Abstract
There are several challenges faced by decision makers while deploying Business Analytics in their organization. There may not be one resolution approach that is suitable for creating a Business Analytics culture in all organizations. However, it is easy to perceive that most India-based organizations may have similar issues of data organization that may be impeding their progression in the field of Analytics. Based on their research, the authors have proposed a framework for adoption of Analytics in Indian firms in their book “Weaving Analytics for Effective Decision Making” by SAGE. They propose to use that model for explaining certain domain specific adoption of Business Analytics in organizations in India. They have used a case study of a Global Bank which is in the process of establishing its consumer lending USA operations, an offshore captive operation, in India to describe the process of building an Analytics team in an organization in India. Data processed using R has been added as screenshots for supporting the findings.
TopBackground
A senior management team in an organization that is contemplating investing in an Analytics function may often times see such investments as a consequence of trying to organize the data overload from disparate sources. Lot of work has already been done across organizations to convert data into narratives and then communicate the story to the relevant client using visualization methods for superior engagement of the audience (Figure 1).
Figure 1. From Numbers to Narratives (Book: Banerjee, 2017)
The authors have emphasized in their book (Banerjee, 2017) the critical factors affecting analytics adoption in organizations. The model described in the book suggests some key points that are specific to an emerging economy as shown in Figure 2. The top management of global companies, while contemplating on the need to invest into such an offshore operational unit is often unable to drive a turnkey solution and therefore begins by relying on local consultants who can explain the global benchmarks. There is a dearth of standardized data infrastructure due to legacy systems in place and compatibility issues. Adequate local resource is lacking and global resources may not be completely in sink with local needs for data, technology, culture and infrastructure.
TopResearch Methodology
Building an analytics culture within organizations has been discussed in several forums, primarily with the advent of Big Data- data that is available in huge volumes; captured from multiple sources consciously by organizations or as part of an ongoing process; its availability in various forms text, audio, video, image and online capture of data using sophisticated technology. The authors have used a case study to emphasize upon critical aspects that add value while deploying an analytics culture within an organization, with a focus on offshore operation. The case described below discusses some of these points and the methodology used for planning and implementing in a captive offshore operational unit in India.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Offshore: Move some of the organization’s functions to a different geography than where the head office is located.
Business Analytics: It is the process of working with factual information in organizations, using suitable tools and techniques to identify the nuggets of wisdom (insights) from them that can have direct impact on influencing good decision making.
Data Science: With the increase in the amount of data captured by organizations, the various forms of structured and unstructured captured and the speed and frequency of it, significance of data science has increased over time. Data science is a methodical form of integrating statistics, algorithms, scientific methods, models and visualization methods for interpretation of outcomes in organizational problem solving and fact based decision making.
Global Services Centre: It means a central point of offering operational services for an organization. In this case, it refers to the local operations of the Global bank extended at the offshore unit of the bank in India.
Consumer Lending: It refers to the process by which a consumer takes loan from a bank. It is the category of lending centred around individual or household customers such as home loans, automobile loans, personal loans.
Wordcloud: It is usually an outcome of visualization method used for analysing textual data. It is a pictorial representation of frequency of occurrence of terms in textual documents, thus highlighting the ones that have maximum and minimum occurrence. It aids organization decision making and sensitivity analysis.
Text Mining: It refers to analysing large quantities of unstructured textual data using data analytics methods for relevant outcomes.