Business intelligence solutions have become critical for companies to make data-driven decisions and stay competitive. The article profiles ClicData, a leading BI solutions provider, and its founders Telmo Silva and Hélène Clary. ClicData offers a 100% cloud-based platform that integrates data collection, processing, warehousing, visualization and publishing. The platform helps customers make smarter, faster decisions. While the pandemic disrupted some operations, ClicData ensured employee safety while sustaining services. Going forward, the company aims to enhance its platform with new features and functionality to build an even better product.
4. he power of data for optimizing processes,
Tenhancing customer experiences, and scaling
a business cannot be denied. But given the
mammoth data available with every company,
processing them for powerful analytics to improve
day-to-day operations and expanding customer base is
impossible for businesses.
Here is where business intelligence (BI) solution
providers come to the aid. They collect, retrieve,
process, and analyze data to make informed business
decisions necessary for its growth and competitive
advantage. They automate internal data as per the
business needs and boost its performance.
Gone are the days of spreadsheets and other tools that
companies used to store and analyze data. Today,
business houses understand the benefits of digital
tools and are prepared for the makeover. Making
impactful decisions without data is difficult in a
power-packed data world. Companies are outsourcing
data to BI solutions providers who simplify
complicated tasks.
Marking Your Presence in the
Digital World
Hélène Clary
Co-founder and
Director of Sales
Telmo Silva
Founder and CEO
VOL 00 ISSUE 00 2021
5. Incorporating BI software is an integral part as companies
undergo digital transformations. BI software is the fastest
growing software. Using various BI tools, the solution
providers understand the company’s data and source it into
a single platform before analyzing them for better outcomes
and scaling businesses.
Big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning, data
warehouse, and analytics are being used in a big way to
provide BI solutions to entrepreneurs. Soon, BI and AI
would be working in tandem for easy, quick, competitive,
and accurate solutions to businesses.
Though there is a huge demand for BI solutions, there is a
dearth of skilled persons providing business intelligence.
Those who have gathered the expertise have established
their foothold in the domain. We featured few such
exceptional BI solution providers in our latest edition of
Insights Success, The 10 Best Business Intelligence
Solution Providers 2021.
We are sure this edition will open the gateways of
opportunities for BI seekers. Read this interesting edition to
learn about BI’s significance, developments, and advantages
in today’s data-driven world.
Have an exciting read!
Sumita Sarkar
6. 08
Empowering Businesses to Scale Intelligently
Cover Story
Articles
22 34
Is Automation Really the
Answer for Businesses
Post-COVID-19
The Evolution of MarTech
and What to Expect
WHERE TO NEXT? WORLD VIEW
7. 16 26
30 38
Aures Analytics
The Right Technology to
Grow your Business
CloverLeaf Analytics
Architecting the Best Business
Intelligence Solutions
Neener Analytics
Enabling Financial Risk
Decisioning with Superior
Accuracy
SG Analytics
Venturing To Go Beyond
Excellence
Contents
9. Featuring Brief
Company Name
Mark Hudson
CEO
ClicData
clicdata.com
Cloverleaf Analytics
cloverleafanalytics.com
AbsolutData
absolutdata.com
AUREUS
ANALYTICS LTD.
aureusanalytics.com
Antivia
antivia.com
Absolutdata - an Infogain company, its products, and services
deliver scalable business impact across the enterprise by
combining cutting edge AI and ML with its heritage in analytical
frameworks, business understanding, and technology.
Antivia by insightsoftware.com is a business intelligence (BI)
software company that helps organizations realize more value
from their data by getting information into the hands of front-
line decision-makers.
AUREUS is a Customer Intelligence & Experience company
that enables Insurers & Agencies to deliver superior customer
experience leading to greater customer retention, loyalty, and
lifetime value.
ClicData is a leading provider of cloud-based dashboard
systems that are designed to improve business efficiency
through better reporting.
Cloverleaf Analytics’ end-to-end insurance BI solution
improves an insurance company’s profitability and reduces risk
by consolidating data across the enterprise for advanced
analysis and cutting-edge visualizations.
Anil Kaul
CEO
Anurag Shah
CEO
Telmo Silva
CEO and Founder
Robert Clark
President and CEO
Vish Ramesh
Founder
SG Analytics
sganalytics.com
SIBIAAnalytics
sibiaanalytics.com
Neener Analytics
NeenerAnalytics.com
Ducen
ducenit.com
A Sryas Company. Ducen is a trusted technology solutions
provider that aims to empower Fortune 1000 companies
through quality solutions and services.
Neener Analytics provides alternative risk assessment and
marketing conversions for Lending, Insurance, Product
Leasing, Real Estate Tenant Management, Marketing, Human
Resources/Hiring.
SG Analytics is a leading provider of data-centric research and
contextual analytics services globally to companies across
BFSI, Media & Entertainment, Technology & Healthcare
sectors including Fortune 500 companies.
SIBIA provides predictive analytics and decision support
solutions to a diverse set of industry challenges. The
customizable services are curated to solve core business
concerns through the most effective use of big data analytics.
Jeff LoCastro
CEO and Founder
Sushant Gupta
CEO
Angshuman
Bhattacharya
Founder and CEO
Simplify360
simplify360.com
Simplify360 is an AI powered omnichannel customer
experience platform, with a social first DNA.
Rohit Gupta
Founder and CEO
11. With the constant evolution
of technology,
entrepreneurs are realizing
that they need to become more data-
driven to stay competitive.
Impactful decision-making without
data on hand is getting complicated by
the day; thus, deeming it important to
have a data-driven game plan if you
want to be successful in today’s
market.
Whether you’re running a small or
large business or looking for new
opportunities in the market,
understanding analytics is critical. This
is where business intelligence solutions
come into play.
Business intelligence solutions have
become a critical need for
entrepreneurs. They are just as
important as having the right product
and marketing strategies if you want to
succeed in today’s competitive
marketplace.
12. The idea behind BI is that by analyzing data collected from
multiple sources, you can make more informed decisions
about how best to grow your company and develop
products that consumers will love; however, many
entrepreneurs don’t know where they should start when it
comes to choosing the right BI solutions.
Pertaining to this, we at Insights Success came up with this
edition – The 10 Best Business Intelligence Solution
Providers 2021. Through this edition we bring into
spotlight, exceptional companies that strive to deliver the
best BI solutions and truly empower your business.
Featuring on the cover of this edition is one such prominent
player in the BI solutions niche – ClicData, a next
generation platform for Business Intelligence, Data
Warehouse, and Analytics.
Thousands of businesses around the world use ClicData to
connect their data from hundreds of systems and databases,
create data flows to match and cleanse data and to perform
analysis and produce dashboards.
ClicData is a 100% cloud-based platform, available for
Windows, Linux, and Mac OS, with an intuitive browser
driven design and no installation required. Its innovative
architecture can provision private data warehouses in 7
countries within minutes of creating an account and
manages all security, backup, and maintenance of the data.
The platform optimizes data in vertical and in-memory so
that its ready for analytics. By amalgamating the
connectivity, loading, transformation, data warehouse,
visualization, and publication all in one platform, ClicData
provides all the necessary functions for any type of
business, allowing for smarter and faster decisions while
maintaining a single point of truth.
