addition, most organisations agreed the long-term outlook would remain a challenge and uncertain until transformations occur to shape new models. Although this may be the case for most organisations, others will need to consider reformations to align with the new reality of Big Data. Successful reformations undertaken will enable organisations to effectively compete. This aspiration and its execution will depend on an organisation’s ability to make sense of data and how it gets integrated at the core of its business. An ability to harness Big Data to improve productivity and customer experience are a few examples of business outcomes they can achieve.

The reformation that fosters a greater level of data awareness and data imagination will have more potential to move an organisation’s thinking beyond yesterday’s business as usual mind sets. Reformations must also ensure organisations establish the right climate and culture to create the conditions to innovate for growth. For instance, organisations should focus reformation initiatives to reduce the amount of cognitive effort involved in decision making for both customers and employees.

In this new data intensive society, data is described as the digital air, the oxygen that binds together the rhythm of society and the carbon dioxide that it exhales (Boyd and Crawford, 2011). Organisations that focus on data centric capability as being core to future competitiveness will be better positioned to harness data intensive possibilities as society breathes this digital air.

The vantage point in Figure A – the Seven P’s shows the different but interconnected dimensions of Big Data. It can be used to create data awareness to tap into data imagination that explores new business models and opportunities. This is critical for organisations that are competing in the digital economy. The digital economy will continue to reward organisations that recognise the significance of the radical shift that has emerged and can unleash data-centric capability to bring forth new value.

In a series of posts I will examine the Seven P’s and their influence on an organisation’s ability to unleash value in this new data intensive society. As the emergence of this data intensive society stakes out the new competitive landscapes, methods of business will eventually need to adapt.

In brief the Seven P’s are:

Possibilities: opening the imagination of an organisation towards using Big Data for disruptive competition to meet business goals and deliver new value.

Purpose: the establishment of data centric capability that harnesses innovation and creativity to ethically advance the human condition.

Process: the implementation of data centric techniques that harnesses data in an ethical manner so all units of a business can act in real time to generate value that others have not imagined.

People: utilising the knowledge and skills of data centric capability as a catalyst for innovation by exploiting data as a raw material to add value.

Profit: capitalising on transformative data to achieve organisational goals and profit motivations.

Policy: the formulation of policies for the security and privacy of data collection and use while keeping pace with advancing technology innovations (Tene and Jules, 2012) http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/privacy-paradox/big-data.

Productivity: enabling real time cognitive decision making while reducing effort for both employees and customers. The reduction in time to make decisions creates value, freeing up the entire organisation to focus on driving results to meet goals.

An organisation’s ability to sustain benefit realisation through the Seven P’s will depend on execution and embedding them into business models. In the data intensive society, the era of ‘Big Data’ has emerged giving disruptive potential to those organisations with the vision to imagine where data fits at the core. An organisation’s ability to embrace big data possibilities for the purpose of improving productivity and customer experience will create strong signs of certainty.

The transformative use of data is a factor that will ensure organisations not only advance their growth agenda but it will improve productivity with the right climate and culture.

Organisations are struggling to understand how data can open up new possibilities. In the meantime they remain vulnerable to the sensitive ups and downs of faster change cycles. As organisations look forward to the future in the aftermath of the WEF 2012 the Seven P’s combined with the right reformations undertaken is a pathway to enable organisations to address many themes outlined at Davos and compete in the new era.

More to come on each of the Seven Ps in future posts to this blog.

Big Data - Skating with the puck

In this era of big data, organisations need to review their existing technology-enabled customer-centric business strategies. They need to rethink their approach to gain the next big competitive advantage. To succeed, organisations need to creatively harness their data-centric capabilities to positively impact real-time business operations and customer experience.

Organisations that are skating with the puck are focusing on how to leverage their customer-centric technology to consistently deliver the “next best offer” across multiple channels. They are looking to improve the customer experience while boosting employee productivity. Providing a customer with a tailored next best offer is one of the most powerful ways to cross-sell and up-sell to improve the customer lifetime value. However, for a multi-product company with countless possibilities finding that right next best offer can be a challenge. Getting the next best offer wrong decreases the value of the direct interactions with a customer and their affinity with the organisation.

In addition offering too many options decreases productivity and can turn customers off. Hick’s Law suggests the time it takes to make a decision increases as the number of alternatives increases. Hence, the number of alternative products or services and channels an organisation offers are factors which influence the time taken for the frontline staff or customers to make a decision.

