1. /BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
BUSINESS
INTELLIGENCE
AT YOUR
FINGERTIPS
Business
Intelligence
solutions have
moved from
standalone
applications
to integrated
features of many
other systems.
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE AND ANALYTICS SOLUTIONS
ARE NO LONGER THE PRESERVE OF THE MOST TECH-
HEAVY INDUSTRIES, AND AS BI BECOMES EASIER
TO DEPLOY AND USE ACROSS THE ORGANISATION,
ITS STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE IS COMING TO THE FORE
BY KERI ALLAN
April 2013 ARABIAN COMPUTER NEWS 59

2. /BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
Sommer: Oil & gas Better data discovery Hyder: BI has moved
and construction is allowing businesses from the preserve of
companies are to tap into different tier one companies to
becoming the leading sources of information a wider audience as it
users of BI in the and better analyse has become easier to
Middle East today. data, says Devlin. implement and use.
he demand for business intelligence data in a way
(BI) and analytics solutions is increasing that’s useful
across the Middle East as CIOs realise and meaningful
the value they provide as an analytical to the user and
and decision making tool. The appeal organisation. But
of such solutions isn’t confined to just a there are other
few sectors: companies across various features that also
verticals are implementing BI and analyt- becoming more
ics projects with success stories from popular.
leading banks and financial institutions, “Data discov-
government and hospitality. Gartner pre- ery is becoming
dicts that the MENA BI software market more common in
will reach $182m in 2013, an 11% increase the region,” says
from 2012. Paul Devlin, di-
“In the Gulf region, a lot of excess rector of business
cash is fueling fast economic and struc- analytics at SAP
tural development and growth. Asset- MENA. “This
based oil and construction industries, will typically
with little digitised information, did not apply to a user’s
see an immediate need to focus on BI in the past, but they are now personal data
some of the fastest-growing segments,” says Dan Sommer, princi- residing on their desktop. It can also apply to data held in the data
pal research analyst, Technology and Service Provider Research, warehouse. This type of software gives the user access to upload
Gartner. “Financial services, aviation and pharmaceuticals are other structured and unstructured data enabling them to find and detect
industries showing great potential for adoption in this region.” new patterns and insights at the speed of thought. Furthermore, it
“The GCC business environment is undergoing a change then allows the users to share these new insights with the rest of the
towards better infrastructure alignment and as the need for more organisation, through email or internal collaboration engines. This
business value dependent decisions grows, the requirement of better type of software requires almost no involvement from IT, allowing
business intelligence and analytics to drive decision making will users to create and own reports on the fly.
come into play,” Meera Kaul, managing director, Optimus highlights. “We are seeing an increase in social media analytics, both inter-
Most of the main players software vendors such as Microsoft, nally and externally,” he continues. “We are also witnessing the rise
SAS, IBM, Oracle and SAP have BI offerings, along with many tier of predictive analytics. How do I move my organisation from its ‘rear
two ERP solutions which have integrated BI tools. view mirror’ view of data to being able to predict what might hap-
Business intelligence is the focus of this market, which is about pen today, tomorrow, next month or next year? It is a transition from
providing customers with the ability to report, analyse and visualise hindsight to foresight.”
“TOMORROW’S MOST SUCCESSFUL COMPANIES WILL BE THOSE
THAT CAN ORGANISE THEMSELVES AROUND ANALYTICS, ESPECIALLY
PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS, AND DRIVE DIFFERENTIATION FROM DATA.”
60 ARABIAN COMPUTER NEWS April 2013