In addition, for those users requiring more advanced
functionality, the company provides direct access to the
data for advanced statistics and Machine Learning using
Python, R, and many others via its API or Dedicated
Database offering.
With the base platform, customers can also take advantage
of other features such as:
Ÿ Alerts: Monitor key indicators and be alerted to when
they cross thresholds by receiving a dashboard or an
email.
Ÿ White Label: If customers are providing ClicData’s
platform to their clients they can make it their own by
enabling the White Label feature and use their own
colors, logos, and URLs.
Ÿ Data Stream: Push data out to third party systems with
our Data Stream module. Not everything is about
visualization. Sometimes is just about pushing small and
large data volumes from one side to another.
Ÿ Security: Ensure that dashboards and data is secured by
teams, roles, and users. Included in the platform is an
extensive security management system.
Ÿ Embedded Visualization: Our dashboards can easily be
embedded into any web site, portal, or application
simply by adding a link.
Ÿ Mobile: Our free to use Android and iOS mobile apps
can be used to access any dashboard or dashboards in
seconds.
Ÿ low-Code Data Entry: Instead of embedding
visualization in dashboards, embed data forms in
dashboards. Enter data and immediately see the impact
on your KPIs.
All the above advantages and more are changing how
ClicData’s customers work by creating more advanced and
interactive reporting and analytics. “Traditional tools,
typically split into ETL/ELT and Data Visualization, Editor
and Viewer, Client and Server are not able to achieve the
same through their number of interfaces and scripts. And
this is the real key impact to ClicData’s customers,” says
Telmo Silva, the founder and CEO of ClicData.
“
“
We provide direct access
to the data for
advanced statistics and
Machine Learning
using Python, R, and
many others via our
API or via our Dedicated
Database offering.
The 10 Best Business Intelligence Solu on Providers 2021
13. Exemplary Expertise
Telmo Silva—through his role as the CEO and founder of
ClicData—has been pivotal in driving the company towards
zeniths of success along with the Co-founder, and Director
of Sales (Europe), Hélène Clary.
Telmo, having experienced the pains in small and large
companies of implementing local, regional, and global data
centric systems, mostly in retail and pharmaceutical, saw an
opportunity to tackle this problem that even after 25 years,
‘BI’ vendors were still not able to solve.
“The challenge of implementing efficient, simple, and rapid
Business Intelligence solutions complete with a Data
Warehouse was apparent. After years of implementing
different types of enterprise solutions and observing that the
end-user would still go back to spreadsheet exports was a
clear sign that the solution is not just pretty charts and
expensive servers,” Telmo expressed.
Those challenges inspired him to create a platform where
you can connect external data and centralize it and provide
immediate access to it. “The concept was more ambitious,
as instead of defining data models and catalogues pre-
emptively, we built fixed data flow interfaces between
systems and scripting or modelling to describe data flows in
different tools. Doing it all in one platform that is aware of
changes to the data, that does not pre-aggregate metrics
based on pre-defined sets by the editors or developers, and
that has all the tools required to notify users when data
changes by immediately changing downstream views and
dashboards, was the outcome we achieved.”
“Maintaining the data lineage and being smarter by
knowing where the data comes from and where it goes is
part of the solution. The other part is how to make it
available within seconds or minutes and how to scale across
the world and across all types of data and connectors,”
Telmo adds.
As excerpts from his professional journey, sharing valuable
pieces of advice to entrepreneurs aspiring to venture into
the BI solutions market, Telmo says, “Do not be afraid of
the status quo. Companies will always look for simpler,
better, and faster alternatives to the heavy duty, 20-year-old
players such as Tableau and PowerBI, Talend and even
older Informatica, Business Objects and Cognos. A new age
of workers and mindset will look for more intelligent
solutions not traditional solutions. So, if the concept is
sound and volume, security, and performance are part of the
offer, then don’t worry about the others that are there
today.”
14. As for Hélène, she is a seasoned Marketing and Sales
professional with more than 20 years of experience. She has
worked for pharmaceutical organizations as Brand Manager
and Product Managers before she co-founded and took over
ClicData’s global business development and growth
strategy.
Overcoming Adversities
Talking about the initial challenges that he and his team
faced during the pandemic and how they managed to
sustain operations while ensuring employee safety, Telmo
says, “At ClicData, we work with our customers remotely,
and some of our teams were already working from home
even before the pandemic, so from a logistical point of
view, the impact was kept to a minimum. However, many
members of our team do still want the social context of an
‘office’ and that presented a problem not only because of
15. different rules by office regions (United States, Canada,
France, India) but also because of the ever-changing rules.”
“As such, during the lockdown period, we strongly
encouraged our people to work from home, we purchased
additional equipment whenever needed, we started doing
Monday Morning Messages, where Telmo would broadcast
top of mind topics going on with the company or simply
just share thoughts on what was going on plus tips on doing
some work better or new tools or even what is in store for
the releases,” says the team.
Opinions that Matter
We asked Telmo for his opinion on what impact has the
adoption of modern technologies such as AI and machine
learning had on the BI solutions niche and what more could
be expected in the future, to which he said, “AI and
Machine Learning have a place in the industry from a
consumer perspective specifically for those companies that
have a chance of using it in a dynamic way. Today’s
challenge with ML/Advanced Statistics is that it remains a
very topic-oriented subject, requiring a developer with
strong statistical skills to continuously build and prove or
disprove models.”
“In data, segmentation, trending, and prediction are used to
forecast and make assumptions as to the future but often we
see that customers do not validate the outcome of the
models months or years after they were produced and used
for decision making. Much like the rest of BI, ML needs to
16. be embedded in the data management and analysis process
in a tighter way and can’t be the series of ‘one-offs’ that it is
today,” he adds.
Towards a More Intelligent Future
Sharing his vision on scaling ClicData’s operations and
offerings in 2021, Telmo says, “We are planning to add
more functionalities such as a report designer, an insights
data playground, Data Flow, a simple way to manage your
data processing, more visualization, more low-code screen
data entry and more automation, and customization.
Building a great product is our priority.”
“We are now concentrating our operations where our
Professional Services team is closer to our commercial
teams to better assist customers by ensuring they are
picking us for the right reasons and that we can solve their
business problems faster.”
“ “
A new age of workers and
mindset will look for more
intelligent solutions.
“We are expanding into India and Latin America, where a
product such as ours is ideal both from a cost perspective
but a functional and regional data protection perspective,”
concludes Telmo.
17.
18. Artificial intelligence is
impacting the future virtually
for every industry and every
human being. AI and ML have acted as
the main driver of emerging
technologies like big data, robotics,
and IoT. It will continue to act as a
technological innovator for the
foreseeable future. Cloud technologies
are bringing in more agility to business
processes, while AI and Machine
Learning have the power to influence
business outcomes/decisions.
The artificial intelligence and machine
learning driven platform works with
data from carriers, agents, brokers, and
MGAs that allows them to know their
clients on a deeper level, predict what
is likely to happen next, and help them
act on those predictions at the right
point in time.
Aureus Analytics provides customer
experience analytics solutions to the
insurance industry. The company offers
customer intelligence solutions to its
wide insurance client base and enables
them to deliver the best customer
experience through customer retention,
loyalty, and lifetime value. This is done
by leveraging AI and Machine learning
technologies and delivering actionable
insights in natural language at the point
of decision.
