The 10 most promising bi and analytics solution providers 2018

www.insightssuccess.com March 2018

Brand of the Month

Dinesh Rathi General Manager & Business Head Promax, Wipro Ltd.

Company of the Month

Most Promising

BI Analytics

Solution Providers 2018

Lokesh Gupta Co-founder RM Applications

Industry Insight An Insight on the Opportunities in the Big Data Industry

IT Insights Top Queries to Ask Your IT Provider — Before You Do Business with Them

Loic Malassis CEO

Snype:

Specializing in the Treatment of Data Analytics

Omnichannel Agent and Customer Engagement Solutions Simplify and personalize the customer experience, empower agents and achieve business success with one workspace for all channel interactions, application integrations, and CX reporting.

Editor’s Note

BI and Analytics: Revolutionizing the World of Data

I

rrespective of whether you are a popular or successful business or if you’re an emerging start-up floating in the pond of constant, the need for analyzing data to make calculative and informed decisions is of utmost importance. In this day and age, one which is regarded as the age of Information Technology, leveraging information from data in real-time has become a key differentiator between the success and failure of an organization.

Owing to the surging growth of internet based technologies, the quantitative amount of information generated is ginormous, making it a critical parameter for attaining optimal efficiency in decision-making.

But there lies a key need to understand that the real power is not the abundance of data and information, rather it is translating those Petabytes of data into important insights. And, that power lies in the hands of business intelligence and analytics.

For many decades, Business Intelligence has been the provincial key holder for large organizations; for those organizations which can afford a rich collection of data centers and boasts the strength to analyze that vast quantity of data. To the contrary, for years small companies have relied on basic desktop publishing and excel sheets to monitor data. Presently, with the emergence of affordable and dedicated BI analytics platforms in the market, small and medium sized businesses can also reap the benefits of the ongoing BI revolution.

This evolving scientific technology boasts the ability to make your business more effective and lean. It stabilizes your company’s future by extensively analyzing past trends and extrapolates likely future

outcomes. Rather than depending upon human gut feeling, through BI you can gain actionable insights to make productive decisions.

Seeing the evolving landscape in the data analytics space and rising growth of business intelligence services, Insights Success has shortlisted “The 10 Most Promising BI and Analytics Solution Providers, 2018” that are leveraging the potential of data in the most effective and swift manner to bring-forward operational efficiency in the most cost-effective manner.

Featuring as the Cover Story of the issue, we have Snype, a leading BI company specializing in the massive treatment of data especially in telecommunication, banking, and fintech verticals, among others.

Standing out as our Company of the Month feature, RM Application provides technology solutions for conventional and Islamic financial institutions in the areas of Remittance & Payments, ALM & Liquidity (Basel 3) Reporting Data Mart, ETL Consulting, SSIS Consulting, Customized Data Mart, Localization and integration of Partners’ Solutions. And our Brand of the Month feature, Wipro Promax, which is a world–leading specialist in delivering a combination of Trade Promotion Management and Optimization Solutions for Consumer Goods Companies to maximize returns on trade promotions.

Additionally, we also have featured Algomus, which is the world’s first Enterprise Analytical Workbot, Algo, and ML powered Collaborative Intelligence framework that enables anyone to collaborate and interact with their business data in an easy and streamlined way; Panoply, which is an AI-driven and autonomous cloud data warehouse, wherein clients can turn big data into insights in minutes without additional data engineering resources; RPMG, a business intelligence platform that empowers clients’ revenue performance by utilizing innovative business intelligence techniques; and Versium, which offers data, AI tools and analytics insights to understand, evaluate and achieve desired marketing ROI for digital marketing campaigns.

Also, make sure to flip through our articles, written by our in-house editorial team; as well as CXO Standpoints of notable industry personalities.

Let’s dig-in shall we?

Sourav Mukherjee

CONTENTS

Articles 26 Industry Insight An Insight on the Opportunities in the Big Data Industry

08

38

Cover Story

Data Talk

Snype:

Big Data: Transforming Businesses Altogether

Specializing in the Treatment of Data Analytics

Company of the Month Brand of the Month

22 16

RM Applications: Wipro Promax: Digitizing and Optimizing your Trade Promotions

A Premium Provider of Advanced Technology based Remittance, Risk & Regulatory Reporting Data Management & Innovative Solutions

30 Algomus:

32

Bridging the Gap between Humans and Machines

Inside Entrepreneurship from Emerging Markets Emerging Tech, Revolutions & Crisis for Entrepreneurs: Insights from a true Globe Trotter

36 Panoply: The World’s First Cloud Smart Data Warehouse

44 Thought Leadership Regulating Fintech: Now the Regulator Needs to be more Tech than Fin

42 RPMG: Rolling the Moneyball of Revenue Performance

50

48

IT Insights

Versium:

Top Queries to Ask Your IT Provider — Before You Do Business with Them

Riding on Revolutionary Marketing Insights to Bring Digital Marketing home

Pooja M. Bansal Anish Miller Sourav Mukherjee Jenny Fernandes Kedar Kulkarni Assistant Editors Brian Smith Kaustav Roy Visualiser David King Art & Design Director Amol Kamble Associate Designer Vijaykumar Dudhbhate Co-designer Shweta Shinde Art & Picture Editor Paul Belin Jayant Khanna Senior Sales Manager Passi D. Business Development Manager Peter Collins Marketing Manager John Matthew Business Development Executives Steve, Joe, Alan, Rohit Sales Executives David, Kevin, Mark, Vijay Technical Head Jacob Smile Technical Specialist Amar, Pratiksha Digital Marketing Manager Marry D’Souza Online Marketing Strategist Alina Sege, Shubham Mahadik, Vaibhav K SME-SMO Executives Prashant Chauhan, Uma Dhenge, Gemson, Irfan Research Analyst Chidiebere Moses Circulation Manager Robert, Tanaji Database Management Stella Andrew Technology Consultant David Stokes Editor-in-Chief Senior Editor Managing Editor Executive Editors

sales@insightssuccess.com

March, 2018 Corporate Ofces: Insights Success Media Tech LLC 555 Metro Place North, Suite 100, Dublin, OH 43017, United States Phone - (614)-602-1754 Email: info@insightssuccess.com For Subscription: www.insightssuccess.com

Follow us on :

Insights Success Media and Technology Pvt. Ltd. Off. No. 513 & 510, 5th Flr., Rainbow Plaza, Shivar Chowk, Pimple Saudagar, Pune, Maharashtra 411017 Phone - India: +91 7410079881/ 82/ 83/ 84/ 85 Email: info@insightssuccess.in For Subscription: www.insightssuccess.in

www.facebook.com/insightssuccess/

https://twitter.com/insightssuccess

We are also available on : Copyright © 2018 Insights Success, All rights reserved. The content and images used in this magazine should not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission from Insights Success.

Reprint rights remain solely with Insights Success.

Cover Story

Loic Malassis CEO

Snype: Specializing in the Treatment of Data Analytics

“More than 10 years of experience has enabled us to develop a suite of products based solutions.�

Cover Story

W

hat gets measured, gets managed.

The utilization of statistics based data insights and the striking realization that the information gathered from the same can be of utmost value, has and will continue to cause a serious ripple effect in the business world. It has been proven for decades that being smarter translates into success, and data analytics has had a big role to play in ensuring competitive business advantages, as far back as the 19th century.

But over the years data has radically evolved, whether it is in terms of type, volume, or velocity. The rapid transformation in the ‘data world’ is attributed to the surging pace of digitalization of business processes across the globe, making data the new business currency. It is expected that the percentage of digital data produced will exceed by 40 zettabytes (one sextillion bytes!) over the next eight years, which would mean 5,200 GB of data for every single person. Translating this ginormous amount of data into valuable insights is where the main concern lies. The potential value of Big Data is reaped only when it is accurately extracted into information, which would then have the ability to deliver radically better business outcomes.

Standing out from its crowd of competitors, Snype is one company which specializes in the massive treatment of data especially in telecommunication, banking and fintech verticals, among others. With over 10 years of experience in Big Data, Snype is referenced today along with major operators across Europe, Africa, and LATAM regions, and provides all kinds of analytics on top of the data treatment.

The company has developed applications which allows customers to have a simple access to all the information and provides its customers with all the requisite knowledge regarding the overall business unit.

Knowledge is Power Snype’s unrivaled knowledge enables it to boast the ability to tell its clients where opportunities will lie tomorrow. It does so by analyzing gigantic amounts of data to uncover hidden patterns, correlations, and other mandatory insights.

The company not only has the capability to manage billions of tickets and millions of files per day but it can also verify, classify, and provide significant information on all aspects of the business. Snype helps business units to know predict and anticipate action and control and quantify the effect of decisions. The experts working at Snype add on top of the big data treatment a fantastic value to the data itself.

Core Composition Offering modular scalable and non-intrusive solutions with

fast implementation, Snype’s core services are composed with: l

l

l

Data Collection Engine Ÿ All Network Elements & Operational SystemsScalable, Distributed and Parallelized Processes Ÿ Full traceability; Detects late, Missing or Corrupted files Ÿ Billions of Tickets and Millions of Files Processed per day Data Visualization Engine Ÿ Secured Web based Reporting system with Geographic Information Capabilities Ÿ Automated Publication and Export options to XLS, PDF, and PPT via Email Ÿ Competitive Licensing Model Central Monitoring Engine Ÿ Web-based Transparent Interface Ÿ Process Automation and Recovery Ÿ Process Supervision: Execution and Performance Monitoring at every step

“Snype provides a Business Intelligence engine.”

