Technology Management Continuum 2016 was organized on 21 th March 2016 with a theme reflecting the role of technology in transforming the businesses in a dynamic world. The Continuum saw a series of lectures centered on the theme:

 

“Data Management and Disruptive Technology: Reshaping the way how business is done”

 

Following luminaries participated for delivering lectures at Technology Continuum 2016 on March 21st, 2016 at SJMSOM, IIT Bombay:

Ø  Mr. Abhijat Shukla VP – Analytics, SG Analytics

Ø  Mr. Satyakam Mohanty, Co-founder and Chief Executive, Ma Foi Analytics

Ø  Mr. Sandeep Mittal, Managing Director, Cartesian Consulting

Ø  Mr. Manoj Paul, President and COO, GPX Systems

Ø  Mr. Shrikant Shitole Managing Director Symantec India

Ø  Mr. Mohan Raju Account, General Manager, Bharti Airtel Limited,

Ø  Mr. Rajeev Tiwary,  Head – Smart Integrated Infrastructure, Black & Veatch

Ø  Mr. Sunil Shirguppi, VP – Engineering, Ola Cabs

Ø  Mr. Ashesh Kumar, Head- BFS Analytics Practice, Tata Consultancy Services,

Ø  Mr.Satish Iyer, Program Manager, eClerx India,

Ø  Mr. Kaustubh Deshpande, Data Strategy and Execution Leader, Equifax

Ø  Mr. Hari Koduvely, Principal Data Scientist, Services Platform Samsung R&D Institute Bangalore, India

Ø  Mr. Ajay Pherwani, VP & CTO – Emerging Technologies, Tata Capital

 

The main motive of Technology Management Continuum 2016 was to highlight the significant role played by technology management in businesses, especially with the advent of the digital revolution. The different ways in which technology works towards providing better customer value and thus ensuring that businesses stay ahead of the competitors were discussed in the Continuum.

Some of the sub themes for the same are as follows: 

Improving Business IQ for Sustained Competitive Advantage driven by data

Data and the key insights that can be derived from it have emerged as powerful strategic assets for businesses. Decisions supported by data insights can give a company a strong competitive edge, by enabling it to adapt more effectively to changing market conditions, drive operational efficiency throughout the organisation and seize new opportunities. Companies that are slow to adopt analytics, on the other hand, run the risk of being disrupted and outmaneuvered by faster and more agile, insight-driven competitors.

To reap the benefits of analytics, a company should look to transform into an insight-driven enterprise. With the internet of things generating large amounts of data, costs of computing plummeting and more intuitive visualization tools on the rise, now is the time to adopt a data-centric approach to business for a competitive advantage.

Data Analytics emerging as the key influence behind business decisions:

With great development in semiconductor storage devices, the issue is no longer about owning the most data, rather it’s about how to derive insights from it. In other words, how to transform data into insights and then insights into a real business advantage. With the advent of social media and portable devices like smartphones, tablets, everyday a gigantic amount of data is created. But to what extent is this being leveraged by the companies? The reality is, turning mountains of data into valuable, practical and actionable business analytics is not nearly as straightforward as people believe. To gain more concrete understanding of the opportunities and challenges that data analytics (D&A) presents, KPMG carried out a survey in 2013 where they interviewed 144 CFOs and CIOs of major companies around the world (the ones with annual turnover in excess of $1 billion). A few key insights are given below:

·         69% consider Data Analytics to be crucially or very important to their current growth plans

·         56% said to have changed their business strategy to meet the challenges of big data

·         42% consider integrating data technology into existing systems and/or business models to be the biggest challenge their companies have faced regarding data capture

·         85% said that one of their biggest challenges with analytics, specifically, is implementing the right solutions to accurately analyze and interpret data

·         75% expressed some level of difficulty in making decisions around analyzing data

Emerging Area in Analytics and its relevance to the Banking Sector:

The Banking industry is a fast growing sector in India. According to an IBEF report, the banking industry in India has the potential to become the fifth largest banking industry in the world by 2020 and third largest by 2025 according to a KPMG-CII report. In order to stay competitive, banks in India are taking the data analytics route to lure new customers, retain them, find opportunities to upsell and cross-sell and minimize their own losses. One of the first instances of the use of analytics can be traced back to the early 2000s when HDFC Bank Ltd, put in place a data warehouse and started investing in technology that would help it make sense of the massive troves of unstructured data captured by its information technology (IT) systems.With the analytics engine in place, Banks can track every aspect of a typical customer’s financial habits. The analytics tools also give the bank insights into personal habits of its customers, allowing it to promote offers accordingly. Analytics is also used to reduce chances of money laundering by identifying suspicious activity such moving money to multiple accounts, finding large single-day cash deposits, opening a number of accounts in a short period of time or sudden activity in long-dormant accounts. Using analytics, the banks also able to keep track of credit histories of customers and can hand out loans accordingly.

Data analytics opportunities and challenges in offering engaging services to smart phone users:

By 2017, mobile apps will be downloaded more than 268 billion times, generating revenue of more than $77 billion and making apps one of the most popular computing tools for users across the globe, according to Gartner, Inc. As a result, Gartner predicts that mobile users will provide personalized data streams to more than 100 apps and services every day. Mobile apps have become the official channel to drive content and services to consumers. From entertainment content to productivity services, from quantified-self to home automation, there is an app for practically anything a connected consumer may want to achieve. This connection to consumer services means users are constantly funnelling data through mobile apps. As users continue to adopt and interact with apps, it is their data — what they say, what they do, where they go — that is transforming the app interaction paradigm.

Web Services and Engineered system: Innovation driving the ROI:

Web services may top the IT world's buzzword and hype list these days, but unless it can show a real return on investment (ROI), it will go the way of many other much-hyped technologies. Before deciding on an ROI for a Web services project, keep in mind that there are two different types of possible ROIs — an ROI for a project that will generate new revenue, and an ROI for a project in which time and money will be saved. As a general rule, it's easier to figure out an ROI when new revenue is generated than when you're focusing on cost-savings, simply because it can be difficult to accurately figure out how much money and time a project actually saves.Engineered Systems Help Simplify IT, Power Innovation. With the IT environment getting more complex, the technology infrastructure market is undergoing a shift towards integrated systems.

IOT & Big data : Changing the landscape of traditional business:

In the past, organizations could not access data sources easily. Neither did the computing power exist, nor did the ability to pluck relevant information rapidly from massive amounts of text, video, audio and graphic data. But today the technology has improved to the extent that clear, powerful, and informative visual models give clarity, depth and context to the river of information. Cloud computing becomes faster and cheaper to more organizations every year. They can now access not only structured data within their own organization, but data stores from industry and government sources. By accessing multiple data sources, each employee can analyze information quickly and help improve their organization's decision-making and performance.