FEATURE: BIG DATA
FEATURE: BIG DATA
AFRICA MAKES EARLY
GAINS IN BIG DATA
AND ANALYTICS
T
he African market is witnessing
a maturation of data analytics
into an independent, intuitive
technology. It is becoming integral to
the way people work, moving away
from the predominant use by only
a select few, towards a tool that is
utilised across the entire organisation.
According to Jane Thomson,
Managing Director at Softworx,
in 2017, a greater embedding of
analytics is expected, integrating its
value into the rest of the enterprise
applications, instead of running it as
a separate function.
African businesses are beginning to appreciate the
gains they can make by using cloud-based analytics
and managing volumes of data being generated.
By Arun Shankar
She continues, “This embedding will
be fostered with increased movement
to the cloud, as organisations that
have not yet invested in data analytics
infrastructure can now do so without
incurring the traditional startup costs.”
Softworx was first set up in 1995, and
since then has progressed to become
global ERP vendor Infor’s Gold
Channel Partner and Master Partner
operating in sub-Saharan Africa.
With the cloud, the need for capital
expenditure is eliminated, as smaller
monthly fees ease the pressure on the
balance sheet. Although cloud is an
excellent solution, which has matured
in some African sectors, its application
in data analytics is still fairly new. For
those African organisations that are
not ready for a full cloud transition,
or do not want to lose the capital
investment already made, hybrid
cloud offers the perfect solution.
"Big data
in the end
is just data,
gargantuan
amounts
of data."
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Over the last five years, data analytics
processes have greatly evolved. The
processes themselves have gone from
clunky and non-intuitive tools, driven
only by the IT department, to a truly
modern era of self-service. This self-
service approach to data analytics is
starting to bear fruit. It does, however,
come with some challenges. Often, IT
wants to remain in charge of analytics
in order to govern the outcomes, but
this usually causes bottlenecks and
frustrates the goal of instant insights.
For data analytics truly to be part of
the work, it must be made available to
the entire business. To this end, tools
are becoming available to greater parts
of the enterprise. This results in more
discussion about the data itself, not
only the analytical tools, both around
the boardroom, and the water-cooler.
Data is the source, it is the element
that is most important.
As the basic islands of tools controlled
by IT are phased out, the new
generation toolsets are more intuitive
and flexible, easier to use and offer
faster results. Of course, the role of the
IT department is still fundamental,
particularly with regards to ensuring
that the raw data is secure, properly
stored and accessible.
From reports to analytics
Historically, enterprises in the region
have relied on reporting tools as the
basis for taking business decisions.
These tools assess historical data and
produce summaries in standard views
and standard formats. The next phase
was to move reporting summaries into
dashboards using graphical coloured
tools to highlight alerts, trends and
summaries for business. Another
historical trend, a decade ago, was
for enterprises in all industries, to roll
in a financial accounting package as
a one-stop solution for all
business requirements.
With the arrival of cloud technologies
and the increasingly larger scale of
data aggregations, the requirements
of end users are changing. Going
through standard reports and
legacy tools is no longer an option
for regional enterprise end users,
believes Monzer Tohme, Regional Vice
President Sales, Africa and Middle East
at Epicor. End users want dashboards
that give them an instant view of their
company position from all different
angles. From collection to sales, to
product performance, per region, per
sales person. They need that sort
of analysis on the spot, and at any
time. This is where mobility now plays
a big part in making data
analytics available.
According to Tohme, discussions
on the benefits of ERP have now
moved to the second position. “In my
interactions here in the region, with
our existing customers and even with
potential prospects and potential
customers, business intelligence and
analytics is definitely a key discussion.
It comes even before drilling down to
the ERP product.”
While business intelligence tools have
been built horizontally across the Epicor
ERP suite, Epicor has added its latest
overlay of analytical tools as well. “In
parallel, we have built a new tool called
Epicor Data Analytics, which again
sits on top of the ERP. It is a full cloud
solution that provides an end-to-end
analysis of the business. Today our
new tool is only available on the cloud,
because we believe the way forward
is cloud, and this has been
acknowledged by all vendors as well
as customers. Although, this region
is maybe slightly behind on cloud
adoption, it is moving forward with this
direction,” elaborates Tohme.
The difference between generating
reports from historical data and using
Epicor’s Data Analytics is the ability to
generate predictive analytics based on
historical data. The longer the baseline
of historical data, the more accurate
will be the predictive forecasts. “It is
not just a view of history. It will give
you as well some sort of, I would say
forecast, some intelligence on how
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