3. /BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
Nowadays it’s easy for companies and staff to start using BI and
analytics packages, as Ali Hyder CEO of Focus Softnet highlights:
“Up to about five years ago, it was very difficult for enterprises to
THE NEWEST BI AND ANALYTICS TRENDS
implement BI tools, as only tier one ERPs were providing BI, and it
required lots of configuration and skilled implementation resources. The new trends in business intelligence (BI) and analytics solutions are focusing on
Now the implementation of BI has become much simpler as cus- mobile apps, big data and cloud, with social media also coming in from 2014.
tomisation is more user-friendly at the interface level.” “Big data and big analytics seems to be the new trends in the BI and analytics
Benefits are also becoming clearer, with businesses able to see arena. Big data represents a transition-in-kind for both analytics and storage. For
how they can improve operational efficiency, productivity, reduce big data, the data being analysed will come from its original unstructured form
business risks, mitigate points of failure and almost always create (e.g. web logs, video clips, social data, open government data etc.) giving users
differentiated and more personal customer experiences. the ability to analyse what is happening in the world around them, with all of the
“[Benefits include] rapid access to information, version con- richness and detail of the original sensation,” says Hariram Kalidas, of GBM.
trol and removal of Excel proliferation,” notes Denzil Murray-Lee, “The next trend would be BI and analytics in the cloud,” he continues. “Cloud-
Infor’s channel manager for Enterprise Performance Management based services will have support for massive amounts of data. This could be a way
for the MEA. for more organisations to broaden adoption rates and reap the benefits that analyt-
“The most important benefit is timely information as decision ics can provide. Business analytics in the cloud provides more user communities
makers don’t have to wait for reports to be prepared and submitted with access to the analytics, performance management and predictive analytics.”
by the users,” continues Hyder. “The analytical information which “The main trend is cloud-based BI and analytics but also SaaS, where organi-
earlier was very difficult to get is now available at their fingertips. sations are able to reduce upfront costs in terms of hardware and infrastructure
These solutions allow information to be leveraged to improve sales and still benefit from the latest software capabilities,” adds Denzil Murray-Lee,
and marketing programs and help boost revenues and profits for the Infor’s channel manager for Enterprise Performance Management for the MEA.
organisation.”
“A recent global survey from MIT Sloan Management Review
indicates that up to 67% of companies surveyed are gaining a
April 2013 ARABIAN COMPUTER NEWS 61

4. /BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
“THE CREATION Kalidas: Business
OF ADVANCED
Intelligence for
solutions designed
for specific vertical
STATISTICS, DATA
segments are
coming to the fore.
MINING, AND MA-
CHINE LEARNING
ALGORITHMS WILL
DRIVE MORE POS-
SIBILITIES FOR THE
WORLD TO BENEFIT
FROM KNOWLEDGE
AND OPTIMISATION
OF DATA.”
competitive advantage by using analytics,” highlights Devlin. “This analytics, the solutions themselves will continue to evolve.
marks a 15% increase from last year’s survey and an 80% increase “The market will evolve to address specific vertical market sec-
from two years ago. It stands to reason that companies can no longer tors,” notes Hariram Kalidas, manager — Analytics and Information
survive on sustained differentiation through product, pricing and Management Practice, Gulf Business Machines (GBM). “GBM is
service alone. Tomorrow’s most successful companies will be those already delivering analytics for finance, called financial performance
that can organise themselves around analytics, especially predictive management systems. Furthermore, there will be more and more
analytics, and drive differentiation from data. Companies that base usage of analytical applications around spatial information analytics
their decisions on gut feelings or data that is weeks or months old (GIS analytics or location intelligence), production planning service
will, in time, simply not survive.” operations, supply chain analytics and workforce analytics etc.
Companies do face obstacles when it comes to getting the most “Gartner and IDC are predicting growth in the social, mobile
out of BI and analytics solutions, however. According to Gartner and cloud [arenas] as well as big data and predictive analytics in
the major issue worldwide is lack of skills, but this is especially an MEA, especially in the GCC and Levant regions,” he adds.
issue in the GCC region. Organisations are also concerned about the Indeed, BI and analytics is expanding to provide users with
management of the enormous amount of data they generate. many more features and abilities, and advanced capabilities from
“Two words: data and user adoption. If companies are to truly advanced data mining, and machine learning algorithms.
benefit from business intelligence, it is vital that they understand “[BI] will grow to become analytics less just on structured data,
what success will look like before they start,” says Devlin. “They but also unstructured and real-time data. Further, the BI space is
need to understand if the data is available to achieve their success moving from reporting mainly on what has happened (descriptive),
and then be rigorous on change control. Set out your criteria for to why it happened (diagnostic), to what will happen (predictive),
success, deliver to it and leave required changes until you go live. and finally, what do we do about what will happen (prescriptive),”
It’s also useful to work in 90-day deliverables after the initial go Sommer concludes.
live. This is key, as it gives users confidence in using and accessing
relevant data and driving real business benefit,” he advises.
Even as more businesses and users begin to embrace BI and
62 ARABIAN COMPUTER NEWS April 2013