Analytics Success Requires Shift In Cultural Mindset For Organizations: Chetan Alsisaria, CEO At Polestar Solutions :
Originally Posted: Analytics India mag
Every day 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is produced, but this is mere gibberish in its raw form. This is where data analytics, the ‘science of making sense of data’, steps in. With the growing data, the importance of data analytics has been increasingly felt.
Noida-headquartered Polestar Solutions is one such company that helps its clients realise the potential of their data and transform it into the proverbial ‘new oil’ that drives their businesses. Analytics India Magazine caught up with Chetan Alsisaria, the CEO and co-founder of Polestar Solutions, to better understand their solution and services. Alsisaria also provided some great insights into the future of data analytics.
Here are some of the excerpts from the interview.
‘Entire Spectrum Of Analytics Strategy’
“In terms of analytics, we cover the entire spectrum starting from analytics strategy to understand clients’ business processes, their current IT landscape and challenges, what kind of decisions they want to drive, their short and long term goals, and in terms of digital transformation, where they are and where they plan to go,” explains Alsisaria.
Along with this, Polestar Solutions also helps organisations with business data management, data quality, and maintenance of data warehouses. “We also work on the predictive side where we use different kinds of platforms, including both open-source as well as proprietary frameworks and tools to provide businesses an insight on what may happen and accordingly recommending suitable action,” he adds.
Polestar Solutions has clientele in various industries, including automotive, e-commerce and retail, hospitality, manufacturing, IT and ITES, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, BFSI, and consumer durables. It provides services such as business intelligence, data warehousing, data analytics, enterprise planning, cloud computing, and big data.
“We recently introduced an end-to-end recruitment software for recruiters, named Vega HR. It uses machine learning techniques in functions such as resume sorting and resumes ranking. Apart from that, Vega HR can also assist in candidate evaluation, onboarding, and even for predicting the joining probability of the candidate,” tells Alsisaria, while speaking of Polestar’s latest innovation.
Polestar Solutions includes some of the Fortune 500 companies and even government agencies among its clientele. When asked about their recent projects, Alsisaria listed some of the recent ones:
- The company provided an entire analysis of the primary and secondary sale of a Fortune 500 FMCG enterprise. Using predictive analytics, the sales forecasting methodology was hugely improved.
- Polestar Solutions assisted a major electronics brand in enhancing its entire data management and distribution mechanism by identifying major market potential areas for its product distribution.
- The company has also worked with a government entity for public procurement as an analytics partner, avoiding possible collusion in case of multiple sellers. It also helped the agency in fraud detection.
- Polestar was also associated with a mid-size Nigerian pharmaceutical company specialising in exporting and importing medicines. It was entrusted with providing solutions for demand forecasting, inventory optimisation and procurement planning and reorder.
Future Of Analytics
Alsisaria talks about a very interesting concept of democracy in analytics or democratized analytics. “In general, analytics is limited to the top level, who are not the ones taking actions. In fact, day-to-day actions are taken by people who are running those operations, who are on the field or the shop floor,” states Alsisaria.
Alsisaria further explains that these are the people who should have the data and the knowledge to make sense of this data to drive timely decisions. Right now, the audit or review process happens once in a month, and the top-level dictates the restructuring measures. “This way, transformation of business is not possible,” says Alsisaria.
He also adds that doing so will also take a lot of time and effort. “It would require massive upskilling, a lot of cultural and even mindset changes. But the return on investment would be huge.”
Speaking of how analytics will affect and drive businesses’ transformation, Alsisaria says that while the BFSI sector has been an early and quick adopter of related technologies, traditional sectors like manufacturing are also catching pace.
According to him, “Manufacturing has started very well now; it is where the maximum action is happening. With increased automation, the dependence on ERP is less; instead of preventive maintenance. We no longer just consider internal automation but look at it on an ecosystem level.”
Alsisaria also cautions that analytics and business intelligence processes will become obsolete or at least highly limited. “People will be able to drive decisions on their own, and this is linked to democratisation that we spoke about. Consumer analytics will also change, and a lot of it will become conversational analytics.”
Further, he says that businesses using case solutions will have a large role to play and considering this, Polestar has already begun its journey of transforming into becoming an industry-specific analytics solution provider, as one solution fits all will soon be phased out.
Wrapping Up
“There were two major changes that were observed during this period of the pandemic. Firstly, IT and technology, which were considered merely an enabler earlier, assumed a more important role in businesses. They realised that IT and automation could play an important role in almost every aspect of a business– HR, production, marketing, branding, and finance.
Secondly, business’ trust over cloud solutions and computing grew manifold, not only because of compulsion but also to increase confidence. These two changes will also largely shape the future of businesses,” Alsisaria said before signing off.