Written by Teresa Roma, Business Line Manager of System Evolution, a Kirey Group company
It is now evident that in the era of industry 4.0, the digitalisation of processes, the Internet, mobile and social networks have generated an enormous amount of information. However, this mole of information’s quality and certainty in analysis are often still uncertain.Big data, analytics and data science become increasingly strategic for large Italian companies committed to extracting value and knowledge from the multitude of data collected, in a context where clearly their value does not consist in the collection itself but in the true ability to use information to generate innovation.
I have been dealing with business intelligence for over 20 years and have personally experienced the profound transformation of this sector.
The first major milestone that I believe has been achieved over time is the awareness of the importance of adopting structured business processes. In fact, Italian companies today perceive the urgency of having an information management system that enhances all the parts of the process, so that management can have full control over it and manage its business accordingly. They understood how to operate on business processes to reduce risks and anticipate internal and external needs, think of new products and services to propose them in the right way and at the right time.
Recent market data confirm this greater awareness, highlighting how today Italy invests over one billion in big data, with an increase of over one fifth of investments compared to last year, mainly to improve customer relations, increase sales, reduce time to market and expand the range of products and services. [1]
In this new era, analytics play a key role because they allow us to build models to describe the reality of internal and external processes; dynamic models that are able to follow the flow of data in its development faithfully, capturing that ever-changing reality that characterizes the modern company projects towards digital transformation.
However, if on one side companies have "metabolized" the need to exploit information so that this takes place concretely, often skills and key figures are still lacking, such as the Data Scientist, an increasingly important role that Kirey Group seeks and promotes in its organization , because thanks to its abilities in the field of algorithms and technologies it is destined to become "the armed arm" of the financial and business analyst of our customers.
I believe that in the next few years information management will become more and more essential because of its ability to capture the world as it transforms, because only through big data and information collected on social media and from the many sources of data available will it be possible to understand the future trends of consumers, anticipate their requests and develop products and solutions that meet their new needs. From this point of view, business intelligence works like a kind of antibody that helps to respond to market needs and prevent errors.
We have adopted the analitycs in the company to manage the working status of the projects, planning the tasks of the various consultants and monitoring the processes in progress. In light of our internal pipeline we have developed algorithms that would allow us to predict which people and skills should be included in the company at a certain time of the year. This type of approach allows us today to better grasp the opportunities that the market presents to us, optimizing our internal resource allocation process in order to foresee possible peaks in customer requests.
An important aspect that today characterizes the world of information management is its ability to play the fundamental role of "business facilitator", from the point of view of compliance with national and international regulations and increasingly stringent industry regulations whose compliance involves a full vision of data and the solidity of the processes.
In banking, for example, Business Intelligence is a fundamental tool for fraud management, allowing to model processes using large amounts of data that provide statistically important numbers to support organizational models, skills systems and process logics. adopted to prevent, combat and manage the types of fraud identified.
In conclusion, I believe that the data is and will be a key component for the business in the next 20 years, but it will be necessary to combine technology and skills for its collection and, above all, transformation.
The technology and skills, also from the point of view of knowledge of the specific dynamics of different markets, are two complementary and essential aspects, to which we at Kirey Group also add the creativity that we consider fundamental in order to offer our customers innovation in an efficient way.
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[1] Source: Big data analytics & business intelligence observatory, Milan Polytechnic - November 2017