These technological advancements are
looked after by Ashish Tanna, COO
and Co-founder of Aureus Analytics.
In addition to his deep domain
expertise and analytics expertise,
Ashish’s passion for big data and data
science helps him drive the customer
experience business for the insurance
industry.
Embracing Technological
Advancements
CRUX - Insurance-specific AI-
powered platform. AI platform learns
and builds metadata across customers.
A real-time AI platform that uses
predictive analytics and machine
learning to provide business and
analytics users the ability to capture
data from a variety of both internal and
external sources. The application is
available across all device form
factors. Hence, it gives any business
user the ability to access insights that
the solution produces at any time and
on the device of their choice.
The AI platform CRUX has processed
more than 65 million policies for key
customers in India that include SBI
Life, Bajaj Allianz Life, TATAAIA
Life, Bharti AXA Life, and Kotak Life.
SentiMeter® - A standardized metric to
calculate the customer experience and
understand the sentiment of all
policyholders on a scale of 0-100
across the entire customer journey.
Aureus’s proprietary algorithm
SentiMeter® uses deep text analytics
and artificial intelligence to measure
the customer experience in real-time
for all policyholders. The Aureus
SentiMeter® solution helps the carrier
define essential insights for every stage
of the policy engagement workflow.
Predictive models - Predict the
consumers’ behavior in real-time and
identify the next best action for
policyholder retention, cross-sell, and
up-sell opportunities. The typical use
cases predict and identify potentially
fraudulent claims, improve cross-
sell/upsell, and build
persistence/retention analytics.
Customer One View (COV) - Single
view of customer’s entire portfolio
throughout the customer journey.
The Right Technology to Grow your Business
16|October 2021|www.insightssuccess.com
19. Aureus proprietary person de-dupe
logic helps create person-level records
and unique customer identities by
clustering matching records across
enterprise databases.
Household Analytics - The patent-
pending householding algorithm
provides insurance carriers with the
ability to view and understand the
portfolio dynamics at a household level
instead of just at the individual level.
Proprietary person deduping logic,
which includes a robust name
matching logic and multi-parameter
matching algorithm to identify
different records for the same person.
Proprietary address matching logic for
Indian addresses.
Erudite Mentor
Ashish Tanna, currently the COO and
Co-founder of Aureus Analytics has
previously occupied the position of
Vice President at CBay Systems India
Ltd., where he was managing global
operations. Having worked in
industries such as ITES, healthcare,
and steel for over two decades, he is a
seasoned entrepreneur, who has started
and exited previous businesses with
success.
Expert Advice
AI and ML technologies today can
predict the behavior of a customer,
which helps businesses to act in
advance and give a superior customer
experience. Using machine learning
and Artificial Intelligence-driven
models, Aureus has been able to help
insurers reduce early claims by more
than 50%, improve retention, and
cross-sell by 5%.
Piercing through the Pandemic
The biggest challenge was to ensure
employee safety with a smooth
AWARDS & RECOGNITION
◆ Aureus Analytics receives 2021 CT Entrepreneur
Honorable Mentions Awards.
◆ Aureus was featured in India's Dynamic InsurTech
Map produced by The Digital Insurers in
collaboration with India InsurTech Association.
◆ Aureus Analytics was named a Top Data Science
Service Provider in India in 2019.
◆ Aureus Analytics included in Singapore's Top 10
High Growth Analytics & AI Startups with the
Highest Funding.
The 10 Best Business Intelligence Solution Providers 2021
17|October 2021|www.insightssuccess.com
Ashish Tanna
COO and Co-founder
20. transition from physical working
environments to virtual workstations.
Besides also maintaining the best
standards of client services and
business deliverables with minimal
disruption.
With HR support, all employees were
moved to work from home while
taking care of all the required
infra/support to work efficiently and
service the clients. Keeping the team
motivated and virtually connected with
weekly catchup sessions with different
agendas.
A town hall meeting was set with top
management executives at least once
every month to share company-wide
updates and concerns with the entire
team. Finally, psychological
counseling and training sessions with
expert counselors were done to share
helpful tips on how to manage mental
and physical health in distressed times.
Valuable Guidance
“I would say this is the best time to
start your venture if you have an
idea/product, which solves a business
problem. Today the entrepreneurs have
a full-fledged ecosystem where the
government is helping/creating policies
to foster entrepreneurship, venture
funds are available, and top of it the
availability of skilled resources and
technology”, says Ashish.
“Keep patience while running your
venture as it is going to take time and
you will face many hurdles. Always
keep your cost in check and think from
the customer perspective and the
differentiated value you can deliver”,
adds Ashish.
Journey Ahead
Aureus launched the DONNA
(www.donnaforagents.com) platform
in April 2020. This AI-driven platform
is focused on the IA (Independent
Agency) market in the US. Since the
launch, the platform has seen rapid
acceptance by the market even with
minimal spending in marketing. Within
the past 14 months, the company has
onboarded 70+ agencies, 1 Carrier and
1 Agency Association; integrated with
3 of the top 5 AMS systems and
processed more than $1.6B of
premium. Since its launch, the product
has had 1 major release (DONNA 2.0)
and the latest release (DONNA 3.0) is
currently in its finishing stages.
Currently, in the US, there are more
than 38,000 agencies. This combined
with the carriers represents a huge
market opportunity for DONNA. The
firm strongly believes that the product-
market fit is now established, and the
next phase is to scale the business
significantly.
For India, it already works with 10-11
top insurers and its focus would be to
go deep within existing clients while
focusing on acquiring new life
insurers.
Aureus’ network
analysis algorithm is
able to connect
customers based on
multiple configurable
parameters and
traverse large
datasets e ciently.
18|October 2021|www.insightssuccess.com
21. Milestones and Achievements
Product Milestones:
◆ 15+ active insurance customers that are on the full commercial stage of business. Most of them
working on multiple use cases and associated with Aureus for over 5 years. Focus O erings include
Sentiment Analytics, Customer One View, Predictive Analytics – Retention, Claims and Fraud, Cross-sell,
and Advisor Analytics.
◆ 65Million+ policies processed for mid-sized and large insurers.
◆ Platform capability for large Enterprise Network, deployed for 300+ branch users.
◆ 100% Conversion from Paid POC to Production.
◆ Zero Customer Churn till date.
Aureus celebrated the 1st year anniversary of DONNA, an Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics
Platform for Independent Agents. DONNA’s mission is to enable independent agencies to leverage vast
data sets that they already own and deliver a superior customer experience to their policyholders.
DONNA is an example of how expensive and complex artificial intelligence technology, previously only
accessible to large players in the insurance industry, is now available to agencies of all sizes. DONNA is
integrated with leading Agency Management Systems, thereby eliminating the need for complex IT
integration to get started.
Business Achievements
◆ 536.7 crore fraud saves through proactive identification using early claims fraud predictive model
◆ 37% reduction in early claims frequency for a large insurer within a year
◆ SentiMeter® has helped 600+ customer
service representatives of a life insurance
company improve customer interactions
and experience they o er their customers
◆ Improved retention rates by more than 3%
pts, cross-sell by 5% pts, and NPS by more
than 30 points in less than 6 months.
Brand Innovations
From time to time, Aureus has collated the
views of industry think tanks and
published them with in-house expert and
SME opinions. One of these e orts was
Aureus Insights, an o ine/online yearbook
series featuring incisive views from senior
executives across the insurance value
chain.
