FEATURE : ANALYTICS
to gather deeper consumer insights and in turn , champion the personalised experiences it offers to customers .
According to Avaya ’ s Dorra , the MEA market is seeing enterprises use analytics to provide enhanced personalisation .
“ Let ’ s take an example in the telemarketing outreach sphere . In the past , when organisations had new services to offer of the beneficiary citizens on a monthly basis . The programme analyses the data of the registered citizens ( 3.7 million in 2017 ) to determine the citizen monthly payment .
CIO and IT teams challenges
Given the fast pace of change happening in organisations , CIOs and IT teams are always challenged when deploying analytics in their IT environment .
UNIFIED VISIBILITY , INDUSTRIAL REAL TIME MONITORING AND VISUALISATION , PREDICTIVE MAINTENANCE , ANOMALY DETECTION ARE ALL FEW EXAMPLES OF USE CASES WE HAVE RECEIVED .
existing customers , they would call anyone and everyone to get the message out . Now , through analytics it is much easier for organisations to run more targeted campaigns that result in higher rates of success – as well as better utilisation of resources ,” he said .
Dorra added that this is because analytics helps with the identification of specific potential prospects by understanding the behaviour of customers ’ and interests through social media and websites . “ This means that , when running outbound campaigns , organisations can target the specific customers who might be interested in the offer and is willing to receive information about it ,” he said .
Anas A . Abdul-Haiy , Director and Deputy CEO at Proven Consult , said one of the truly great use case of government analytics is Citizen Account Programme in Saudi Arabia launched by the Ministry of Human Resource and Social Development .
Abdul-Haiy explained that it is a national initiative established by the Saudi Arabia to protect Saudi families from the direct , indirect and expected impact of various economic reforms through the provision of cash transfers deposited directly in the accounts
Thierry Nicault , Executive Vice President , Middle East , Africa and Central Europe , Salesforce
Assaad El Saadi , Regional Director – Middle East , Pure Storage , said tapping into the power of analytics can seem daunting at first and there are three main challenges facing organisations and these include : an overwhelming amount of data to analyse , a proliferation of powerful , yet complex tools and technologies and data silos and low performance .
“ The more data there is , the more complex harnessing it becomes . Organisations face the difficulty of conquering the five ‘ Vs ’ of data – volume , velocity , variety , veracity and value . Particularly , with regards to variety , organisations need to make sure they can collect and get value from both structured and unstructured data . Structured data is well-organised and easy to analyse with traditional business tools . By contrast , unstructured data is harder . Social media posts are an example . Tweets or Facebook posts can have huge business intelligence value , but are particularly difficult to analyse ,” he said .
El Saadi sad given that unstructured data makes up 80 % of the world ’ s data , any company serious about Big Data insights must find ways to harness it .
“ The number of data analytics tools and technologies available is as overwhelming as the amount of data available to be analysed . It can be difficult for organisations to implement and integrate this complex myriad of tools alongside existing , older systems ,” he said .
“ That and legacy storage platforms are just not suited to support modern analytics . Common issues include everything from low performance for search , index and complex queries from white box solutions that are not optimised for speed or efficiency to costly , inefficient data pipelines that limit data access and create redundant data silos .”
Thierry Nicault , Executive Vice President , Middle East , Africa and Central Europe , Salesforce , said when Middle East and Africa organisations are deploying analytics , they should not do it as a one off project but rather integrated into a wider Digital Transformation roadmap .
Nicault said while CEOs are highly knowledgeable about the potential for analytics , they should also work with vendors and channel partners to understand how analytics can meet business goals , identify the right software solutions and develop the KPIs that can be reviewed consistently .
“ Re-skilling and up-skilling workers for new and different roles during and postpandemic is a priority for many MEA organisations and employees ,” he said .
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