Product Package of Snype The Commercial Pack: This pack optimizes the clients’ investments, improves sales quality, allows tracking of sales, customer segmentation, facilitates customer satisfaction, market share, distribution channel and commissioning, and inventory and churn analysis.

The Marketing Pack: This pack provides key valuable knowledge to the clients’ agents to improve customer satisfaction. It includes know your customer’s device, and propose of the adopted VAS and campaign management.

All usage is tracked and classified in this pack, as well as revenues on all components, and the profitability per offer, prediction model and performances, and top-up booster and campaign management.

The Financial Pack: This pack secures costs and revenues, eases monthly closings, ensures 99.99% accuracy on prepaid revenues, and all the needs are covered regarding fraud and revenue insurance on all business lines, including prepaid.

The Technical Pack: This pack optimizes the clients’ CAPEX, secures upgrade and migrations.

The Mobile Money Pack: This final pack secures the financial flows and prevents occurrence of frauds.

Some of the Additional Services of Snype includes: Installation & Integration, Providing and deploying hardware (servers, switch, or SAN), Installation and configuration of System & Database, Adaptation to clients’ environment, Performing Parameterization (offers, VAS, cells, region, etc), User Training, Maintenance & Support, System and Database Administration, Daily operations and minor evolutions, Support Level 2, Upgrades & Patches, Ad-hoc operations, Training, Specific developments and major evolutions and Ad-hoc Analysis.

Overcoming Market Changes Snype has been consistent in using the best of each technology to optimize its own solutions; so that any new and efficient tool or technology will always be analyzed and integrated if it makes sense or if it is optimizing the end result.

Cover Story

With its customer base rapidly evolving across different environments, Snype has developed a greenway to develop Big Data as the solution needs less server space and electricity to operate in, rather than having your own in-house premise.

More than what it seems!

Snype is more than a database vendor, like Oracle or Hive, as it provides the data model. It is more than a Business Intelligence vendor, like QlikView, Tableau or Business Objects, as it provides the included dashboards. It is more than an ETL vendor, like Datastage, Pentaho, Talend or Informatica, as it provides ready to use and optimized data management processes. The company is more than a data-mining vendor, SAS, SPSS, KXEN or R, as it integrates them in an optimal manner into the data management processes. Lastly, Snype is more than other wellknown IT integrations and consulting companies, as it makes its clients gain time and control costs with its end-to-end product based approach.

Planning a Future that Brings Success The coming years will see a bloom in the usage of analytics across all sectors, as information will start to be a key factor behind the success of organizations in different industries. Analytics provide that muchneeded knowledge, security and verification of information, which is needed to take the correct decision. Being an expert in Telecommunications and Banking, Snype is ready to apply its knowledge across other sectors, like transport, health, security and others. Although the amount of data is less significant in these sectors as compared to the Telecommunication and Banking sector, but the need to identify and verify is of optimal importance, as well.

A Leader with years of Industry Experience Loic Malassis, the CEO of Snype, is the leader who ably led the company on his shoulders towards success. Loic holds a master’s degree in engineering from both French and Japanese Universities. He has multiple patents in Data-mining and Machine-toMachine. His experience portfolio includes Consulting for Ernst & Young, Gemini, with mission in the areas of Financial Audit, Risk Management, and HR automation and analysis. He has also occupied positions as the director of internal controls and audit, and has later served in IT Departments in a key telecommunication company, prior to founding Snype. His diverse experience has naturally provided a holistic view to develop and manage a Big Data Business Suite Solution for Telecom, Financial Institutions and Fintech.

“We are a team of dedicated professionals, with a high experience in Telecom and Media, ready to share this experience to make you gain time and efficiency.”

SUBSCRIBE

TODAY Never Miss an

Issue

Yes, I would like to subscribe to Insights Success Magazine.

Global Subscription 1 Year.......... (12 Issues) .... $250.00

6 Months ..... (06 Issues) ..... $130.00

3 Months ... (03 Issues) ....

1 Month ...... (01 Issue) .....

$70.00

$25.00

Date :

Name : Address :

Telephone : Email :

City :

State :

Zip :

Country :

Check should be drawn in favor of : INSIGHTS SUCCESS MEDIA TECH LLC

CORPORATE OFFICE Insights Success Media Tech LLC 555 Metro Place North, Suite 100, Dublin, OH 43017, United States Phone - (614)-602-1754,(302)-319-9947 Email: info@insightssuccess.com For Subscription : www.insightssuccess.com

Company Name

Management

Brief

Algomus algomus.com

Amjad Hussain CEO & Co-founder

Algomus has the world’s first Enterprise Analytical Workbot, Algo, and ML powered Collaborative Intelligence framework that enables anyone to collaborate and interact with their business data in an easy and streamlined way.

Ezdatamunch ezdatamunch.com

Milan Desai Co-founder

EzDataMunch provides BI Dashboards and Consulting Services to help companies with business growth by providing insights into business performance.

Margasoft Corp margasoft.com

Armen Margaryan CEO

Margasoft Corp specializes in creating uniquely tailored software solutions which reflect and automate the business processes of your organization.

Panoply Technologies panoply.io

Yaniv Leven Co-founder & CEO

Panoply is an AI-driven and autonomous cloud data warehouse.

With Panoply, clients can turn big data into insights in minutes without additional data engineering resources.

Wipro Promax Analytics Solutions promax.wipro.com

Dinesh Rathi General Manager & Business Head

Wipro Promax is a world–leading specialist in delivering a combination of Trade Promotion Management and Optimization Solutions for Consumer Goods Companies to maximize returns on trade promotions.

QlikTech International qlik.com

Mike Capone CEO

QlikTech International AB, a business intelligence software company, develops and provides in-memory analysis and reporting solutions for enterprise and individual customers.

RM Applications rma.com.my

Lokesh Gupta Co-founder

RM Application provides technology solutions for conventional and Islamic financial institutions in the areas of Remittance & Payments, ALM & Liquidity (Basel 3) Reporting Data Mart, ETL Consulting, SSIS Consulting, Customized Data Mart, Localization and integration of Partners’ Solutions.

RPMG rpmgi.com

Craig McKell CEO

RPMG is a business intelligence platform that empowers clients’ revenue performance by utilizing innovative business intelligence techniques.

Snype snype.org

Loic Malassis CEO

Snype specializes in the massive treatment of data especially in telecommunication, banking and fintech verticals, among others.

Versium versium.com

Chris Matty CEO & Founder

Versium offers data, AI tools and analytics insights to understand, evaluate and achieve desired marketing ROI for digital marketing campaigns.

Wipro Promax: Digitizing and Optimizing your Trade Promotions About Wipro’s Consumer Goods Practice Wipro is a leading IT, consulting and business process services company that delivers winning business outcomes through its deep industry experience and 360 degree view of "Business through Technology.” By combining digital strategy, customer-centric design, advanced analytics and product engineering approach, Wipro helps its clients create successful and adaptive businesses. Wipro’s Consumer Goods practice helps its clients build great brands and reengineer the way they connect their brands to their consumers by moving ahead from insight to foresight. To know more about how Wipro helps CPG industry leaders do business better, please visit http://www.wipro.com/industrie s/consumer-goods/

T

he Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) industry is now in the “Digitally Enabled Shopper Era” and is faced by increasing demands of the omni-channel ecosystem. In order to achieve sustained business results and to stay at pace with competition, companies are left with no choice but to embark on a digital transformation journey, in collaboration with their trading partners.

Funding trade promotion continues to be seen as strategic for enhanced trading partner collaboration. Trade spends around 15 to 25% of revenues are typical of progressive CPG businesses. However the mostly post facto, rear view mirror and often delayed assessments of trade funds ROI are still prevalent and are inadequate to drive timely course corrections and adjustments to drive trade campaign effectiveness. Tighter engagement with the digital savvy consumers across channels requires real time visibility to event specific performance indicators and cognitive capabilities for ongoing optimization of campaign and funds.

Trade funding and managing the e2e campaign process is a cross functional activity, involving sales, marketing,

16

supply chain and finance departments.

Often, disparate systems and unavailability of timely data to understand and control is a constraint.

Integrated solutions with powerful predictive capabilities that leverage channel/consumer insights and analytics, enables transformation towards a more dynamic optimization and monitoring of trade funds.

Wipro Promax Analytics Solutions (WPAS), a part of Wipro Limited, is a leading provider of solutions and services for Trade Promotion Management and Optimization (TPx) for the CG and Pharma industries. The Promax solutions have evolved across decades of experience in collaboration with global consumer packaged goods manufacturers and retailers, and caters to multiple markets across the globe.

According to Dinesh Rathi, General Manager & Business Head – Promax, Wipro Ltd., “Our focus and investments are more towards Trade Promotion Optimization (TPO), where customers can plan their promotions predictively. They can simulate various promotional scenarios and review its impact on financial and volumetric outcomes (constrained optimization).

