“Analytics” or shall we say “SMAC” is a Nutritious Career Supplement for 21st century IT professionals.

Pink papers, big & small, announced 25 years of Infosys listing (on Indian stock exchanges) on June 14th this year. This news generated a lot of pride, reverence & excitement among readers in general and IT (Information Technology) professionals in particular; such has been the dominance of this company on the bourses & market place (a staggering market cap of USD 37.32 billion in 2017; INR 10,000 invested in 1993 has become INR 2.1 crore today at compounded growth rate of 36.2% and company grew from USD 5 Million & 250 employees in 1993 to about USD 11 Billion and 2 lakh plus employees now). Although Infosys was the face of Indian IT to the world, the sector per se moved at similar pace and stride as its leader – sector revenues jumped from USD 0.8 billion in 94-95 to about USD 150 billion & employed close to 4 million minds in FY 2017. It is further projected to grow to, hold your breath, USD 225 Billion by 2020 & 350 Billion by 2025.

“Application Development and Maintenance” was the growth engine for the industry till recent past; however, the current growth harbinger is “DIGITAL”. DIGITAL is technology at one level but essentially a transformation that creates value to the core business in more ways than one – Proactive & contextual decision making, Real time automation & Innovation. Domains like Social (S), Mobile (M), Analytics (A) and Cloud (C) or SMAC (in short) are harnessed in varied proportion to solve business problems while achieving customer centricity & growth.

I would like to touch upon the concept of “Analytics” in this paper –

What is Analytics?

Dictionary says it is the “Systematic computational analysis of Data or Statistics”.

Let us understand the above definition with a cricketing example – for a moment assume you are captain of the English cricket team playing against India in England in July 18. Your task is cut out - to plan and execute strategies to win games against India. In the normal course you would depend on the scorecard of the previous games, expert opinion, match recordings, experience of the players who played India before etc.… to figure out how best to contain the Indian side and win.  But without algorithms and computational power for analysis of data gathered, you would end up with limited intelligence; game plan formulated thus may at best yield limited success.

So how could you increase your odds of winning?

No answer!!

Hmm.., maybe I can induce you to a solution –

1>    I tell you that opponent win percentage is 60% if Virat Kohli scores less than 25 runs in each innings in a test match.

2>    That 8 times in last 20 innings Virat played in last three seasons, he has got out to a slightly short pitched bouncing delivery outside off stump that was moving away; 3 of those 8 occasions he got caught in second slip, twice in first slip and another 3 times he got caught playing an uppish shot through gully.

3>    5 other times he has got out when the run rate fell to below “3 an over” for 5 overs in succession.

4>    Virat has had 4 runout encounters taking singles while batting with Rahane.

5>    Virat can be contained in the first 5 overs he faces; else he goes on to hit a century 1 in every 3 tests.

6>    Virat scores most of his runs on the on-side in the first 5 overs of attaining crease and then opens up to play all across the field.

Phew…, there seems some light at the end of the tunnel….

With these inputs, you probably have a better grip on your thoughts to develop / unleash a plan –

As soon as Virat comes to bat you could bring in “Anderson & Woakes” who are natural outswing bowlers, set strong catchers at 3 slips, gully & covers position and field some protection in Mid-wicket and Mid-on region. If Rahane is around then post fielders (within 20 yard circle) a yard or two behind – just enough to provide false sense of a run to the batsmen.

These approaches have a high probability to contain runs while Virat is batting & help get him out early; similar study could be undertaken for other batsmen as well.

 You may ask - How did I get the above intelligence?  

Well, by “Analysing Data” about Virat’s cricket – his performance on the field. In today’s digital world everything is recorded & there is technology available to analyse such structured and/or unstructured data and so it is very easy to find Virat’s strong and weak points – his approach to batting at the beginning of the innings as against when he is settled & sees the ball well.

Another example - Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) uses analytics to predict rainfall every year analysing inputs as varied as temperature in the Pacific Ocean, pre-monsoon heating of Peninsular India etc., indications for which start coming in from December / January. It runs various models on the data collected to arrive at a forecast / prediction.

Early 20th century was about transferring work load from humans to machines to enhance productivity, predictability & efficiency.  The last two decades of that century ushered in “Knowledge Economy” that opened global markets - extended supply chains across the globe, brought cost efficiency, very large scale automated production & Surplus output. This surplus necessitated a more focused approach to the market place to satisfy customer wants/needs or induce them to newer ones & so the data industry was born. The 21st century is about “data” and “intelligence” one is able to generate from it i.e. “ANALYTICS”

 Analytics, today, brings lot of significance and hope to Governments & Industries; they realize the benefits it could provide mankind. We would thus see this being ingrained in all aspects of governance, business & our day to day life and so can be a good career progression for individuals. One reason of commenting about IT growth in early part of this submission was to align your expectation of growth in this field hereon – What “IT” did to the Indian Economy (today contributes about 8% to India GDP) Analytics, rather SMAC, has the potential to repeat - As someone succinctly said “Data is (to mankind) in 21st century what Oil was to the 20thcentury”.

This article has been written for private circulation and only to introduce the subject. Readers would do well to research the subject more to form personal opinion /impression. While effort has gone in researching content, readers are cautioned to do their study for correctness of facts, figures and line of thought provided.

June 15th 18, Mumbai