19|October 2021|www.insightssuccess.com
22.
23.
24. Automation
Really the Answer for
Businesses
Post-COVID-19?
Is
The automation technology, which was already being
adopted by many large corporations gradually
worldwide, has accelerated its growth due to the
COVID-19 pandemic. Companies that relied almost
entirely on human labor became vulnerable as a result of
the COVID-19 outbreak. Entire companies and businesses
had to shut down, and those that were considered necessary
had to face the risk of spreading the disease. Productivity
was down, unemployment was up, and the economy was
almost on the verge of collapsing. These factors led to the
increased adoption of automation technology, which eased
the business processes.
When it comes to testing, tracking, and tracing the spread of
the virus, robots are currently assisting with testing,
sanitization, surveillance, and more, all without putting
anyone in danger of infection. They are, however, helping
firms get back into the swing of things. Even when
employees are not in the office or factory, automation keeps
businesses running and ensures a smooth flow of supply
chains. Robotic automation is expected to play a significant
role in accelerating manufacturing processes and assisting
post-Corona rebound economies. Robots will alleviate the
present labor availability issues while also enhancing
precision and improving quality.
22|October 2021|www.insightssuccess.com
26. Although automation isn't new, the need to invest in,
acquire, and integrate new automated systems and services
has never been greater than it is now. The key to our
economic revival may be automation. Let's take a look at
how robotics can help businesses adapt and grow in the
post-COVID era, possibly saving or creating new jobs in
the process.
Changing Priorities
Companies realized the need for robotic and automated
projects even before the COVID-19 pandemic. Automation
boosts productivity while minimizing harmful and time-
consuming chores, benefiting both firms and employees.
According to a report of McKinsey Global Institute that
was released in late 2017, automation will disrupt 400
million to 800 million employments. Recent events,
however, may only serve to exacerbate this trend. Even if
there isn't a recession, the rate of automation rises.
According to data from the National Bureau of Economic
Research, over three recessions have occurred in the last 30
years.
Businesses look favorably on automation and robotics—92
percent of business leaders agree that they are necessary to
survive and thrive. Still, only 51 percent of business
processes are automated, according to the K2 study. With
COVID-19 affecting virtually every industry, companies
have a renewed sense of urgency to accelerate the
Automation of their business processes.
Adopting Automation
Automation boosts productivity and makes the workplace
safer and less tedious. During economic downturns and
times of crisis, automation suffers the brunt of the damage.
Most corporate leaders may have been caught off guard by
COVID-19, which forced them to shut down warehouses,
factories, and offices to protect their employees. Those that
had automated systems or technology in place, on the other
hand, were able to mitigate the effects of the global
epidemic. Could the economic damage caused by COVID-
19 pandemic have been avoided if the workforce had been
more automated?
Yes, according to the research. To deal with the current
COVID-affected reality, a staggering 60% of businesses
said they need to adopt new ways of working. Almost the
same number of people are having trouble making the
necessary changes. Investing in future outcomes may go
against the instinct to stay put and wait out the storm, but it
could be a missed opportunity.
According to the International Federation of Robotics
(IFR), the cost of robots has reduced and is continuing to
decrease, allowing for widespread use. South Korea now
has seven robots per 100 workers, with China accounting
for one-third of all new robots. According to Oxford
Economics, China is expected to automate 12.5 million
manufacturing jobs by 2030. This number could rise
dramatically in the COVID era.
Companies emphasize the ability to "respond swiftly to any
scenario and reuse any current production lines," and as a
result, they are in the search for adaptable Automation that
allows them to maintain company continuity.
The Synergy of Humans and Robots
Robots have been a source of concern for workers in the
past, with alarmists forecasting complete automation of the
workforce and widespread unemployment. While
automation is intended to streamline operations and save
costs, employment that demands an adaptable and creative
mind will continue to exist.
Many businesses are experimenting with ways to mix
robotics and manpower to improve warehouse operations,
such as integrating collaborative robots into DMS
warehouse management systems. Collaborative robots
typically have limited capacity, but they can be taught to
carry packages swiftly and effectively to a precise area,
where a human subsequently runs a forklift to stock the
product.
Conclusion
In times of crisis, the flaws of a non-automated society are
also shown. This ambiguity is particularly crucial in the
event of a global pandemic when safety protocols such as
social distancing, masking, and handwashing are
recommended. Robots do not need to take precautions and
can perform things that would be dangerous for humans on
a regular basis. Meanwhile, those employees may focus on
safe, interesting, and adaptable work, allowing them to
work from home or from a distant location when necessary.
Building a symbiotic relationship between humans and
machines helps keep employees safe—and the company
running smoothly—for these reasons.
-Trishika Rokade
24|October 2021|www.insightssuccess.com
27. kimberly Khoury
Paving her Way in Sustainability Development
&
&
The
20
BUSINESSWOMEN
to Watch, 2020
Most
28. Architecting the Best Business Intelligence Solutions
Recently the word Business Intelligence (BI) has
popped out from the dictionary of B2B world,
which is now well-known in the B2C sector as
well. BI has evolved with time. BI is a multi-faceted word,
it is an umbrella term that comprises data mining, reporting,
visual analysis, data preparation, statistical analysis, etc. BI
eliminates the inadequacies in the business and lets it adapt
to the market. It helps companies to create a comprehensive
view of the market.
BI provides solutions to companies by delivering the
present and the preceding data within the business frame-
work. In this fast-paced world, companies are dependent on
valuable insights for their growth. Looking at the demand
for Business Intelligence, many companies started their
endeavor.
One such company is Cloverleaf Analytics, which is
dedicated to providing an affordable and end-to-end
insurance BI solution. In our quest for 'The 10 Best
Business Intelligence Solution Providers 2021', we
collaborate with Robert Clark, CEO and Co-founder of
Cloverleaf Analytics, where he sheds light on his company's
journey, its services, and the future prospects of the
company. Following are the highlights of the interview:
Please brief our audience about Cloverleaf Analytics, its
USPs, and its position as a leading player in the Business
Intelligence solutions niche.
We are the first and only insurance-specific BI provider. We
compete against large horizontal technology companies that
focus on multiple industries with the same product instead
of being experts at insurance data. However, we bring
decades of insurance and technology expertise coupled with
advanced machine learning to give insurers a fresh
perspective on increasing revenue, profitability, and risk
reduction.
What other products/solutions does Cloverleaf Analytics
offer, and how are these impacting the industry and
your clients?
We combine machine learning, predictive analytics, and
other emerging technologies with our insurance-specific
data model in a platform that features dozens of customiz-
able reports and visualizations. Our solution gives insurers
the best clear picture of how to improve customer relation-
ships, products, and internal business processes.We give
insurers a competitive edge by efficiently unifying disparate
We bring decades of insurance and tech-
nology expertise coupled with advanced
machine learning to give insurers a fresh
perspective on how to increase revenue,
profitability, and reduce risk.
26|October 2021|www.insightssuccess.com
29. policy and claims systems comprising thousands of data
points into one data platform within weeks. This has
enabled the rapid creation of new insurance programs and
products that have opened the door for new revenue streams
that had never been considered before using Cloverleaf.