Promax Optimize is designed for business users using advanced March 2018

Brand of the Month

Microservices Architecture and Machine Learning Algorithms. The solution can bolt-on to any existing Trade Promotion Management (TPM) systems and can interface with internal and external data sources.

Our customers have gained several qualitative and quantitative benefits such as visibility to the most effective promotion tactics and pricing strategies and savings in operating income. The customer now has a single consolidated trade promotion planning and analytics solution to provide users with visibility to both predicted and actual key individual promotion KPIs.” Wipro Promax Solution Suite for Trade Promotion Management and Optimization Promax Advanced is a Trade Promotion Management/Optimization (TPx) solution while Promax

Dinesh Rathi General Manager & Business Head Promax, Wipro Ltd. Optimize is a dedicated Trade Promotion Optimization (TPO) solution that can be bolt-on to any third party TPM. Wipro also offers Integrated Trade Services for Trade Promotions covering Data Science as a Service, Analytics and Reporting as a Service and Business Process Consulting.

Both Promax Advanced and Promax Optimize can be deployed on premise or on cloud. The depth of

Case-in-point For a multinational manufacturer and marketer of branded consumer foods: • •

•

For a global health and personal care company:

$3MN+ rise in incremental net revenue in 6 months.

•

Predictions have improved forecast accuracy Mean Average Percentage Error by 11%.

•

Improvements in % loss making promotions from 55% to 31% to date.

•

•

•

Improvements in promotion forecast accuracy from 64% to 83% using prediction.

Rise in net sales by more than $ 0.85mn and margin by more than $ 0.6mn.

Timely and accurate visibility of Trade Spend ROI and promotion effectiveness for both customer and retailers.

Visibility to the most effective promotion tactics and pricing strategies.

Increased Promotional ROI whilst maintaining retailer margin.

March 2018

17

What is my return on my trade promotion investments?

What are the most effective promotion tactics and pricing strategies?

How much does cannibalization and pantry loading effect impact my promotional outcomes?

Are my promotions growing the category for trade partners?

To what degree are my promotions causing brand switching behaviour?

“

functionalities offered by the Promax suite of solutions is complemented by Wipro’s rapid implementation and support capabilities across the globe, a strong R&D team working on enhancements to the product and best-in-class data scientists and business solution consultants working with CPG customers to generate tangible business outcomes. Ranging from end-to-end promotion management to effective trade spend optimization using advanced analytics and predictive planning, the Promax suite of comprehensive solutions and services are packaged to deliver exceptional returns from trade spend.

Wipro’s Consumer Goods practice aims to help its clients build great brands by connecting better with their consumers. Wipro’s strategy for CG industry is to help customers accelerate growth in their existing portfolios and to build new capabilities to drive consumer engagement.

Wipro brings its domain expertise in enabling digital transformation, omni-channel commerce, value chain optimization and advanced analytics to ‘meet’ and ‘shape’ customer expectations. In the past couple of years, Wipro has made substantial investments in Digital, Artificial Intelligence, Cloud and Start-ups to improve its services and capabilities in order to serve clients better. Trade

18

Promotion, and Promax, is a part of Wipro’s larger vertical focus on Integrated Sales and Marketing (ISM). ISM brings together various data streams and processes that help consumer goods companies to move from sensing consumer demand to driving consumer behavior.

Dinesh Rathi, says, “We collaborate with customers to generate sustained business benefits. This entails moving beyond the specific IT services and solutions to identify and transform processes creatively.

Besides, we have been continuously adding new functionalities and advanced capabilities to the TPM product, Promax Advanced, based on market needs. In the latest release of the product, we worked on simplification to provide an enhanced usability to customers. The configurable summary dashboard allows each business user to have a relevant and intuitive view of metrics facilitating actionable insights.”

Wipro Promax solutions have sophisticated Business Intelligence capabilities and dashboards tailored to each stakeholder to provide pertinent information at a glance.

The highly visual and intuitive user interface provides

“

Software and services packaged to deliver exceptional returns from trade spend.

“

Gain the visibility needed to answer these critical questions:

March 2018

Brand of the Month in terms of digital and cognitive capabilities, with a sharp focus on the business outcomes that we create for our customers.

“

Embark on a digital transformation journey and enable industry leading trade promotion optimization and revenue management capabilities with Wipro Promax.

“

business users with a seamless user experience. Wipro Promax also offers Analytics Services, providing a full range of data cleansing, transformation, and data consolidation services to help CG companies have a comprehensive promotional data repository.

A key advantage of opting for Wipro over any other TPx solution provider is that there is no involvement of any third party vendor for the implementation or on-going support of Promax solutions across the globe. Additionally, being part of the larger organization - Wipro, CPG companies can leverage Wipro’s capabilities in domain consulting, big data, digital, AI, cloud, hyper-automation and other services.

From reactive transactional to proactive and predictive We are in the times of digital transformation where companies are struggling to capture and make effective use of data. Data driven decision making eliminates uncertainty to a large extent. Therefore, companies which embark on a digital transformation journey sooner are likely to gain a competitive edge.

Most CPG companies in the developed markets today, have some form of Trade Promotion Management (TPM) tools.

Such tools provide transactional improvements but lack the capability for ROI analysis and promotion optimization.

Wipro’s Promax Optimize (TPO) provides companies with a platform to integrate “data” from multiple systems, converts large volumes of data into useful information and consumes such data for forecasting. Built on an industry leading BI technology stack, Promax Optimize offers a rich repository of core reports to allow users to quickly evaluate the effectiveness of their trade promotion decisions. The solution is scalable and configurable, and provides flexibility to create ad-hoc reports and role based personal dashboards with seamless integration to smart devices such as iPads/ phones, tablets etc.

Promax Optimize extends the capabilities of any TPM tool via improvements in 1

Supply Planning – as accurate predictive demand signals inform production decisions and inventory levels.

2

Cash Management – as effective and accurate planning helps the business predict and manage trade spend accruals.

3

Profitability – as companies allocate resources to those promotions that provide the best return on trade investment, remember what gets measured typically gets improved.

4

Collaboration with trade partners – by defining mutually agreed and sustainable success metrics for promotional activity.

5

Visibility – to best and worst promotional plans, tactics and pricing inputs thus maximizing ROI on trade spends.

Wipro enables its customers with cutting edge technology and acts as a partner, leading our customers to the forefront March 2018

19

RM Applications: A Premium Provider of Advanced Technology based Remittance, Risk & Regulatory Reporting Data Management & Innovative Solutions

W

ith an unwavering thought of “Why it can’t be done?” a group of professionals with boasting years of experience within the finance and banking industry joined hands to form RM Applications Sdn. Bhd. (RMA) – a MSC status boutique software company. Based out of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, RMA started its journey as a delivery oriented system integration company and later went on to be a provider of end-to-end bespoke technology solutions for Conventional and Islamic Financial Institutions. The company successfully delivers leading edge technology solutions in areas such as Remittance & Payments, ALM & Liquidity Reporting Data Mart, Data Management (ETL) Consulting & Development, Bespoke Data Mart, Localization and integration of Partners’ Solutions.

Core Values of RMA RMA offers various solutions for its clients including Consulting, Implementation, bespoke solution development, Integration and Technology convergence. It also offers Program and Process management and delivers end-to-end business enabling IT solutions. Furthermore, RMA has followed a simple but fundamental principle in order to build great relationships with its clients. RMA has invested in trust, faith, and respect in order to affirm its long-term commitment to the clients. Over the years, RMA has enabled its clients to meet their desired goals and expectations time and again in order to build a large client

22

pool worldwide. RMA continues to generate growth for its clients with cutting-edge innovation and latest tech solutions. The company also fosters a culture of honesty, integrity and business ethics to provide clients with a reliable solution provider.

A Venture Guided by Original Insights It is important for companies to understand its clients and its concerns before offering them a complete solution. This is how RMA came into the fore of BI and Analytics. After speaking to its clients, RMA founders realized that the existing Enterprise Data Warehouse was not able to meet the requirement of its clients. At the time, data standardization, data quality, replicating original data values were not up to the mark for many businesses. Hence, RMA founders decided to adopt bespoke data marts, which were more efficient and provided value of money in each case.

Data marts met the requirements of RMA clients by making the semi-processed data available. This made it easier for its clients to feed the data into Risk and Regulatory Reporting engine to generate reports and conduct further analysis.

Currently, RMA provides a range of solutions along with data mats to further boost the business of its clients. Its added solutions include data management for Asset Liability Management, Basel 3 (Liquidity), Fund Transfer Pricing, MFRS9 (Malaysian Financial Reporting Standards) and other Regulatory Reporting.

March 2018

Company of the Month

“

A Complete Range of Financial Solutions RMA with constant innovation has been innovating with its products consistently to make it easier for businesses to make finance look like a cakewalk. The company achieves this goal through its offering of many fully featured products, which cater to various demands of businesses. Some of its flagship products are detailed below.

OmniRemit (Remittance Solution Suite) is a Remittance and Payment Solution made for various types of Remittance Houses, Conventional and Islamic Banks, offering Cross Border Remittance. The solution makes it convenient for clients to engage in Online Remittance, Branch Remittance, and Remittance Back Office solutions. The solution complies with Bank Negara Malaysia’s legal requirements and also adheres to AMLA guidelines. The solution features support for MoneyGram and clients can avail straight through processing along with real-time interface with cross border remittance corridors for transaction processing.

