The State of the Business Analytics Play – Where From Here?

Backdrop:

The business analytics industry is extremely fragmented and is still in its early innings. The market that kicked off more than a decade ago is still small in terms of the size ($ value) but rapidly evolving and is projected to demonstrate strong double-digit growth in the medium to long term.

Talent side:

The demand for data analytics professionals continues to outpace the supply across the globe. In the last few years, we have seen the emergence of a number of universities and academic institutions that offer structured analytics program at a degree, diploma and certificate level. This has helped the industry bridge some talent gap but it has not quite helped them in terms of in-sourcing high-quality talent.

Business analytics is still a young discipline and to scale up, the industry continues to scout for experienced professionals with hands on experience to save them from the trouble of running an arduous and time-consuming training and development (T&D) programs for candidates that do not offer the required skills and experience.

In the current environment, the available talent mix that the academics bring to the industry from the context of technical and business skills remain limited and inadequate making it a huge challenge for companies to drive immediate results.

In addition, there is a steep learning curve for many candidates that get onboarded and the companies that hire new talent more often fail to bring the up to the speed in the absence of a fully committed L&D teams. This is even harder for start-ups and small service-oriented analytics firms that do not have a structured onboarding and project teams that can help the new joiners seamlessly assimilate into their practice.

Another issue facing students entering the field of analytics is the lack of the right background and skills to succeed. It is widely believed that people with Operations Research (OR), Statistics, Mathematics and Computer Science are cut out to excel since the field of analytics involves strong quantitative orientation, algorithm and critical thinking skills. But lately, we are seeing a large number of students enrolling in to these programs without having the core skills. However it is possible for students to acquire them through a diverse array of available learning platforms to enrich their background.

Industry Side:

The business analytics industry is extremely fragmented and is still in its early innings. The business analytics ecosystem in India is currently dominated by smaller players with start-ups accounting for a large share of the revenue mix. There are a bunch of business services and KPOs such as Genpact, WNS, TCS, EXL and Wipro that drive a steady stream of analytics projects but they also are plagued with the challenges of talent sourcing. There are also a series of pure-play analytics companies in India that include Latent View, Mu Sigma, and Fractal Analytics which are doing extremely well.

Everyone is looking for experienced people (who are already employed anyway) whereas thousands of aspiring candidates with little or no experience looking to try their luck find it frustrating when it comes to securing a job.

The outsourcing volume in analytics for services and solutions continues to expand and there are a bulk of start-up firms that are carving their niche in areas that represent high growth and remain unmet including commercial analytics, clinical analytics, operational & administrative analytics, and population health analytics among others. 

Market consolidation in the analytics industry is a long way off. The current market is all about capability development, demonstrating expertise, building brands and delivering client value. 

What can students keep in mind:

The field of analytics holds promise but is extremely demanding and it requires a lot of hard work and patience. Having an in-depth understanding of different tools in the play, we keep hearing about them all the time such as SQL, machine learning languages, SAS, SPSS, Tableau etc. is needed. However, knowing these tools and technology at a very high level or in other words conceptual learning is not going to help. Depth is central to stay ahead of the game.

Having domain understanding on top of the in-depth understanding of analytics tools and technology is a strong career differentiator. It is good to have students entering in to analytics remain clear on their mind what industry they should target (Life Sciences, Banking, Financial Services, Insurance, Manufacturing, Industrials etc.) and pick-up learning about these industries they want to make their career early on.