Being an experienced leader, share with us your opinion
on what impact has the adoption of modern technologies
such as AI and machine learning had on the BI solutions
niche, and what more could be expected in the future?
AI and machine learning have accelerated interest in BI
across many industries. As these and other new technolo-
gies are used together, I believe these technologies will be
intertwined like a rope. In the insurance industry, we are
now approaching a point where the industry is taking AI,
ML, and BI more seriously. After the last few years of
having new insurance technology entrants from within and
outside of the industry launching innovative products
leveraging these technologies, the traditional insurer has
taken notice.
Unfortunately, prior to Cloverleaf's launching in 2015, there
weren't many other options for insurers that wanted to be
ahead of the curve other than trying to do it themselves or
apply a horizontal BI solution from a multi-billion-dollar
company that does not have deep insurance expertise to
derive meaningful insights.
Taking into consideration the current pandemic, what
initial challenges did you face, and how did you drive
your company to sustain operations while ensuring the
safety of your employees at the same time?
Cloverleaf was designed to make the maximum impact
through the power of our technology and industry expertise
without having to hire dozens of employees. This has
enabled us to operate lean while rapidly scaling growth.
When the pandemic started, we weren't concerned as much
about our business but about if carriers would realize that
BI could help keep their doors open in the current environ-
ment, where traditional insurance like auto has not been in
use much.
Since the pandemic began, insurers have become increas-
ingly concerned with operating more efficiently, improving
pricing, and creating new products. All these areas weren't
in focus as much before the pandemic. So, smaller, and
mid-sized insurers were not properly prepared for how to
grow and increase margins when this challenging time
began.
About the Leader
Robert Clark is an insurance BI and advanced
analytics expert, a successful entrepreneur, and
a trusted senior executive respected by some of
the top insurers in the world. In his 25+ years of
insurance industry experience, Rob has served in
technology leadership roles for AXA, including
being a virtual CIO, and founded three successful
technology start-ups, including Cloverleaf
Analytics.
Throughout Rob's career, he has been an active
advocate and partner of senior insurer leaders,
helping to identify how to solve some of the
insurance's toughest problems with his mastery
of insurance data. Rob's passion for all things
insurance gives him a unique perspective in this
new decade to guide insurers in how the power
of BI can give insurance intelligence and flexibil-
ity to meet rapidly changing insurance customer
needs.
Robert Clark
CEO, and Co-founder
The 10 Best Business Intelligence Solu on Providers 2021
27|October 2021|www.insightssuccess.com
30. However, we believe the challenges faced during the
pandemic are only a symptom of a bigger problem the
insurance industry had in being hesitant to use powerful
technology to take an honest look at their business opera-
tions and customer relationships. The status quo can be
comfortable while revenue is being generated and cash flow
is positive.
Today's environment has opened the eyes of insurance
executives to realize whether their business was already
strong or like a house built with a bad foundation due to not
having a handle of how to understand the data in an
insurance carrier.
In terms of Cloverleaf's operating model, we already had a
structure that encouraged our employees to work remotely.
This has been in place since day one, and so there wasn't
much pivot there. Where we have been impacted is where
almost every company has been in the past year and a half
with the lack of in-person engagement at annual tradeshows
to meet customers and prospects.
What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs
who aspire to venture into the BI solutions market?
Being an entrepreneur requires pouring your heart and soul
into your company, employees, customers, partners, and
most importantly, your family as they support you in your
venture. Surround yourself with talented individuals that are
excited about your company's mission and that can play
multiple roles in the early days of your business.
Now more than ever, be mindful of cash flow and protect it
with great financial discipline. Get out and be proactive at
in-person and virtual industry events and meet-ups for like-
minded entrepreneurs. Find the right mentor, someone who
has done this before, to guide you through the initial start-
up years. Lastly, have fun as this is a journey, not a
destination.
How do you envision scaling your company's operations
and offerings in 2022?
We will continue to scale by being active in strengthening
relationships with insurers across the US and by expanding
our partnerships with existing relationships like Guidewire
and looking for new alliances that can add value for the
insured. Additionally, we will continue to drive innovation
with our insights gleaned from helping insurers to
strengthen our solution features.
28|October 2021|www.insightssuccess.com
33. Neener
Analytics
Enabling Financial Risk Decisioning with Superior Accuracy
S
ince the rise of the social media platforms such as
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, people are more
connected to global trends. Previously, these
platforms were the mediums of communication and
exploration of personal views. Talking about the business
perspectives, they were only limited to the brand awareness
of business organizations. However, the increasing number
of social media users opened new doors for business. These
platforms became the advertisement boards for the
companies, through which they were connecting to their
audience.
But to understand the exact approach of consumers, it was
important to read their minds. This necessity was fulfilled
by social media analytics. In this process, the customer's
social activity data is collected and used to make decisions
for the companies. By analyzing this data, companies can
sell their products accordingly.
Realising the immense scope in this field, Neener
Analytics, a company specialising in media analytics was
formed. Neener Analytics is spearheaded by Jeff LoCastro,
the Founder and CEO of the company.
In an interview with Insights Success, Mr. Jeff LoCastro
shared his journey and future perspectives about Neener
Analytics. Following are the highlights of the interview:
Jeff, Please take our readers through your journey being
at the helm of Neener Analytics.
This answer could be its own book! But look, we are a
start-up. And we are still small but growing fast. I am not
only the CEO, but I am also the founder. So, I wear a
hundred hats. One of the best pieces of advice I ever got
was, "You have to be constantly ready to switch gears." So,
on any given day, I wear the hats of finance, bookkeeper,
controller, HR, strategy, governance, product development,
business development, sales, press agent, fundraiser, chief
negotiator, tea maker, soothsayer, evangelist, and fortune
teller.
Constantly switching gears, trying to move seamlessly from
one discipline to the other and then back again. It is a thrill
every day, and I don't know how to do anything else except
building the stuff.
Describe your company and its products, which address
all the needs of your customers.
We have come up with a solution for 1-click AI-based
financial risk decisioning technology using human data; a
regulatory compliant AI-based financial risk decisioning
technology using social media or any media used socially to
help lenders, insurance companies, and all risk-based
businesses to make better decisions and understand specific,
individual, risk outcomes for thin-file, no-file, and credit-
challenged consumers.
Besides, the company is building a delivery platform
around its decisioning platform core. The platform will
engage the potential borrower at multiple points of contact,
including POS using web, postal, email, chat, QR, mobile,
app, or text/SMS, and include all the KYC, including facial
recognition, income verification, and employment
validation.
The 10 Best Business Intelligence Solu on Providers 2021
31|October 2021|www.insightssuccess.com
34. What makes your organization a preferred choice of
your clients over the competition?
There was always a lot of talk about 'Big Data', and
everybody cheered it. But big data is not a new concept. It's
been around for a hundred years, and it is pretty basic stuff.
But most people don't really know what it is. Essentially,
big data are aggregations or bins of motivations, behaviors,
or affinities. Everyone you think who exhibits those
motivations, behaviors, or affinities gets tossed into that bin.
But what does it mean? Well, you are not really sure, so you
need more aggregations and bins to toss people into.
Basically, big data is the practice of, "I don't know you, but
I know people like you." What a horrible way to make a
decision or form an opinion about someone!
