QlikTech, a business intelligence (BI) solution provider is training its focus on the huge untapped market in India for analytics. Phillip Beniac, Regional Vice President-APAC, QlikTech, speaks to Durba Ghosh about the growth strategy in India, its vantage points and challenges.
How has business intelligence and analytics changed over the time?
Business intelligence has been transforming and currently we can see advanced level of business analytics model. There is a gap between two different areas —one that looked at the past and the other that looks at the future. Earlier, it used to be spreadsheets and sending emails. As the market is opening up to more options, the data fragmentation occurs and we are in turn inheriting the change. Moreover, the senior management in Indian companies has to take regulatory compliance as a very serious issue. Business intelligence was derived out of the need to understand data. What it does is, it puts a system on the top to find out what is in a data set. BI Systems were designed to get clean and organised data that can assist businesses. Traditional systems do not offer the ability to collaborate across mediums and devices, and thus may fail to answer certain questions. There is nothing organised and structured today, hence the BI systems are changing to address that.
What is your perspective about the Indian BI market?
Indian market is no different from other markets since everyone wants their questions to be answered. Organisations in India are actually better off, because they have the infrastructure, the data, and they are not as bound by tradition as established markets, and are open to new and improved technologies. We have spent a favourable time in Asia pacific and Japan. We have been successful in Europe and North America also. We have brought in partners and staff on board to help service the growing number of customers that we have in the market. We had to build the infrastructure not just in terms of sales, but also expert services as we target more enterprise accounts here. There has been a major drive towards industry specific targeting and we would be doing the same thing in India, since the market is very receptive to new technologies and capabilities.
What are your focus areas in India?
Our focus is on the financial services space. If we think about the infrastructural investments that the banks and insurance companies have made, a group of individuals need to understand more about self serving analysis, and traditional way of approach is not very supportive in this kind of market. We see a huge opportunity in the Indian banking sector. We have more than 600 customers in India and are adding about 70-80 new customers per year. Today we work with about 30 partners, excluding 60 OEMs we partnered with, to embed our solutions. We want to promote BI by example. As we acquire customers, the awareness will grow. We are encouraged by the outlook in the Indian subcontinent. It is an important market for us.
What are the challenges for BI today?
Productivity, performance and elements of traditional BI products do not service the needs of individual users as much and these are some of the concerns in the industry today. Industrial dynamics have changed dramatically. Traditionally, such systems are pre-defined, but there are is a big problem with that. Because usually one does not know what data they want and what will help in their business. One tends to go with what others are doing. Trouble with that is, that the questions which need to be answered may be left unanswered, in a scenario where data generation is fragmented and not as predictive as before. When these dynamics are incorporated into sectors like manufacturing, retail, products and services, price sensitivity and competition becomes very important, especially when Internet is a channel for experienced shopping. These are the markets, which are fundamentally important. A lot of traction was found in terms of customers using QlikView as their tool on top of their own IP. This is a very important development for us which is specific to India unlike other Asia Pacific countries. We want to enable a system which is exploratory and aids discovery because all questions cannot be anticipated. According to Gartner, about 22% employees of an organisation uses BI, which is not useful for the rest 78%. We want to explore that area and tap it. No organisation has till today implemented BI completely.
What is the way forward for QlikTech in the Indian market?
QlikTech is growing fast and we see a huge traction in Asia Pacific region, which contributes a significant amount to QlikTech’s global revenue. The infrastructure, the people and the partners, everything needs to be in place for us to not just make a significant growth but also sustain it. India being a prime market, not just in an international perspective, but also a local perspective we will have a significant development here. We want to address the untapped market, which has not implemented BI as yet. We want the BI system to be flexible and customised according to what a company wants. There is a community out there which wants to start using a system that will answer all their questions. Collaboration between various verticals and devices is one thing that will come in effect as far as BI is concerned. BI will evolve to another level, that of business discovery.