Powerful data-centric technologies, such as master data management (MDM) and complex event processing (CEP), when used together, can help organisations better predict what that next best offer should be in real-time. The organisations that adopt this technology have the opportunity to detect, learn, communicate and act consistently across all channels to improve the customer experience and employee productivity.

Customers have become digitally oriented and their preferred channel is digital. Organisations that are circling the ice with their reactive approach to next best offer may find themselves at a significant disadvantage when engaging with customers across multiple channels, particularly if they fail to find creative ways to drive value through digital channels.

An organisation’s ability to create one positive customer experience is an anthesis of the true value of harnessing data intensive possibilities in this business ecosystem. Whether the customer is interacting on the social web or across traditional channels, technology like Informatica’s MDM and CEP can instantaneously suggest a tailored next best product or service. This data-centric capability not only improves the immediate customer experience, but the customer’s lifetime value, while boosting employee effectiveness and productivity. In addition, organisations who use data more broadly, mastered, to encompass the social graph and interest graph are enabling business agility. Mining historical transactions for patterns, trends, and predictors (“big data”) provides a strong indicator of future behaviour leading to appropriately tailored next best offers.

Another critical component of this approach is a feedback loop. Frontline staff at customer touchpoints provide feedback about how the customer responded to the technology-enabled “next best offer”. The offers taken up and those that weren’t through online channels can be evaluated in order to continue to improve “next best offer” possibilities, sharpening an organisation’s ability to better meet their customers’ needs.

The digital future of an organisation’s customer-centric strategy hinges on their ability to move away from the reactive business model of the past to an instant, intelligent business that better leverages its data to impact results. The first tangible outcome of this new proactive business model is to improve the customer experience and boost employee productivity by suggesting tailored next best offers. This empowers the frontline staff and customers to make smarter decisions faster across multiple channels.

The next best offers are event driven, reducing wasted effort in making offers to customers who are not ready to convert. An event can be as simple as a website activity or interacting with a frontline employee.

It is the real time suggestion of a tailored next best product or service that enables organisations to gain a more balanced, integrated approach to the customer experience. As an accelerator of their customer-centric strategy into the digital future, this advantage is a critical factor for organisations operating and competing in this new data intensive society.

Read more about CEP: http://blogs.informatica.com/perspectives/index.php/author/chris-carlson/

Big Data and the supply arbitrage

"Big Data" has reached a tipping point for organisations creating a need for a supply arbitrage of skilled knowledge workers. Many universities around the world, such as Columbia, Northwestern, Yale, Oxford, are working in collaboration with entrepreneurs, investors, and alumni to expand or create curriculum around this supply arbitrage.

As the world becomes more data-intensive, businesses of the future will need to capitalise on knowledge intensive skills that are in tune with how to apply big data processes and techniques right from the start. These actions are inspiring for many entrepreneurs that have pioneered data science innovations to create products and services. Data matters now more than ever and the universities around the world aspiring to diversify national economies and spur job creation in technology-based businesses is exemplary.

The computing landscape has become increasingly data-centric, while big data is also becoming more mission critical across the disciplines of business, technology, medicine and science. For instance Pike Research suggests cities around the world are harnessing big data in new ways with the goal of improving on the quality of living in urban areas http://www.pikeresearch.com/newsroom/global-market-for-energy-efficient-buildings-to-surpass-100-billion-by-2017 . They go on to suggest that in this decade cities around the world will invest $108 billion in smart city infrastructure like smart meters, grids and energy-efficient buildings. The cities around the world (e.g. Helsinki, London, San Franscio, Rio de Janeiro, New York City, Washington, D.C.) highlighted as leading the way in the use of data centric capability, aspire to address the unprecedented challenges and opportunities posed in this new data rich era. Their ability to harness data to reduce crime, congestion and waste is closely linked to why the arbitrage of skilled knowledge workers is necessary.

There is no doubt that universities around the world have recognised they have a vital role to play in capitalising on the big data supply arbitrage. Their participation will provide opportunity on a much wider scale for students to understand how to apply big data techniques and processes pioneered by “born digital” organisations like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Foursquare and others. That said, Linkedin communities such as “Big Data Integration” will continue to play its role in the supply arbitrage by refining and inventing new Big Data techniques that can quickly be leveraged to meet the demands of organisations http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Big-Data-Integration-3981538?home=&gid=3981538&trk=anet_ug_hm .