In fairness, big data is a perfectly acceptable way to make,
for example, marketing decisions. But it is a terrible way to
understand authentic outcomes, especially financial risk
outcomes. Big data, by its very nature, creates disparate
impacts. There had to be a better way.
Before big data models, how did people make (accurate)
decisions about other individual human beings? How did
my grandfather get his first home loan back in 1940? He
just walked into the bank, said he wanted a home loan, and
the banker said, yes, I know you." The keywords are 'I
Know You'. But how did he know? The banker didn't have a
lifetime record of all my grandfather's transactions. And he
didn't have a collection of his complete payment history.
But he knew my grandfather would pay him back. That
banker knew this based on the conversations and communi-
cations he had with him over time. He knew this by having
listened to how my grandfather talked about the things in
his life, his words, and his communications, exactly what
human beings do with other human beings.
This is the innovation, except not using big data. This is not
sentiment analysis or likes & friends or keywords or
phrases. We have cracked the code on Small Data. And
Small Data = I know you.
What is your idea of impactful leadership? What style of
leadership do you personally prefer and have imple-
mented at Neener Analytics?
,,
,
,
We are pioneering the idea that the
consumer is their own data, and the
consumer as their own source of
data is the future of all consumer
engagement.
32|October 2021|www.insightssuccess.com
35. Leaders don't lead by themselves. Leaders lead people. So, I
think the most important job of any leader, and CEO, is
building that team to lead; the priority is putting great
people in the right place to succeed. Great leaders attract
talented people and put them in a position to win.
I don't like to put too many boundaries on people and what
we do. People should not be afraid to make mistakes. When
your daily task is innovation and not caretaking, if people
are afraid of you at worst stagnate, and die or at best move
super-slow and fall behind and die.
1. Hire only people that have shared values. I'd rather have
the second-best player who shares our values than the best
player who doesn't.
2. Give people the freedom to make mistakes. Encourage
failure (so-to-speak). When people aren't afraid to fail, they
try all kinds of crazy things.
Give your opinion on Data Science after the pandemic.
What is at the core of what COVID exposed? It exposed the
horrific nature of big data's historical, transactional, and
relational-based credit decisioning systems. It exposed the
ugliness of the definition of big data: "I don't know you, but
I know people like you."
It exposed the clear need for human-based AI solutions,
individual decisioning; Small Data, not big data, and the
clear need to use authentic AI (not machine learning) to say
to someone, "I know you.”
What would be your advice for the emerging and
aspiring business leaders?
I’ll give the same advice I always give – find something to
lead and lead it. Leadership can be practiced. Yes, some
people are innate leaders, and some people are just better at
it. But you will never know until you start practicing it.
Form a group, join a club, learn to organize. Dint wait for
your job to deliver leadership to you. Do it yourself. And be
prepared to make mistakes.
What were the challenges you came across in your
career as a business leader?
This is a huge question. This could be an entire book. But
one of the biggest is facing just how difficult to change
other people. And I think it is because they are conditioned
to avoid failure or to talk about failure. Change can lead to
failure because it is a big unknown. I find that hugely
frustrating and is a daily challenge (outside of my
organization).
What have you envisioned for your company's future in
terms of expansion, the introduction of new services,
and talent acquisition?
We are really pioneering the idea that the consumer is their
own data. And the consumer as their own source of data is
the future of all consumer engagement. We are currently in
11 countries, and I see us owning specific market regions in
the next ten years. We've already built out two product
lines, each delivering five decisioning products. We have
another line slated for 2021 and are on track for a new line
each of the next 5-years while continuing to expand our
decisioning capabilities.
We've budgeted for global offices to connect banks, lenders,
insurance companies, real estate companies, and others with
4 billion currently invisible consumers globally.
Exhibiting Brilliance
Chris Barry, Product Innovation Manager, FIS
Global - "Neener Analytics is a FIS portfolio
company. We invested because they are solving a
fundamental problem faced by virtually every
one of FIS's global customers: how to say yes to
more borrowers without increasing their risk
threshold. We hadn't seen anything like them
before. They are receiving a ton of positive
attention from internal lines of business as well
as from our client base. Jeff LoCastro as a founder
and CEO, is highly innovative, and along with
co-founder & CTO Marc Thomlinson, CTO, we
don't see a ceiling on where this could go.”
Mahesh Raghavan, Associate Partner, Digital
Strategy and Innovation at Infosys - "We
partnered with Neener Analytics because they
have solved the most fundamental aspect of
banking that is broken - assessing a person's
financial risk. Current FICO-based models are
backward-looking and do not enable lenders to
really know their customers. Neener Analytics
fills this whitespace bringing back a person's
worthiness based on their unique characteristics
and ability to pay in the future, and not a series
of past payments like FICO does.”
33|October 2021|www.insightssuccess.com
36. In this fast-growing world, technology is on the rise
with a plethora of innovations. As a result, we can
experience improvement in the various industries
globally, through advanced tools that are drastically
improving. Sooner or later, the new and evolving trends in
technology will diversify the marketing industry. The
current background of martech aids with a gamut of
marketing activities, including marketing attribution,
content management, and customer relationship
management.
Technology has managed to provide the industry with every
essential requirement. So far, technology has transformed
marketing by making campaigns more personalized and
efficient and has created a more integrated system for the
customers and the marketers. New emerging trends in the
technology in marketing have infused the infrastructure and
the systems on which the companies are built, giving value
to the procurement, and adding to the bottom line. Martech
has introduced engaging ways between brands and
customers. This is the crucial reason why marketers require
a correct tool and understand the fundamentals of
technologies towards the business goals.
Looking at a scenario around a few years back, this was a
critical task to execute as martech was in the infancy phase
with few tools available at its fingertips. The marketing
34|October 2021|www.insightssuccess.com
38. industry had a massive development when the
software-as-a-service model was introduced. Later, CRM
systems developed and increased their efficiency. Since
then, many tools have been introduced and catered to
diverse companies with various marketing roles. The rapid
growth of martech empowered marketers to automate,
enhance, and reorganize many characteristics of their
day-to-day marketing activities.
As technology upgrades to new zeniths, brands are adopting
new standards, setting up contemporary trends with the
customers with their loyalty and transaction history. It was a
challenging task before these martech tools existed. It is the
effect of the technology that marketers can now look at the
insights and data related to a particular field provided by
people, and marketers can see that if the people are clicking
ads and getting distracted by an inaccurate call to action
(CTA).
With this data, marketers can make the required changes,
observe the results, gain efficiency, and implement their
marketing strategies accordingly. Also, they can continue to
refine and personalize their content. The more relevant their
messages, their customers are going to engage in a
conversation, which eventually can lead to a good
connection between the marketer and its customer.
The tide will soon change, from software to enhanced all-
in-one solutions that will empower new tools and
coordinate the teams altogether. Martech is quickly catching
up with the developing businesses. On the other hand,
innovation in digital marketing technology is on the climb
sharply as frameworks and technologies make it easier to
build, integrate, and operate platforms.
Codeless platforms are on the rise now, which is enabling
non-developers to build and scale their solutions. This is an
accessibility of the martech with enhancements for the
innovative marketing platforms with advanced features and
progressive capabilities. Fresh marketing solutions and
platforms pop up every day, as these solutions are built with
personalization options.