Lokesh Gupta Co-founder RM Applications

OmniData (Risk/Reporting Data Mart) & ETL Consultancy specialize in meeting the needs of financial institutions like banks in data repository for Asset Liability, Basel 3 Reporting & Risk Management Solution. The solution integrates various complicated data computation methods and makes integration essential for Data

March 2018

23

feeds originating from sources such as Loans, Fixed Deposits, Treasury, Trade Finance, Credit Card and other banking systems. Raw data is modeled to match the requirements of Risk & Assets Liability Management (ALM) solution. The data is further used to compute and analyze customer behavior, economic valuation, interest rate scenarios and wide range of other variables. These solutions provide a simple, lightening quick and accurate method of computation.

Vehicle Inspection Management System (VIMS) is a solution designed to meet the needs of value-conscious used vehicle buyers. The solution streamlines used vehicle evaluation and inspection task, which is beneficial for individual sellers and buyers as well as vehicle dealers. The solution provides clients with the much needed certified quality analysis based on standardized scoring, transparency in inspection process. This helps enrich the financial trade of used vehicles by legitimizing its true value, and opens up new opportunities from a business point of view. VIMS mobile ready interface allows businesses and individuals to access the features in a convenient manner and makes evaluation a systematic and reliable process.

OmniAuth: OmniAuth is a convenient code generating system, which relies on the latest smartphone technology to authenticate a user. It employs Quick Response (QR) codes based token system embedded in OmniAuth App. It allows users to quickly and easily sign into a system by scanning the QR Code displayed on a website. This is an advanced form of token systems as compared to other systems which expect users to manually enter a combination of numbers to confirm their identity. It provides immense relief for individuals and financial institutions which still rely on physical token based solutions. Additionally, it is a more secure form of authentication. Many websites currently use a single factor system, which relies on a personalized login and password. RMA solution enables users to use a mobile phone as a second factor that would save time for users, help them appreciate the efforts of financial institutions and, in turn, can provide brand loyalty to brands.

RMA also plans to roll out a new product which would connect merchants with consumers in a unique manner. The solution named ‘OmniPay’ would allow payments to be processed through the smartphone platform and also allow debit from a virtual wallet or Intra bank account. The innovative solution is in its final stage of development and would likely go on floor in June 2018.

Guiding RMA into the Future Lokesh Gupta is the Co-founder of RMA and continues to

24

guide the company to solve some of the most difficult challenges in IT innovations. He has worked in Financial Solution Consulting, Regulatory Reporting, Data Mart Development and Project management for over 17 years. At RMA, he is involved in Asset Liability Management, Basel III, Risk and Regulatory Reporting Data mart Development as well as Remittance & Payments Solution implementations in the region. He regularly contributes to the industry with his knowledge and insight. He has coauthored four books in Islamic Finance and has also published papers in various reputed magazines. RMA is also blessed with a founding team that has a vast experience in providing IT solutions. Under their leadership, RMA continues to experiment and break new grounds in unexplored areas. An example of such noteworthy achievement is the recent launch of VIMS as part of their AutoTech initiatives. The company founders are eager to see RMA reach the pinnacle of success that they relentlessly pursue with their hardworking and committed group of employees and are called as RMATEs. The Early Phase of Challenges and a Boundless Vision for the Future When RMA was in its early stages, it faced a vicious cycle of challenges that many start-ups often face. As the company had not yet built a reputation for itself in the market, clients often preferred well-known solution providers instead. The company also faced similar problems in hiring new talent as employees also preferred to work with an established company as opposed to an upcoming one. All of this resulted in limited liquidity in cash flows for RMA and consequently, stretched budget demands for R&D. RMA faced this challenge head-on by diversifying into new segments and creating a niche for itself. As a result of its early challenges, RMA today is in a position to provide unique and original solutions to its clients. RMA in its early stages developed client-specific products which provided financially flexible business model such as ‘revenue sharing’ to its clients.

RMA believes in collaboration with Customers, Partners and expand into new markets. RMA follows collaborative and agile approach in creating bespoke solutions across the digital value chain using Web and Mobile platform to address the customers pain point and requirements. RMA continues to take lessons from its initial phase to establish itself as a key financial solution provider for its clients as well as for its partners. RMA is now working towards data models development for reporting using ‘R’, using QR technology for payment, Blockchain integration with OmnmiRemit for using digital assets such as crypto currency and exploring Big Data as part of Data Management Offerings.

March 2018

An Insight on the Opportunities

BIG DATA INDUSTRY

I

n this era of changing technologies, the Big Data domain has evolved in a very short period of time. It plays the most pivotal role across all industries. The ability of Big Data to mine critical data has radically altered the dynamics of the way businesses function, drive sales, and attract customers. It has become an essential component of business strategy nowadays. A business tastes success by uncovering insights locked inside data. The overlaying trends will examine the evolving ways enterprises can realize better business value with Big Data and how improving business intelligence can help transform organizational processes and the customer experience. There is a demand for better data management from most of the business executives for compliance and increased confidence to steer the business. It will help them in more rapid adoption of Big Data and innovative and transformative data analytic technologies.

analytics which will become a major area of investment and will grow swiftly. It is necessary for the enterprises and the government agencies to upgrade their security systems to next-generation software which can address ultra-modern security threats.

Insight-driven Organizations In this present year, businesses will move beyond just data handling to leveraging the insights that Big Data uncovers.

As understanding, managing, and manipulating Big Data has now become fairly ubiquitous, most of the companies have the ability to deal with it. Mining data will be the center of attraction and it will help effectively to meet organizational requirements and for precise targeting of products and services. An insight-driven approach will facilitate an evolved customer experience, competitiveness, advanced security and operational efficiency.

Bridging the talent gap If the demand expands further, the talent gap in data analytics will soar. It is expected that organizations and academic institutions will collaborate closely to generate skills and talent to meet the demand for data engineers. The functions of all corporate employees will be expected to understand, appreciate and work with analytics since it emerges as one of the key instruments in every organization. The academic institutions are also looking forward to put together degree programs in data science.

Cyber security Applications Today, everyone is dependent on the digital technology and our dependence has reached an unprecedented level. Cyberattacks have also become much more prevalent. An increased occurrence of ransomware has been registered across the globe and cyber criminals are now targeting personal data and devices. Concerning the prime industry, cyber security can only be possible through big data

26

Analytics across the enterprise It can be said that the analytics will not remain isolated to a few departments like marketing and risk management. On the other hand it will infuse the entire enterprise. To understand the dynamics of business operations, data analytics will be utilized and will also reveal ways and means to increase efficiency. Hence to derive overall business strategy, insights from multiple departments will be integrated and redundant processes will be eliminated. It will also help the departments to increase efficiency, growth, and productivity.

IoT and People There will be a transition from Internet of Things (IoT) to Internet of People (IoP). Interactions, predictive analytics around human behavior, and other subjective areas will grow and start to filter all industry verticals. For example, hospitals will increasingly deploy machine learning techniques to predict the likelihood of the relapse of a disease. This will enable them to work out a patient’s readmission precisely at the time of the initial discharge.

March 2018

Industry Insight

Business-science collaboration Businesses will have to learn and deploy traditional, scientific techniques of pattern-matching and artificial intelligence for analytics use cases. For example, techniques to analyze gene sequences in DNA are being used in text-matching algorithms to process bulk emails. It is expected to see very close collaboration between data scientists and the scientific community. For example, image processing is widely used in ‘tagging’ in social media, while voice recognition is used in apps.

Technology There will be brisk moving in the organizations from on-premise platforms to cloud and hybrid environments. Around 44 percent of applications used by Fortune 500 organizations are already on the cloud, and more than 50 percent of IT applications will move to the cloud by the end of the year. There will be a rise in demand for analytics tools that are simple, flexible, and capable of handling a variety of data sources. Hadoop enables to store an extremely large volume of data at a significantly lower price point and hence it will continue to become increasingly popular. The share of unstructured data in the data warehouse will continue to increase, which will further cause for Hadoop. Hadoop, now, is past the business relevance and scalability assessment phase and its adoption is expected to accelerate strongly.

We are advancing towards a completely new era in the domain of analytics. Big data is disruptive and it has paved the way for pioneering ideas and innovative techniques across industry verticals. It is now driving the stream of disruption and expanding the scope of opportunities for previously untouched market segments. Organizations need to leverage Big Data analytics to its full capacity so as to thrive in this competitive world.

March 2018

27

Algomus: Bridging the Gap between Humans and Machines Amjad Hussain CEO & Co-founder

I

n the Spike Jonze directed movie – Her, the protagonist had a relationship with an AI enabled program, which boasted the capability of conversing like a human and performed mundane and complex tasks with ease. The average knowledge surrounding Artificial Intelligence revolves around a rumored headline of it surpassing human brain with the help of a computer generated program, causing a cloud of catastrophe over the idea. But the reality is much more complex than the above stated rumor. Organizations from varied sectors realize the potential of AI and Machine Learning and are racing against each other to build the most efficient AI enabled program, capable of reducing human efforts by solving the maximum tasks possible. Built on the concept of people and machines working together, Algomus is one company that stands out to create an environment where humans and machines can work and learn from one another to make specific tasks easier.

