IDC: Asia Pacific to see more BA adoption in 2012

Organisations in the Asia Pacific region are seen to finally embrace business analytics (BA) with CIOs and IT decision makers saying that BA is a priority in their organisations.

A recent study by IDC shows that more than 65% of respondents polled consider business analytics their top priority in the short and long term. The study — done in June 2011 — involved 1,300 CIOs and IT decision makers in the Asia Pacific except Japan (APEJ).

In the upcoming report, titled ‘IDC Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan) Business Analytics 2012 Top 10 Predictions’ noted that the trend towards the extensive use of data in decision-making is prompting organisations to become aware of BA.

The study also showed that 29% of organisations in the region are evaluating “Big Data” tools while over 30% still do not have plans at all about using “Big Data” technologies, IDC analysts said.

“‘Big Data’ is still a nascent market and the use of ‘Big Data’ technologies is still in experimentation phase for Asian organisations. However, we expect specific use cases to drive awareness and adoption of ‘Big Data’ technologies in 2012, particularly for banks, telcos and governments,” said Daniel-Zoe Jimenez, program manager, business analytics and enterprise applications, IDC Asia Pacific.

IDC noted that mature organisations are moving up the analytical value chain by focusing on “predictive capabilities” such as forecasting, modelling and optimisation.

“For the mature markets where increased competition will drive laser focus in defensive strategies, we will see BA being used to improve cost control and customer loyalty, as well as to optimise business operations,” said Jimenez. “Similarly, as businesses in Asia invest to drive growth in emerging markets, they are harnessing analytics-led solutions to gain better customer insights, manage risk and financial metrics more effectively, and at the same time, strive for unique market differentiation.”

With the expected growth in adoption of BA in the region, IDC offered its top 10 predictions for BA in 2012, starting with the emergence of a “chief data scientist” who will map out the BA strategies in the organisation to make “big data” relevant to the organisation. However, this new role will most likely not rest on a single person, given the skills required, so IDC expects this role to be done by a “competency centre.”

Analysts said in the future the demand for more “real-time” analytics will drive adoption of specialised business intelligence (BI) appliances to handle specific workloads and industry-specific use cases.

IDC also expects a new executive figure, the “chief sales officers”, will emerge to look at BA tools to increase sales effectiveness to respond to challenges such as increasing competition and uncertainty in the market.

Despite the infancy of BA adoption in the region, specific use cases, such as fraud detection, pricing optimisation, risk management, and reputation monitoring, will drive the adoption of “Big Data” analytics in banks, telcos and government, IDC anaylsts said.

With the region known for natural disasters, IDC expects organisations to focus their interests on BA.

According to IDC, CMOs will use BA for the metrics, dashboards, data and advanced analytics while the adoption of data visualisation tools will increase as end-users prefer simple and affordable solutions that will not continually require the IT department.

IDC expects organisations to integrate social networking and social media capabilities in their business intelligence to facilitate faster decision making.

CFOs will find value in BA as a tool to accelerate growth and revenue, while cutting overall expenses and efficiently managing risk, IDC said.

IDC expects the emergency of new consumption models as customers will want mobile and cloud-based BI. However, this demand will not significantly increase vendor sales, IDC concluded.