Business Analytics – A rapidly evolving phenomenon
The significance of Business Analytics in modern day world is unparalleled. Symbiosis Centre for Information Technology organized a Guest Lecture on Business Analytics by Mr. Surender Ahuja, Leader – Cummins Global Analytics Center (GAC). With a double management degree from IMT and IIM-A, he has been offering consultancy to various Manufacturing practices including Six Sigma, Lean and SCM.
Having started the session calling it as a curtain riser on the scope of Analytics, Mr. Ahuja went on to describe the various verticals in Cummins and spoke about the effect of Global presence attributing it to the employees for being the success ingredient. We were then exposed to the role of Analytics in the field of Manufacturing with the way connectivity has boomed in the form of mobile apps to aid all the activities. GAC was introduced to us as a knowledge processing hub where a team of experts applied skills to leverage data and analyze them.
The session then took on to the complexities arising off late in terms of data generated from aircrafts, traffic-on-road etc. He emphasized that the sole purpose for adapting Analytics was the drive to generate meaningful insights from raw data which later would help firms generate more revenue. The various forms of analytics were discussed which included Descriptive Analytics, which focussed on ‘What happened?’ that included plot trends and gathering information which later would help in Prescriptive Analytics, where meaningful insights would be driven. There was also another segment called Diagnostics, which answered the question of ‘Why?’ The speaker then spoke about the current scenario on Data Sciences taking on BI and the evolving Digitization in all sectors of industries. We were then brought with an example of Smart factory, where Digitization had stepped into the industry of Manufacturing.
The session ended with the current trend of Industry 4.0 being discussed which involves Cyber Physical systems and urged us, the students, to develop the necessary skills to be industry ready and contribute to the growth. I would like to thank the Director and our Guest lecture team for providing us an opportunity to get exposed to the current trends in the field of Analytics.