Lastly, as data scientists employ new tools based on new models of computation, an organisation’s ability to adapt and embed them will ensure they can drive attributes of data centric capability at all levels of integration into business operations. As opposed to being a silo that services one line of business, this integration will make an organisation more productive by providing business users with more time to make more informed decisions driving results.

Big Data – Born Digitals already benefit from it

IDC Asia/Pacific (Excluding Japan) Business Analytics Top 10 Predictions suggest the need for organisational change is fast approaching. Decision makers in Asia/Pacific (APEJ) are taking up the journey of transforming their data poor organisations of the past to ones that are strategic at harnessing data centric capability in this new data rich era. As data volumes have grown and the complexity of data that is collected and analysed is increasing, Business Analytics is entering a new phase.

The significance of Business Analytics (BA) was revealed as becoming the number one priority for organisations in the region. Ten factors outlined in the IDC survey can help sustain an organisation’s competitive advantage beyond 2012 when the aspiration to place Business Analytics at the centre of delivering tangible business value is a strategic intent. http://www.idcresearch.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prSG23165411

The survey purports over 65% of decision makers in APEJ have a greater awareness that organisations are now living in and competing in a new data-rich society. This new reality is fast creating unprecedented challenges and opportunities within their organisations to spur productivity, growth and revenue. A recent Forbes article (Beware The Big Data Hype) outlines another critical factor on the backdrop of a global survey by The Corporate Executive Board (CEB) of Chief Marketing Officers (CMO). The CEB research suggests more than 60% of knowledge workers at large enterprises say their organisations lack the processes and “big data” techniques to use information effectively for decision making. It goes on to suggest if organisations don’t figure this out, Big Data could go the way of CRM back in the 90s – much promised but results a long-time coming. This too is a significant factor influencing how APEJ organisations are able to achieve on their strategic intent. http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickspenner/2011/11/09/beware-the-big-data-hype/

A lack of focus on processes, “big data” techniques and business alignment will undoubtedly stifle the achievement of outcomes outlined in the IDC survey. What to do? An outside-in view of other forward thinking organisations that have already taken the journey in this data rich era can provide them with a greater awareness of outcomes they can also aspire to achieve. Most of the organisations described as ‘born digital’ have been influencing disruptive change through harnessing their data centric capability for competitive advantage. An aspect of its culture is its capability for unique differentiation and its ability to continuously strive to embed ubiquitous measurement into the rhythm of its business ecosystem.

For instance, the link below to the “Anatomy of Facebook” (from the Facebook Data Team ) provides a nice vantage point of the business outcomes such a culture can deliver when the right climate, data centric capability and processes are established to compete in this new era. http://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-data-team/anatomy-of-facebook/10150388519243859

The thinking that underpins a ‘born digital’ culture is best characterised in their focus on the generation and sharing of insights. In addition, an entrepreneur, laboratory approach to development has ensured the generation of new knowledge can expand through new channels across the social web. Their data centric capability draws on the strengths of digitisation to speed innovation creating value for the social consumer. There are many other players such as Linkedin, Amazon, Google, Foursquare, Cloudera and a whole host of others that have made the transformation to compete in this new data rich era.

Organisations in APEJ that aspire to transform, need to ensure their strategic intent is underpinned by data centric capability that fosters a climate in which strategic data use is a core competency of everyone. Their ability to apply similar working practices and process as the ‘born digital’ organisations will ensure they are better positioned to maximise business value in 2012 and beyond.

A cornerstone of a successful change journey outlined by over 65% of the decision makers is the emerging significance of the Chief Data Scientist (described as a critical role to ensure organisations define their “Big Data” strategies and make it relevant to the business). This number one factor identified by the APEJ decision makers is something they have in common with the ‘born digital’ organisations. The role brings a vision and intense curiosity to understand what's behind the data to turn it into useful products and services.

