Martin Lindstrom has taken the conversation towards small data. But that does not mean the talk has steered away from big data (the art and science of finding patterns from a sea of customer data from diverse sources).

Now, most organisations who have invested in big data are particularly interested in how one could use it well and not stray off the path.

Business analytics experts in India point out that from the inflated expectations of the past, a sense of reality is beginning to set in. A couple of months ago, when IT research and advisory Gartner released the 2016 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms, only three companies managed to feature in the leaders quadrant. The research major cautioned, though, against comparisons with previous editions, when nine companies featured in the leaders quadrant.

MarTech gains ground “The evolution and sophistication of the self-service data preparation and data discovery capabilities in the market have shifted the focus of buyers in the BI and analytics market towards easy-to-use tools that support a full range of analytic workflow capabilities and do not require significant involvement from IT to predefine data models up-front as a prerequisite to analysis,” Gartner said in its report.

In India, according to the “State of Martech 2016” report from Hansa Cequity, Indian CMOs say that investing in Marketing Technology tools is going to be strategically the most important item in their digital marketing scope. The importance of Martech for Indian marketers is expected to go up from 37 per cent in 2015 to almost 67 per cent in 2018.

However, there are some ground rules to get the complete benefit of a big data initiative. S Swaminathan, CEO and Co-founder, Hansa Cequity, says the starting point of a big data journey should be in identifying the KPI (key performance indicators) and that should be followed up by a change management initiative throughout the organisation.

However, most organisations are obsessed with picking the right tool that could work for them from the 3,000-odd choices that are available in the market. Ajay Kelkar, COO and Co-founder, Hansa Cequity, points out that technology is only one part of the investment.

Change management initiatives can cost an organisation as much as three-five times the amount they have invested in their technology. “Then it can become a powerful game changer,” says Kelkar.

Identify the problem first However, leveraging big data is not a ‘one-size-fits-all’ game. “It takes a different meaning for different organisations,” says Makrand Jadhav, Co-Founder & COO, Kloutix Solutions. He adds that companies need to ask the basic question – have you identified the business problem to apply big data technology? For instance, a company could choose to do a call analysis of its call centre to improve customer service or work on improving its lead conversion using the online traffic data. “When you have a clear business problem, there will be a role for big data to play,” he says, and adds that while there is a lot of noise around technologies available to solve the problem, most companies do not take time to understand the landscape.

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