Skip to main content

Tips from Top: Business Intelligence and Analytics, Mr Manish Menon (Manager, Business Technology, ZS Associates)

Mr. Manish Menon, Business Technology Manager at ZS Associates, visited IIT Kanpur campus on 11th September. The topic of the seminar was Business Intelligence and Analytics.
The seminar began with how analytics affects every walk of our life: from taxi aggregating service Ola, e-commerce giant Amazon, superstores like Walmart, to healthcare services such as Apple Health Kit. Mr. Menon elaborated on the shifting focus of analytics over the years from “what to do with data and where to get the data from?” to “how impactful can we make it?”
Mr. Menon talked about the evolution of analytics from centralised passive reporting, periodic monitoring and data warehouse to decentralization, active experimentation, advanced use cases and data lakes.
He also emphasized on a pragmatic saying – “fail fast so as to recover quickly, learn the lesson, and move on to other projects”.
Mr. Menon discussed how the growing trend of cloud computing and storage of huge quantities of data on remote locations might not be as much of a fail-safe and fool-proof idea as the general perception was turning to be because of varied concerns like security.
He also briefed us about what stages or steps advanced analytics entails to arrive at a solution. These include- descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive analysis. Descriptive analysis deals with “what has happened” and thus includes business intelligence and dashboards, Diagnostic answers “why it has happened” using model fitting and data mining, Predictive helps us to formulate “Will it happen” through forecasting and statistical prediction and last is Prescriptive which mentions the future course of action or “what should we do” using optimization models.  Mr. Menon emphasised on the role of analyst’s intellect and intelligence on each and every stage of analytics, using certain pragmatic examples. The icing on the cake was a case study task for the students, which invoked active participation from the enthusiastic audience. It gave hands-on experience on using appropriate analytic analysis’ stages while approaching the problem.
There was also a brief introduction about the various analytics tools available that are also being used in corporate. He emphasised on how the key to a successful analytics project is to ask the right question! Furthermore he gave guidance on approaching an analytics problem. He also recommended certain books that he reckoned would help in streamlining the thought process. 
Mr Menon ended the enlightening session with-
“If you don’t pursue your passion as your work, you will end up in a job and not a career!” 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Consilium'08: The Consulting Conclave

MBA batch under the aegis of Department of IME is going to organize the annual consulting conclave of IIT Kanpur, Consilium’08. The objective of this event is to create a platform where confluence of leading professionals from consultancy and vast student community can take place. As consultancy has become one of the most preferred career choice for IITians , Consilium'08 will provide them the opportunity to learn about the nunaces of consultancy in various domains. From a humble start, it has been envisaged that Consilium will become the platform in coming years where representatives from across the spectrum of consultancy will share their knowledge, experience and insight with students. The event has generated enthusiasm among all sections of IITK students and students from other major B-Schools who are also expected to participate. Case solving competition is one of the attraction of Consilium '08 in which winners shall get certificates and attractive cash prizes. Apart
Post a Comment
Read more

Seminar: Financial Risk Management: A Brief Overview

Date: 14th January, 2011 Speaker: Dr. Puneet Prakash About the speaker: Dr. Puneet Prakash is an Assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University since 2005. He holds a Ph.D in Risk Management and Insurance from Georgia State University, an MBA from IIFT, Delhi, PG Diploma in Development Policy (IGIDR), and M.Sc. (5-year Integrated) from IIT, Kanpur. He is also a visiting faculty to IIT Kanpur, Fall 2009. Abstract of the talk: The seminar started with a brief discussion on market and the categorization of market participants into risk averse, risk neutral and risk seeking behaviors. Dr. Prakash then proceeded to discuss the Modigliani – Miller theorem that Corporations are risk neutral and that if investors want to manage risk they could do it as an individual rather than through the company. The underlying assumption is that a company and a individual have the same capability to manage risk. As this assumption is not a universal truth, not all corporations are risk neutral. Any
Post a Comment
Read more

TIPS FROM TOP: "ON-SITE MARKETING" by Mr. Advit Sahdev, Head of Marketing, Infibeam.com

The Department of Industrial Management and Engineering hosted Mr. Advit Sahdev, Head of Marketing in Infibeam.com, Indian E-commerce retail portal for a corporate seminar on 8 September’18 on ‘Invisible Marketing.’ The seminar mainly focused on the scope of marketing in the online world and how different experiments can help in boosting sales of a product. Mr. Advit Sahdev suggested various techniques, tried and tested in the online marketing world that bore fruits for the e-commerce companies. The main focus of this domain is, firstly, to bring the customer to the site and secondly, to convert the customer into a buyer and further into a loyal customer.  Real-time data analysis is used to attract customer to the site. Analyzing Google search and browsing history in social media sites like Facebook and Twitter is particularly helpful in assessing age, behaviour, and mood of the prospective buyer. The essence of the assessment is to categorize the customer into detai
Post a Comment
Read more