Product, Service and Customers – The Pillars of Uniqueness The Product – The company’s Taskbot, Algo is unique for applying a Natural Language interface to a full-stack Business Intelligence and Enterprise AI platform. It combines data analytics, visualization, robotic process automation, and personalized insights and reporting, thereby giving its clients an easy to use hub to collaborate with data and get their questions answered.

Additionally, Machine learning enables Algo to learn from its users, and get more useful and personalized over time.

30

Service Model – Algo is a full-stack AI as a Service platform which ensures very little effort from the IT department and other client teams to get up and running for usage. This leads to quick return on investment.

Customer Success – Algomus’ single most important focus is upon its customers’ success. It believes in doing anything and everything to ensure its customer partners get exceptional ROI from all its solutions. It prides itself on creating long lasting relationships with every single customer it has partnered with thusfar.

The CEO who steered his Company to Success With a vision of people and machines working together, Algo was Co-founded and ably led by Amjad Hussain – the CEO of the company. During the initial period, the company faced considerable challenge in finding the right personnel and turning its vision into a reality.

Amjad dedicated his time and efforts to build a passionate team of artificial intelligence scientists, software engineers, and industry domain experts. Amjad brought a small team of well-educated, dedicated, and talented people, possessing complementary skills, together to use diverse AI methods and architectures running on Big Data, to solve meaningful and complex problems for companies.

An entrepreneur by heart, Amjad is the CEO during day and an avid AI algorithm designer at night. With a resolute focus on Artificial Intelligence, Amjad earned his Masters’ in Electrical Engineering & Computer March 2018

Algo’s brain is always on, looking for insights and anomalies that are important to his users.

Science from UMIST, in the UK and followed it up with an MBA from MIT. Recognized amongst the Crains’s ‘40 under 40’ Executive Award for his pioneering contributions in advanced analytics, Amjad boasts an Advanced Management Program from Havard and Stanford.

Helping People Make Smarter Decisions in an Uncertain Environment Amjad believes, “AI is going to be overhyped in the short run and under-hyped in the long run.” Taking this into consideration, Algomus will focus on a narrow AI field, applying diverse AI & ML methods on business data for analytics and workflow automation. It envisions a future where it continues to build Enterprise AI applications to help people make smarter decisions in an uncertain environment.

‘‘

‘‘

features. Implemented as a full-stack service, Algo is trained to continually learn from data with more and more human interactions.

Delivering Exponential Business Outcomes Algomus grows the collaborative intelligence of enterprises, with people and AI agents working hand in hand to deliver exponential business outcomes. Its inhouse product, Algo, is the world’s first AI enabled conversational Business Analyst and an integrated workflow environment of its kind. It mines Big Data and develops an internal representation and higher-level understanding to help businesses get answers to their questions in a quick, easy, and accurate manner. Algo continuously learns to perform tedious analytic tasks to give business analysts more time to be strategic and creative. As Amjad rightly points out, “Algo is always on.”

AI enabled Virtual Assistant – Algo Algo is a bot that wrangles Big Data to help people get answers to their data related queries in a quick and easy manner. It can deploy Machine Learning models to learn to take over tedious tasks, thereby giving more time to be strategic and creative. Algo makes collaboration easy through its insight sharing, storyboarding, and reporting

March 2018

31

Emerging Tech, Revolutions & Crisis for Entrepreneurs: Insights from a true Globe Trotter

Photo Courtesy: Daniel Lopez-Paullada

By AlisĂŠe de Tonnac, CEO of Seedstars

32

March 2018

Inside Entrepreneurship from Emerging Markets

C

ompared to Silicon Valley, the markets we operate in are eager to keep up by creating environments for entrepreneurs and startups. This is driven by investments in institutions and infrastructure, however, in general, the countries still lag behind when it comes to the number of opportunities (even worse when it comes to the “entrepreneurship culture”).

In terms of having the right institutions and infrastructures, all regions are doing well except Africa.

Countries from Central and Eastern Europe have been specifically successful here. Asia is definitely the most developed region concerning entrepreneurship.

One of the biggest challenges I observe is that, unfortunately, many of these countries are confronted with brain drain, although startup hubs like Singapore and Hong Kong are able to attract outstanding minds.

Fortunately, investments start to flow to these countries now, as many companies, business angels and venture capitalists already see them as opportunities: entrepreneur hubs like Mexico, Bangkok or CapeTown are attracting more funding every year.

On top of infrastructures and institutions there’s another difficulty: training and mentoring habits are missing in many places.

Nevertheless, we can see some hubs emerge while accelerators and investments in training schemes are created: Singapore, Shanghai, HK, Santiago de Chile, Nairobi, Mexico City, Cape Town, Belo Horizonte, and others.

March 2018

The one thing that is really different for those countries is that entrepreneurship is just starting to hit their culture now. Nowhere in the world are there as many self-declared entrepreneurs as in San Francisco.

For emerging markets, culture seems to be the biggest challenge, with notable exceptions: Singapore, Nairobi, Lagos and Cape Town.

with entrepreneurship in these markets: the opportunities for innovation are wider. I am talking, for example, about drone companies who work with the Rwandese government to change aerial regulations, in order to allow the first national drone airport in the world to reside in their land of a thousand hills...

What is interesting about these frontier markets is that out of their challenges rises the opportunity to disrupt the status quo and even sometimes be the test market for new innovations. We witness in more and more industries that phenomena of leapfrogging through which you would skip one technology movement directly to the next - less costly, more efficient and usually more sustainable one. From their weaknesses comes also the advantage of maybe less regulation, less lobbying and a lesser hurdle of consumer habits to change. The most obvious example is that of skipping land lines directly to mobile phones.

It is predicted that by 2020, over 80% of all smartphones will be located in emerging markets! When you think about businesses in these markets you consider a mobile economy from day 1. The opportunities of disruption in the financial sectors with mobile payment (50% of Kenyan GDP passes through M-PESA mobile payment application), healthcare sector and others came from there.

You also see the rise of solar powered or electric powered energy solutions for remote areas due to the inefficiencies of the national grid.

Talents are everywhere What I see throughout all regions and countries though, is that no matter what the difficulties are, passion and dedication always make things happen.

There’s a reason for the collaboration of European or American companies

I like to shout out that talents are everywhere. No one’s potential is linked to an environment. It’s true that a good education and a secure context help, but the good “seed” can be in anyone, regardless of the social environment. Anyone can build anything great from scratch if you give them time, resources, patience and help.

I agree that motivations differ according to circumstances. Some have no choice and are entrepreneurs out of necessity, some fundamentally believe it is their mission to change the status quo in their local communities and countries, whilst others are born with that DNA of wanting to build something new and involve others in their journey.

I wonder if it is also generational.

We, millennials, see life differently and do put a lot of emphasis on our personal purpose. We’re very much attracted by the nomadic lifestyle that, many times, a digital entrepreneur can give. I think the previous generation did not realize or

33

plainly abused of the way we treat our planet and entrepreneurship became something very relevant to solve the major challenges of today.

Do one thing that scares you everyday In the end, I think that entrepreneurship is more a lifestyle and a mindset, rather than a position. What really moves the needle is then courage and capacity to go out of your comfort zone.

I was working for a big luxury company in cosmetics and I had this feeling of dissatisfaction and unhappiness.

I needed to find a project which made me feel complete and useful. I felt it was a shame not to work for a product capable of changing the world. I came across a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt: “Do one thing that scares you everyday.” I realized I was deeply in my comfort zone and not doing this at all, so I decided to go out of my comfort zone and tour the world from Nigeria to Colombia in 2013, with the goal to meet the best entrepreneurs in those countries. That’s where Seedstars World was born, a startup competition focused only in emerging markets. Now that we’re turning five, one can surely say it is our main tool to impact millions of lives through technology and entrepreneurship!

Today I work hard to be comfortable... being uncomfortable. I wouldn’t say it’s an easy thing to do and that I excel at it everyday, but it’s with a good attitude towards it that you will get there. This is what we call the “Growth Mindset” at Seedstars. We focus particularly on that one while recruiting.

the number of failures you will live, your ability to master these moments and build agility and resilience.

J.K. Rowling gave it all it’s meaning when stating that “some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default”.

For all entrepreneurs and professionals, I’ll advise to: Ÿ

Surround yourself with great talent and more generally in your life, cut out those who pull you down; keep the best of hearts, minds and laughs.

Ÿ

Cut out the noise (reality is not what you read on tech magazines) and stay focused.

Ÿ

Don’t underestimate the time to define and build the culture within your organisation. Someone once said, “culture is management at scale”.

Ÿ

Measure, measure, measure.

Ÿ

Choose your core team because you align with the values, not because you align in terms of skills.

Ÿ

Coach - don’t micromanage (most difficult experience when going from founder to manager).

And finally, make your dreams reality. It’s all in the doing. Until death has been cured/resolved/augmented, we need to respect the time we have and be content of what we achieve on our day to day.

Advice for entrepreneurs The most important thing for an entrepreneur is that you know yourself. You need to understand yourself to be able to define what kind of entrepreneur you are (and yes, this can evolve over time and experiences). Are you the kind that builds/creates? Are you the type that follows and scales? Are you the kind that manages and leads?