Additional usage of artificial intelligence (AI) and high-end
automation platforms can generate the precise information
and data required to enhance the marketing efficiency and
insights on the overall buying journey. This helps the
companies manage and find out where to put efforts and
what would be the outcome of acquiring new customers. As
these systems will get smarter over time, as an advantage,
they will offer enhanced automation that marketing
companies could apply for task execution, and marketing
professionals can rectify the tools for the marketing analysis
with creative and innovative experiences that can drive the
engagement and provide value towards the prospect and
customers. It will also provide them with the following
capabilities:
Ÿ Attribution: The ability to understand how every
marketing and sales investment is impacting customer
retention, customer values, and acquisition.
Ÿ Real-time data monitoring: Observe every interaction
and activity in real-time rather than wait longer to
generate appropriate reports to optimize marketing
efforts.
Ÿ Easy communication: Marketing professionals can
speak to their customers via a medium or channel
through an integrated system. This can reduce the efforts
and time required for this process.
Ÿ Enhanced intelligence: Through the new, improved
machines that can analyze, summarise, personalize, and
execute the right message to the right time and place for
their customers, marketers can execute this process in a
brief time, with improved accuracy.
Ÿ Improved monitoring: With these systems, the
marketers can observe every interaction, can serve their
customers as per the requirement, through an effortless
process, with improved efficiency and productivity.
Thrusting the constraints
With the martech leading the marketing industry into a
development era, it is for sure to experience the latest trends
and high-end tools to act and redefine the structure of the
sector significantly over time.
-Abhishek Joshi
36|October 2021|www.insightssuccess.com
39.
40. he leading business intelligence solution providers
Tcater to their clients’ requirements with better
planning and analysis options along with increased
accuracy. These companies help their customers with
increased sales forecasting and enhanced pricing and offers.
One such dominant company making a mark owing to its
dedicated efforts is SG Analytics. Established in 2007, it is
a leading provider of data-centric research and contextual
analytics services.
In the following interview, we get to know the company’s
journey, its services, its challenges, achievements, and its
future plans.
Below are the highlights of the interview:
Please brief our audience about your company, its USPs,
and how it is currently positioned as a leading player in
the Business Intelligence solutions niche.
Founded in 2007, SG Analytics is a leading provider of
data-centric research and contextual analytics services to
Fortune 500 companies across the globe. Headquartered in
Pune, the company has its presence across 7 locations in
India, the USA, the UK, and Switzerland.
At SG Analytics, we understand our clients’ businesses. We
offer research and analytics services that deliver holistic
rather than just functional solutions to our clients across
BFSI, media & entertainment, technology, and healthcare
sectors. Our contextual understanding of our clients’
businesses and data and sector expertise helps us provide
actionable, ‘differentiated’ insights to our clients, which
help them scale faster.
SG Analytics is a specialist in servicing global clients in
data analytics, business intelligence, data science, and
engineering spaces.
For a company like ours, it is the meaningful mix of our
brightest and budding talent with that of global, multi-
disciplinary, seasoned experts that bring together best-in-
class expertise in analytics, business intelligence, data
engineering, and visualization. Our experts not only
develop solutions, but also consume and implement them to
solve real-world business problems.
We specialize in creating interactive user-centric
dashboards by implementing business intelligence
expertise, thereby enabling our clients with impactful, real-
time, and scalable solutions. However, what really sets us
apart is that we lead with business outcomes: we take time
to understand the business goals of our customers, and then
apply the right set of intelligence and engineering solutions
coupled with business context brought in by a team of
domain experts to create compelling business outcomes for
our global customers.
We have been serving our clients across several domains
including BFSI, automotive, media & entertainment, and
technology sectors. Our partnership with a leading US
media & entertainment conglomerate with a global
footprint has now strengthened with the seal of our
excellence in data analytics and engineering. Speaking of
partnerships, we recently onboarded the largest technology
company in the world as our client and will be partnering
with them in the area of customized reporting and
visualization.
We have remained focused in sharpening our capabilities in
the field of business intelligence and are determined to
strengthen our positioning as the most competent yet
enriched player in the BI solutions niche.
What other solutions does your company offer, and how
are these making an impact on the industry and your
clients?
SG Analytics
Ve n t u r i n g To G o B e y o n d E x c e l l e n c e
38|October 2021|www.insightssuccess.com
41. With businesses having an endless stream of unorganized
data flowing into their systems, companies need to build
strategies to control their data and market it efficiently.
That’s where SG Analytics comes into play by combining
data, machine learning, and software & engineering to build
intelligent applications in which our teams have developed
authority and expertise.
We combine this expertise along with the latest technology
frameworks and tools such as Python, Oracle, MySQL,
Databricks, Informatica, MicroStrategy, Tableau, PowerBI,
and D3.JS and cloud providers such as AWS, Azure, and
Google Cloud Platform to build and deploy relevant data
analytics solutions.
We use our customers’ data lakes and combine data through
ML and software engineering to build intelligent
applications to achieve monumental change in specific
focus areas. They are our experts who create actionable
insights by using event-based data and regulate reports,
making the process run smoothly without a glitch.
We aim to help our customers/clients evolve through their
journey of digital transformation starting from incubation to
the full-fledged use of business intelligence and value-
driven analytics.
Rajesh Viswanath
Global Lead for Analytics
The 10 Best Business Intelligence Solution Providers 2021
39|October 2021|www.insightssuccess.com
42. Being an experienced leader, share with us your opinion
on what impact has the adoption of modern technologies
such as AI and machine learning had on the BI solutions
niche and what more could be expected in the future?
BI has been part of every corporate discussion over the past
many years. And yet, challenges persist in democratizing
advanced AI insights across large sections of employees. As
new AI-powered BI products emerge, silos will be broken,
and every user will be able to leverage data analytics and
find insights easily.
Simple interfaces, personalized insights, and engaging data
experiences will become the hallmarks of data analytics in
2021 and beyond. We are going to see smart, intelligent
storytelling in the coming days.
AI will improve decision-making. BI is shifting to a new
paradigm of advanced data analytics with the integration of
natural language, natural search, AI/ML, augmented
analytics, automated data preparation, and automated data
catalogs. This will transform business decision-making
processes with high-quality real-time insights.
Traditional BI solutions give answer to the question “What
happened?” by providing efficient analyses. Today, modern
BI solutions are giving the answer for “What is happening,
what will happen, and why?” As an example, a digital news
company may be looking at a dashboard that gives the
predicted topics and associations across various customer
segments.
The Future of Business Intelligence isn’t a Tool. Rather,
organizations are looking for a solution to simplify the end-
to-end workflow - from data prep and governance to
visualization, delivery, and action. Two important themes
that will gain attention are Augmented Analytics and
Automated Insights.
Augmented Analytics
In the coming years, we will be able to see BI and AI
working together to create augmented analytics and
augmented data. Augmented analytics will help businesses
to automate the identification of data types, model data
from a source, and automate suggestions. We are going to
see more smart, automated analytics workflows, and natural
language processing makes it possible for all business
stakeholders to make confident decisions based on data-
driven insights and drive the best possible outcomes
without relying on IT or data & analytics experts.
The combination AI & BI will allow users to complete jobs
without difficulty, quickly and effectively. Conversational
analytics will gain more and more popularity and be readily
adopted. Business users can simply ask questions just like
you would in a normal conversation and get instant answers
explained in a natural language.