In conclusion, forward thinking organisations in APEJ recognise the world has moved from a data poor era to a new data rich era. This new reality requires creative thinking to ensure these organisations are better positioned to stay on trend, move up the analytics value chain and embed ubiquitous measurement. Although it is still early days in the region, like any change journey the winners in 2012 and beyond will be those organisations that act and execute based on the greater awareness outlined in the survey. The ability to attain the desired outcomes that underpin strategic intent can be improved by taking on board common threads from ‘born digital’ organisations. This, combined with factors identified in the survey results, will ensure organisations in the region create the right climate and data centric capability with processes and skills to harness valuable insights in this new data rich era.

What does leadership mean to me?

I believe leadership is about creatively harnessing innovative ideas and confidently promoting them to have people passionately join the journey for sustained success. This is just as important in the knowledge economy. The rapid adoption of newer technologies and the growing interconnectedness around the world requires a leader who can build a coordinated plan enabling an organisation to evolve alongside social, cultural, political and technological trends influencing change.

Today’s leadership must have passion as a coach and facilitator to harness the creative minds of knowledge workers to enable their organisations to adopt and integrate the newer technological innovations. It is critical that leadership transform vision into action to unlock the collective intelligence within an organisation. I believe this is a mandate that leadership must excel at. This too is part of the fiduciary responsibility of leadership and ensures an organisation becomes adaptive to all trends influencing change.

An organisation’s current and future success, more than ever, hinges on leadership that act less as command and control or authoritative. Instead, leadership who act more creatively and innovatively is what ensures organisations thwart organisational inertia. I believe it creates a disruptive force for organisations when it is combined with customer-oriented business models and a data-centric enterprise. Moreover, as knowledge is the new raw material of business – an economic input almost on a par with capital and labour – leadership that enable organisations to harness its immense insight and unlock its value will capitalise on its true value.

These aspects are examples of critical factors organisations must consider to increase their ability to make radical or incremental changes in strategy and structure in the face of rapid change. It is imperative that leadership are creative and innovative to enable organisations to thrive in a world where the only thing that is certain is change.

Additionally, I believe leadership that is inspiring, authentic, and infused with integrity ensures a vision fosters a climate where the organisations unique capabilities creates a higher degree of differentiation that is not easily imitated by competitors.

I believe leadership that is creative and innovative is no longer a useful accessory, rather it is critical if organisations want to sustain competiveness in the knowledge economy. These aspects will create a disruptive force that is difficult to imitate by competitors when they are combined with a data-centric enterprise and customer-oriented business models. In a world where change is the only thing that is certain it will be this type of leadership that will promote a vision to inspire knowledge workers to join the journey for sustained success.

The recent Ventana Research Leadership Awards recognise individuals, organisations and technology vendors worldwide that demonstrate innovation and leadership to achieve spectacular outcomes. It was an honor to accept this award on behalf of team.

Thanks to Ventana Research for recognising the leadership characteristics shown in the team. Congratulations also to all the other leadership award recipients.

Below is the link to Ventana Research's press release on the awards.

Read more: http://www.ventanaresearch.com/2011awardspr/

Humanising Customer Centricity: Informatica's Social Media and Master Data Management (MDM)

Informatica's Social Media and Master Data Management (MDM) demo provides an organisation with a nice vantage point to increase productivity and humanise the customer experience. As social media becomes more pervasive in the daily lives of everyday consumers, organisations will need to provide for a customer experience that fosters intuitive relationships with consumers.

The demo captures the spirit of natural tendencies that can often be taken for granted. It humanises the face of an organisation ensuring it is better equipped to improve the customer experience by enabling it to relate a customer’s off-premise persona to what is already known about a customer on-premise. It provides an organisation with a window into how customers that are more connected discover, communicate and share based on their social graph and interest.

As digital technology continues to accelerate economic change, a critical factor of competitive advantage is an organisation’s ability to humanise its social web presence, learn how to listen and adapt. The future business will need to ensure its cultural dynamics are continuously in tune with consumers’ behaviour which are triggering market shifts in business. The inability of organisations to adapt with consumer behaviour will ultimately impact the customer experience and the bottom-line.

Organisations that are winning in this new reality have recognised this is a time when customers can work with you not just against you. This social media and master data management (MDM) demo is a reflection of this new reality. It shows how organisations will conduct future business, humanising their band as they fluidly interact with customers seamlessly and transparently.

Check this link: : http://vip.informatica.com/content/Downloads?docid=1826&lsc=NA-Ongoing-2011Q4-JG-BD-MDM-Social_Media_Demo_www