This has been the most challenging and overwhelming journey I have lived to date. But it is, by far, the "healthiest of insanities", one with a purpose that makes the whole journey great and worth it. A lot is linked to

34

March 2018

Panoply: The World’s First Cloud Smart Data Warehouse Yaniv Leven Co-founder & CEO

T

here is no question that cloud technology holds enormous potential. This has prompted major companies everywhere to move their back-office systems to cloud-based data warehouse platforms.

With cloud-based data warehouse storage, data is saved on solid state drives hosted by an external service provider that handles the IT aspects of the data storage process. This frees the company to concentrate on running their business instead of running a room full of servers.

One company that automatically transforms big data to analytics in minutes is Panoply, the world’s first smart data warehouse. Panoply virtually eliminates the time and effort required to go from raw data to insights by delivering the world’s only smart data warehouse built for the cloud.

The privately-held company was founded in 2015 by Yaniv Leven and Roi Avinoam, and has been funded by angel investors and leading Venture Capital such as Intel Capital, 500 Startups, Blumberg Capital, and C5 Capital.

Smart Data Warehouse: Cutting Edge Technology, Insightful Analytics Panoply provides a Smart Data Warehouse which automates IT processes that manage and scale databases.

It utilizes cutting edge technology to streamline the entire process of connecting, managing and analyzing data.

The company envisions a complete elimination of the time and effort required to go from raw data to insights

36

by bridging the gap between data and IT processes through analytics solutions.

Proprietary machine learning algorithms are incorporated into world-class architecture so this data warehouse actually learns the way data is used in the organization and self-optimizes to improve performance and reduce costs. It focuses on solving three main problem areas in the BI and Analytics domain: Instant setup - With Panoply you can collect, store, and analyze data in minutes, compared to weeks or months with traditional cloud warehouses. Get your data stack up and running in a few clicks with no coding or help from data engineering.

Zero maintenance - Panoply scales as your data grows.

Panoply automated all the maintenance and data preparation traditionally done by a data engineering team with machine learning and NLP. Control your data - With Panoply you can login anytime to view your data collects, add more data sources, schedule collection frequency, view historical data, setup data alerts, and build new data aggregations. Remove the wall between you and your data.

Challenging Conventions The biggest challenge for Panoply has been to educate Data Analysts and Data Scientists - who are particularly dependent on Data Engineers to perform their analytical tasks - that they can manage the entire data life cycle.

The main reason behind their faith is Data Engineers March 2018

‘‘

With Panoply you can automatically transform your data to analytics in minutes.

However, Panoply’s innovative smart data warehouse is an unconventional solution that facilitates the precise machine learning algorithms which can handle those tasks and streamline the entire data lifecycle to the analysts within a drastically-reduced timeline and without IT intervention.

A Logical Analyst Leading from the Front Yaniv Leven is the Co-founder and CEO of Panoply.

He holds a B.Sc in Statistics and an M.Sc in Finance.

Initially, Yaniv worked as a senior Analyst at Moody’s Corp. (NYSE: MCO), building complex statistical models on structured derivatives. After a successful stint at Moody’s, he contributed to Mytopia, (acquired by 888 Holdings for $48 million). Here, he managed CRM, Marketing, Analytics and deal execution. Yaniv’s logical insights catalyzed the company to reach unprecedented heights.

‘‘

dominance in data integration and management of the DB and storage technologies.

Both men have an undying passion for BI and Analytics and have been working together for the past decade.

Yaniv believes he is a logical analyst, regardless of his position in the company or industry. His analytical brilliance has led the company to immense success.

Stand Out Features and Future Plans 73% of Panoply’s clients are from non-IT backgrounds.

The company provides them the ability to instantly harness technologies monopolized by IT, which helps break down the major barrier of harnessing data through IT. Panoply’s streamlining eliminates the 80% inefficiency inherent in the original process.

The company stands tall as the world’s only smart data warehouse. Its proprietary machine learning algorithms are unique in the market and convert analytics into insights within minutes. The company envisions strengthening the modern cloud platform with its warehouse solutions and aims to create more adaptive and easier BI and analytics platforms for the industry.

This managerial experience in Analytics and BI design at two data-driven companies gave Yaniv unparalleled insight into the changes for which the industry yearned.

The ideation developed into Panoply with the help of Roi Avinoam, who was a CTO at Win and Mytopia.

March 2018

37

BIG DATA:

Transforming Businesses Altogether

D

ata are currently woven into each sector and function in the worldwide economy, and, like other fundamental elements of production such as hard assets and human capital, a lot of today’s economic action couldn’t take place without them. The use of Big Data — vast pools of data that can be united and investigated to perceive examples and settle on better choices — will turn into the premise of competition and development for individual firms, enhancing efficiency and creating significant value for the world economy by diminishing waste and expanding the quality of products and services.

As of recently, the deluge of data flooding our reality has been a marvel that presumably just energized a couple of data geeks. Be that as it may, we are currently at an inflection point.

The history of past trends in IT investment and innovation and its effect on competitiveness and profitability highly recommend that Big Data can have a comparable power, and to be specific, the ability to change our lives for the better. Similar preconditions that permitted past waves of IT-enabled innovation to control efficiency, i.e., innovation advancements followed by the adoption of complementary management services, are set up for Big Data. And we expect providers of Big Data technology and advanced analytic capabilities to have at least as much continuous effect on profitability as providers of different sorts of technology. All organizations need to take Big Data and its ability to make value seriously if they want to contend. For

38

instance, a few retailers embracing Big Data see the possibility to increase their operating margins by 60 percent.

Big Data: Another Upper Hand The use of Big Data is turning into an important route for driving organizations to beat their companions. In many businesses, built up contenders, as well as new contestants, will use data-driven systems to enhance, compete, and capture value.

Big Data will make new growth opportunities and entirely new categories of organizations, for example, those that aggregate and examine industry data. A significant portion of these will be organizations that sit amidst massive data streams where data about items and services, purchasers and providers, shopper preferences and intent, can be caught and analyzed. Forward-thinking pioneers across sectors should start aggressively to construct their associations’ Big Data’s abilities.

Moreover, the sheer size of Big Data, the continuous and high-frequency nature of the data are likewise vital. For instance, ‘nowcasting,’ the capacity to evaluate measurements is winding up more utilized, adding vital energy to forecast. Correspondingly, the high frequency of data enables clients to test theories in close constant and to a level that was never possible before.

March 2018

Data Talk Understandings around data security and privacy are only one obstacle that governments and organizations need to overcome, if the economic benefits of Big Data are to be figured out. One of the most squeezing challenges is a critical lack of individuals with the abilities to analyze Big Data. By 2018, the United States alone could confront a deficiency of 140,000 to 190,000 people with deep analytical training (in statistics or machine learning) and other 1.5m individuals with the managerial and quantitative skills to have the capacity to outline and decipher investigations adequately enough to base decisions in light of them.

The Value that Big Data Creates If the U.S. healthcare framework were to utilize Big Data innovatively and viably to drive proficiency and quality, the sector could make more than $300bn each year. Almost 66% of that would be an 8 percent decrease in U.S. healthcare expenditure. In the developed economies of Europe, government administrators could make more than €100bn ($123bn) in operational productivity improvements alone by using Big Data – and that is excluding using advanced analytic devices to diminish fraud and mistakes, and lift the collection of tax revenues.

However, it’s not simply organizations and companies that remain to pick up from the value that Big Data can make.

Shoppers can likewise receive very noteworthy benefits.

For example, clients of services empowered by personallocation data can catch $600bn in customer overflow.

Taking smart routing using constant traffic information is a standout amongst the most heavily used applications of individual-location data. As the penetration of smartphones increases and free route applications are incorporated into these gadgets, the use of smart routing is probably going to develop.

By 2020, more than 70 percent of cell phones are required to have a GPS ability, up from 20 percent in 2010. By and large, the potential worldwide estimation of smart routing through time and fuel savings will be about $500bn by 2020. This is quite equivalent to saving drivers 20bn hours on the road, or about $150bn on fuel consumption, and 10 to 15 hours each year for every traveler.

March 2018

There are additionally numerous technical issues that should be resolved to benefit as much as possible from Big Data. Legacy systems and incompatible standards frequently prevent the incorporation of data and the use of the more advanced analytics that make value. At last, making use of the foremost digital datasets will demand the get together of a technology stack from computing and storage through visualizations and analytical programming applications.

Most importantly, access to data needs to widen.

Progressively, organizations should get data from outsiders, e.g., business partners or clients, and coordinate them with their own. An essential competency for data-driven organizations, later on, will be the ability to make compelling value propositions for others, including buyers, providers and conceivably even contenders, to share data.

In the event that looks far-fetched that data sharing will happen regardless of the potential for societal advantages (a market failure), lawmakers may then have to step in.

As long as organizations and governments comprehend the potential of Big Data to deliver higher efficiency, better value for purchasers, and the next wave of development in the worldwide economy, there ought to be a sufficiently reliable motivator for them to act robustly and beat the hindrances to its use.