Automated Insights
In the coming years, storytelling with the help of automated
systems will be popular and help businesses derive value
out of the data rapidly. Automated insights use artificial
intelligence to dynamically spot patterns and trends in raw
data and then describe those findings in plain English. Such
solutions author insightful, personalized reports around data
at scale.
Instead of users spending time determining which insights
are more impactful for their business, intelligent storytelling
will highlight key findings for them. The system will be
able to track changes and build a narrative that’s digestible
to the user, point out key findings, and make it easy to
deliver through platforms that are consumed the highest.
All the BI product providers will add new exciting
capabilities in this space, and we are going to see enormous
changes in the coming years.
Taking into consideration the current pandemic, what
initial challenges did you face and how did you drive
your company to sustain operations while ensuring
safety of your employees at the same time?
The coronavirus pandemic has been quite devastating, at all
levels. Every organization, small or big, has faced
challenges in running their operations and maintaining
business continuity. We have all been in this situation for
We understand our
clients' businesses
and offer research
and analytics services
that deliver holistic
rather than just
functional solutions
40|October 2021|www.insightssuccess.com
43. almost about 18 months and counting. At SG Analytics, we
all moved into a WFH mode suddenly, which led to some
challenges in adapting to remote working.
However, in the analytics space, since there is anyway a
higher incidence of individuals and groups working from
varied locations across the globe, the transition to remote
working wasn’t really a challenge for our team.
We adopted more collaboration tools to enable seamless
communication between teams. Our executive leadership
team had regular, informal catchups with teams across the
organization to stay connected and involved with everyone
within the company. Like others, the analytics team
members enjoyed these interactions thoroughly. They had
many lively discussions and debates regularly, and Teams
and Zoom helped a lot throughout this phase.
Gaining momentum was a challenge initially, owing to
technical issues with the internet and managing system
issues during the lockdown. However, these were resolved
over time giving way to a very efficient remote working
experience for the team overall.
In times of great adversity, SGA has striven to always be
present, to always be there for its employees, its partners,
and everyone who is part of our family. So, during the
pandemic, facing the most adverse of adversities, we knew
we had to double-down on our efforts.
A fundamental aspect of our employee-first philosophy is
ensuring their safety, both physical and mental. Especially
during the rough times of the COVID-19 pandemic, our
company has been proactive in providing all our people
with the connection and nurturing that is hard to come by in
such testing times.
HR leadership, for example, actively engaged in social
mentoring, offering constant support and motivation.
Further, our ‘Chai pe Charcha’ initiative saw the senior
leadership, including the CEO and co-CEO themselves,
directly engaging with SGAites, listening to their concerns,
addressing the importance of safety and well-being.
Indeed, data-driven through and through, we benchmark
employee satisfaction with employee expectation via our
company-wide annual Employee Satisfaction Survey. The
findings are shared openly so that solutions for
improvement can be identified collaboratively, now in
virtual meetings. Because that, too, is fundamental.
Transparency, the freedom to express yourself, let's not
forget that a sense of community, of belonging, is such a big
part of what constitutes meaning and well-being. Before,
SGA would regularly organize sports tournaments and
cultural events to bolster that sense.
The pandemic presented an unprecedented challenge. So,
we responded with unprecedented spirit. We celebrated
festivals, held yoga and meditation sessions, took breaks for
coffee, together, online. But what’s support if it's only
supplied at the best of times? In times of dire need, it was
moving to witness people offer not just emotional, but also
financial support. Medical expenses were paid for by the
company and our people.
Caregiver leaves were donated. One thing was clear.
Without question, the emotional bond we forged during the
pandemic would be timeless. A testament to our
foundational philosophy. SGA is not a firm. It's a family.
What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs
who aspire to venture into the BI solutions market?
The market size for Business Intelligence (BI) is at the top
among the software categories.
As per Gartner, global revenue of BI is expected to rise to
$22.8 billion by 2021 and foresees additional growth to
$29.48 billion by 2022. The business intelligence market is
booming and will continue to do so as the market for BI
solutions grows as the overall business dynamics have
changed drastically due to the pandemic. It foresees
additional growth to $29.48 billion by 2022. The business
intelligence market is booming and will continue to do so as
the market for BI solutions is growing with the overall
change in business dynamics due to the pandemic.
Here are a few interesting points worth considering for
young entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the BI
solutions market:
1. Cloud-based solutions, increasing accessibility, and
steadily improving benefits for users are some of the
main factors driving the growth of the business
intelligence market.
2. Data security is and is going to continue being a major
concern for BI users and providers in the near future.
3. The business intelligence industry will transition from
traditional to modern with the help from ML & AI and
data scientists are likely to experience role shifts but
will remain vital to the day-to-day operation of this
industry.
41|October 2021|www.insightssuccess.com
44. How do you envision scaling your company’s operations
and offerings in 2021?
We are a research and analytics services provider and
continue to remain so in 2021. The market is definitely
challenging but then it is wide and large enough for us to
find our customer base. Our focus is going to be helping our
customers derive insights out of their data assets and
improve business operations and generate value for their
clients.
We will emphasize on helping to build contextual analytics
solutions that are useful and are consumed by our client
organizations. Certain processes need to be looked at
regularly in operations. Our focus is on utilizing ML to
automate many such processes. Plenty of solutions are
available in the market and many of our customers are
using them too.
Our goal is to get them insights that are undiscovered,
increase the possibility of AI to make the decision-making
process sustainable. Our focus is continuously on the
following key parameters while developing and executing
BI or AI solutions:
• Business value
• Ease of use
• Agile and flexible
• Reduced time to insight
We aim to operate at scale, and we will concentrate on the
company’s core competencies. This is where we offer the
most value to our clients and customers. The most
important aspect of our business is hiring professionally
trained data scientists and data engineers. We are laser
focused and continue to invest in training our group in these
skills. Today is not only about big data, but also about a
wide variety of data sources.
About Rajesh Viswanath
Rajesh Viswanath is the Global Lead for Analytics at
SGA. As analytics continues to evolve, SGA’s mission
remains to provide its clients state-of-the-art scalable
solutions that simplify the way they meet their business
obligations without burdening their operational flexibility.
With nearly two decades in the analytics industry, Rajesh
has proven knowledge of large-scale implementation of BI
and predictive analytics solutions. He and his team
designed and developed numerous analytics and BI
solutions across domains. Presently, he is serving global
M&E giants on their very complex and transformative
analytics projects. As part of his journey with the clients, he
and his team worked closely with them for successfully
implementing BI solutions and generating business value.
What clients have to say
SGA helped us save a significant amount annually by
implementing ML-based automated classification to predict
remediation classes basis content of the customer feedback.
Automation of monthly and weekly analysis of key
business metrics helped us take timely decisions and saved
manual intervention.
Cross Platform Analytics Lead, Top American Television
Network
SG Analytics helped us integrate and streamline the sales
and marketing campaign monitoring data and create clear
visibility into sales and marketing effectiveness, which in
turn helped achieve higher conversion. Turnaround time to
process sales reports across different groups reduced by
50-60% and also resulted in lower sales reporting cost by
60-70%.
Senior Director – Advanced Analytics, One of the leading
news & business information services providers in the
world
42|October 2021|www.insightssuccess.com