By doing as such, they will unleash avenues to new competitiveness among organizations, with higher proficiency in the public sector that will empower better services, even in obliged fiscal times, and subsequently empower firms, and even entire economies to be more productive.

39

RPMG:

Rolling the Moneyball of Revenue Performance Craig McKell CEO

M

oneyball, a 2011 Hollywood blockbuster starring Brad Pitt, is a tale of how unorthodox business intelligence coupled with an unconventional approach can reap spectacular success. In the movie, a baseball team manager and an economics graduate come together to design a system to draft a winning Major League team with a limited budget.

Many people would be quick to dismiss it as the typical feel-good plot. However, it is actually based on the true story of the 2002 Oakland Athletics baseball team. That creative approach to business intelligence is not limited to sports; it is embraced by a company that is using nontraditional, out-of-the-box thinking to amplify its clients’ revenue capacity – RPMG. The company has empowered businesses in every corner of the world with its astonishing analytics platform, TelemetRy. Cutting-edge Revenue Analytics RPMG believes that in order to see the problem, you need insight, and to get insight, you need data. It has been utilizing BI and Analytics to tackle such major issues.

TelemetRy is an intelligent cutting-edge revenue analytics platform which has demonstrated how an improvement of just one percent at the right point in an organizational pipeline can increase its total revenue by 5% and profit by 32%, without touching pricing.

The TelemetRy platform supports clients by facilitating a wide range of diagnostic and performance improvement services. The company has focused primarily on providing

42

analyzed data and identifying performance issues and blockages. Its extraordinary range of capabilities further helps clients to rectify such concerns and strategize accordingly.

The Initial Challenge - Resistance from the Status Quo The plot of Moneyball showed rather hilariously how a new, untested system immediately faces a wall of criticism and distrust. RPMG’s CEO, Craig McKell, explains, “Just like Billy Beane in Moneyball, the biggest challenge we’ve faced has been resistance from what we will call the ‘status quo’.”

The company looks at marketing and selling in an entirely different way, one which “challenges everything today’s marketing and sales executives have ever learned about what they’ve been doing for decades.”

The approach and practices initiated by the company require a significant investment of hard work by CMO’s and CSO’s, which improves revenue performance. Craig adds, “CEO’s and CFO’s love us. CMO’s and CSO’s – not so much. Until they see the results, of course.”

Simplifying Revenue Performance RPMG has witnessed enormous success and seen massive growth since its inception in 2005. The prime reason behind the fast pace of that success is the company’s CEO, Craig McKell.

Craig started in the industry by working at renowned companies like PwC, Ernst & Young, and Telecom NZ. He is also a founder of Woodland Home Products, a company that grew sales within Australia by 21%; export sales by

March 2018

More revenue, more profitably, with more speed – and at lower cost and effort.

‘‘

‘‘

100% and overall sales by 25%. Subsequently, he returned Woodland Home Products to profitability by delivering a bottom line turnaround of more than 400%.

from specific marketing and sales campaigns and activities by measuring contribution to revenue, margin, profit and value.

Craig was fascinated by the idea of business intelligence solutions and wanted to contribute to the sector. That drive to follow his passion has led to the creation of this leading business intelligence solutions provider.

It has been extraordinarily successful in revealing and quantifying the future financial impacts of changes to the marketing and sales tactical mix. It objectively identifies the stage of the sales process at which buyers are, and how quickly they are moving through the pipeline. Additionally, it analyzes and benchmarks every aspect of an organization’s revenue performance and revenue creation processes over time and against peers.

Craig states, “I’ve done some interesting and rewarding things in my career but nothing even comes close to the satisfaction that I get from watching the impact RPMG is still having on people’s businesses, and their lives.”

Today, the company has reached around 150 global and regional clients. Craig says that it is gratifying working with global giants of the likes of Google, IBM, EY and Westpac, but it is also immensely satisfying and humbling working with smaller companies who aren’t so well known, but turning around their revenue performance with the RPMG platform.

Why Businesses Choose RPMG The principal product offered by the company, TelemetRy, is a composite of unparalleled features that entice clients to choose RPMG over its competitors.

Through an astute analysis algorithm, TelemetRy is able to measure every aspect of organizational revenue performance to produce piercing insights, which spawns the creation of avenues of improvement that may be implemented far into the future.

Aspirations and Plans The company believes that everyone will soon come to understand and accept the principles of marginal gain theory and revenue performance. The concept is just too powerful and simple to remain a secret for too long.

RPMG aims to lead the business intelligence market through its unconventional and consistently incoming strategies.

Be it a global tech giant or a promising regional enterprise from Australia, the platform has been quantifying their ROI

March 2018

43

T

he last 10 years has witnessed a huge boom in alternative finance (“altfi”). As many commentators have observed, this was in part kick-started by the global financial crisis – with consumers becoming disillusioned by traditional financial service providers, assets classes and practices. Prior to 2008, attitudes to finance were often characterised by apathy, acceptance of “the way things were done”, and perhaps even a blind trust that regulators and banks would keep the economy (and people’s savings) safe.

Then it all hit the fan in the wake of the Lehman collapse, and much trust in traditional institutions was lost.

Since then we’ve seen individuals demanding more transparency and control over their finances, lower transaction and service costs, and better conduct – which has provided opportunities for a new wave of customer-focussed altfi providers to satisfy that demand.

But even more than changing attitudes, it is technology that has been the bedrock of altfi’s success. New financial products, such as crowdfunding and peer-to-peer lending, simply wouldn’t be possible without the use of sophisticated technology platforms, which enable those services to be provided in a low-cost, time efficient manner. The use of technology engenders not only transparency and accountability (it is difficult to escape customer censure when it forever becomes a part of Google’s online memory), but also financial inclusion. Venture capital, for example, used to be an investment activity reserved for those that had vast quantities of both money and time on their hands – but since the dawn of equity crowdfunding, any person can invest businesses they believe in at the click of a button, from as little of £10.

Financial technology (“fintech”) has had far-reaching benefits across the financial services sector: at the retail end, we’ve seen challenger banks such as Revolut, which provides low cost FX to travellers through an app, and Plum, an savings tool that works through online messenger; to the institutional end, where blockchain technology is reducing the opportunity for transaction fraud using smart contracts, and even the traditional

44

March 2018

Thought Leadership

Karen Kerrigan Chief Legal Ofď€ cer Seedrs Limited

March 2018

45

bond market is being made more efficient by online platforms such as Origin, which optimise connections between issuers and dealers.

The regulation of fintech, however, is proving a challenge. We see regulators across the globe struggling to keep up with the pace of change – both in terms of facilitation and intervention. There is a tendency for a regulator to consciously delay addressing a sector, because it is not yet sufficiently developed or isn’t deemed to have “systemic importance”, but this can have the following negative implications: First, lack of regulatory involvement or interest can result in a sector being seen by consumers as illegitimate, which can slow or even hamper its development. See, for example, the peer-to-peer lending space, which had to lobby for years to come under the regulator’s jurisdiction.

Second, it can mean that bad actors have the licence to operate around the edges of existing regulation. Whilst the impact of any fallout from this may not be “systemic”, if it is a retail product, it can very well affect the most vulnerable in society.

Third, even when existing regulation does apply, it is often not fit for purpose. Much of the regulator’s rulebook is based on the idea of paper records and manual systems, rather than today’s digital reality – and compliance with such rules not only increases costs for the provider, but can be frustrating for the consumer. In the realm of identity checks, for example, the idea of an online platform asking customers to come into the office with a passport is wholly incongruous with an online experience.

Fourth, just because one regulator chooses not to act, doesn’t mean others will take the same view. In Europe, for example, we have seen many jurisdictions building bespoke, unconnected regulatory regimes that make operating cross-border very challenging.

And finally, fifth, too many times shortly after regulators have publicly stated they will not intervene, they change their minds within a matter of months. This change of tack can result in panic in the industry, and risks new

46

regulation being incomplete and/or out of date as soon as it is published.

In the United Kingdom, we are lucky enough to have a pro-active, forward-thinking regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (“FCA”). In 2014, it launched a new initiative,” The Innovation Hub” with the dual objectives of helping new altfi firms navigate the existing regulatory landscape, and educating itself about changes in fintech. Accompanying the Innovation Hub, is the FCA’s “Regulatory Sandbox”, launched in mid 2016, which provides an opportunity for altfis to test their proposals in a confined regulatory testing environment – and over the last two years, it has invited the trials of businesses from a variety of sectors, from insurance to pensions, retail to wholesale. The FCA has also signed a number of collaboration agreements with overseas regulators on the development of fintech, in a bid to share ideas and understanding and, recently, it sought feedback on whether it should expand its sandbox to global testing – an initiative that will no doubt be popular, given that, by its very nature, the digital provision of finance knows no geographical bounds.

The benefits of technological engagement, such as we are seeing from the FCA, cannot be underestimated. But engagement needs to be accompanied by the right sort of resources to support regulatory change. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the top computer scientists and mathematicians aren’t typically attracted to life as a regulator, and as such it can be difficult for even forward-thinking regulators to put their learning into practice. Which is why I think regulatory compliance in the era of fintech need to be re-focussed. No longer should it simply be about checking boxes to satisfy rules designed for earlier models of finance, or regulatory reporting through systems that don’t run on modern web browsers. It should be about problem solving: seeing technology as a way to not only provide financial services but regulate them too - using such techniques as behavioural algorithms and big data analysis to identify and react to risks. In doing so, regulators will attract the type of technology talent that it needs to effectively supervise today’s financial services firms.

March 2018

Versium:

Riding on Revolutionary Marketing Insights to Bring Digital Marketing home

Chris Matty CEO & Founder

W

hen the world was driven by mainstream media, TV audience was passive and could not make an independent decision about what they liked or didn’t like. With the emergence of digital media marketing and advertising has become a harder ballgame.

Marketers are having a hard task of chasing the audience to gain their attention and sell their products thereby making it important for marketers to be intelligent, objective, and insightful when marketing through the digital medium. A company that helps marketers understand their audience inside-out is Versium. The company provides quality actionable data, along with tools which help analyze it and gain enriching insights about the audience. The company also provides predictive services, which help their clients improve the ROI of their online campaign by better targeting the right audience for best results.

Unique Business Intelligence of Versium (BI) in a Nutshell Versium BI enables their clients to achieve three important marketing goals. First, it provides various automated data hygiene and enrichment tools to improve the quality of existing customer and prospect data and makes it more actionable. Second it delivers rich customer insights by enriching existing enterprise data with Versium’s proprietary Life Data® which enables enhanced segmentation and personalized messaging, which results in a rewarding customer experience. Third, the company delivers a suite of automated machine learing AI solutions in order to predict who is most likely to buy or engage to increase marketing ROI. Versium continues to expand data models in order to gain a better understanding of the online consumers.

48

Business Intelligence as a Weapon The founders of Versium were inspired by the poorly targeted email campaigns seen during the Groupon heyday..

The campaigning woes they experienced were common among marketers and executives. Digital marketing provides a cost-effective alternative to the mainstream TV advertising. However, it is a marketing area filled with uncertainties, and lacks a set of clear guidelines to follow at the moment. Hence, this field is in a deep need of objective insights which can then be used to form intuitive understanding of the audience. The current challenge for revolutionary companies like Versium is to convince the disarrayed digital executives to follow the path of rationality and invest in data driven AI intelligent solutions.

The Right Leadership for Embracing a New World There is a quote often repeated among digital marketing executives. It goes on the lines of, “There is no such thing as a digital marketing expert.” As mentioned earlier, digital marketing requires a set of enlightening guidelines and insightful leadership. Versium Founder and CEO Chris Matty, has a rich history of leading successful technology companies. As an industry thought leader, he pioneered the white and yellow pages’ online presence during the early days of the internet as a founder of Infospace, then assembled a team of data technology experts with decades of experience dealing with the challenges of consumer and business data accuracy, focusing on automation to bring the technology more broadly to the market. Fast forward a few years and with Versium, he has created a revolutionary data technology company that is truly changing the marketing landscape.

March 2018

We deliver highly data driven marketing solutions for gaining actionable insights - which is key to

‘‘

‘‘

achieving a winning ROI and extraordinary results.

Chris Matty lives and breathes technology innovation in an inspiring manner. He has donned multiple hats in the technology world before founding Versium. Many of his ventures went on to become successful enterprises in the Internet, mobile, and SaaS spaces. His insightful contribution has defined some of the internet business models common in the industry today. His merit and his leadership are set to provide a sigh of relief for the marketing industry through another major breakthrough.

A Real Solid Strategy for a Virtual World of Challenges Personalized messaging is becoming more and more important in the virtual world. As the audience is passive watching a TV commercial; it is easy to divide them in traditional categories such as men, women, teenagers, older audience. However, a large variety of choices and active participation online makes this scenario further complicated. Hence, it is absolutely essential for digital marketers to start understanding their audience as individuals and form as deep an understanding as possible.

Versium with its unique solutions places its clients in the driver’s seat to gain such insight.

professional and consumer personal and behavioral tendencies. Clients using Versium can find out who works in different organizations and their relevant professional information. This data is rich in insight; through it clients can aim personalized campaigns and messaging which is likely to be very effective. Additionally, Versium offers Predictive AI modeling tools that are simple to use and work on demand. These tools leverage the company’s rich proprietary data set combined with machine learning technology to eliminate the requirement of employing expensive data scientists and other tools. Due to its unique solutions, Versium technology is gaining more acceptance and continues to grow in an innovative manner.

A Resourceful future that Lies Ahead As AI technology develops and more digital marketing companies realize the potential of BI, the demand for Versium solutions is likely to rise. As the demand rises and economies of scale sets in, data driven AI solutions would become further more appealing for clients. Hence, a very resourceful future lies in store for digital marketers as well as for innovative solution providers like Versium.

Versium’s extensive LifeData® proprietary warehouse contains both business and consumer data. Their proprietary matching technology delivers rich insightful data, which is ready to be acted upon. Versium Life Data® delivers a true 360 degree view of a consumer in terms of bother their March 2018

49

Top Queries to Ask Your

Before You Do

Provider —

Business with Them

A

nyone can say that they offer IT services. But are they providing the right kind of service for your business? It’s important to ask the right questions when making your decision. We have compiled a list of queries for you to ensure you have the tools to identify if the IT provider of your choice can truly fulfill your needs.

You need to make sure that the IT provider is competent and experienced in serving your organization, puts your needs above all else, and has the tools and resources to get the job done securely and efficiently.

How Long They Have Been in the Business According to the US Small Business Administration, roughly 50% of small businesses fail within the first 5 years. It’s important to be able to trust and rely on the company of your choice. It’s important to know how long they’ve been in business as well as how successful they have been over that time as it will give you a better assessment of their ability to fulfill your needs.

The Type of Insurance They Have If the company doesn’t have insurance and something goes wrong or someone gets hurt, they may not have the finances on their own to salvage everything.

Prior Experience in the Vertical If they’ve only focused on companies entirely unrelated to how you handle your business, they may not have as much expertise or insight as an IT provider that has had many different clients in a variety of industries.

50

IT

If They Provide Onsite Support or Outsourced Support The best IT providers staff their own helpdesk support onsite, at their office, so they can train them, keep their certifications updated, and make sure they have good people working for them. It should be important to them that their staff has intimate knowledge of what your business does and their client base in order to provide the best assistance and customer service possible.

What Their Support Hours Are You want to make sure there is always someone there to help if something goes wrong, no matter when.

Emergencies don’t wait until the weekend or holiday is over. The best IT providers have ability to help you 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Measure Customer Satisfaction A quality IT provider should be calling clients and performing surveys. The clients chosen should be random (not just their happy clients.), and should rate their customer service experience on: reliability, performance, security, problem resolution, friendliness, professionalism, and timeliness.

If They Have an Out Clause After signing the contract with an IT provider, you may find after some time that they are not a good fit for you. What happens then? Are you stuck in a long-term contract with them anyway? Or do they have any sort of Out Clause in their contract that will allow termination if your needs are left unfulfilled.

March 2018

IT Insights

Usage of Up to Date Technology If your IT provider uses outdated technology and aren’t always keeping their eyes open for new technologies, they may not have the capability to do the job right. And don’t just take their word for it – make sure they can prove it.

Guaranteed Response Time It’s important to have a good idea of how long it takes the provider to tackle whatever issues your technology may come across and make sure it’s within a reasonable time frame. The right IT provider should offer you a Service Level Agreement (SLA). The SLA indicates the response time that their team guarantees.

Use Two-Factor Authentication You want to ensure your IT provider is using the most advanced methods possible to keep your data secure. TwoFactor Authentication is an extra layer of security that requires not only a password and username but also something the user has on them, such as a pin, fingerprint, ID card, etc.

Secure Storage of Important Data and Passwords A capable IT provider has the latest security features to ensure your personal information is kept safe. If you can’t trust an IT provider to keep their systems secure, can you trust them to protect yours? The right IT provider will store all passwords in a password repository system which requires 2-factor authentication. They should also have procedures in place in case of an employee termination to ensure there is no risk of unauthorized access.

3rd Party Penetration Testing of Their Business Many IT providers may offer business penetration and security tests, but have they been tested themselves? Many IT providers have not had their own systems tested by a 3rd party. Others who have been tested have found that they are not as secure as they advertise themselves to be.

Choosing the right IT provider is not an easy decision.

There are numerous factors that need to be considered that should not be taken lightly. Using the questions above will be very helpful in the vetting process to separate the strong contenders from the rest and assist you in making a final decision with confidence.

March 2018

About The Author Christopher Coluccio is the CEO & Co-founder of Techworks Consulting, Inc. From his early years, Chris had a love of computers, coding his first program at the age of 8. He went on to study Computer Science at Dowling College.

During that time, he worked on projects such as the “Big Dig” in Boston and large construction projects in Manhattan. He went on to become the IT Administrator of one of the largest print manufacturers on Long Island. It was around that time that he met his business partner, Keith, and the building blocks of Techworks began. Incepting in 2002, he was able to make their dream a reality.

Chris is widely-recognized for his vigorous advocacy of technological innovations and high standards for quality support and services.

Having over 20 years of experience in the IT industry, Chris has worked with numerous companies spanning various industries providing services to keep their organizations running smoothly and securely. Chris is also the co-chair of the HIA-LI Technology for Business Committee.

51