From Insights to innovation that was the IBM’s organizational view that helped them deliver cutting edge technology & solution to their customers.
So speaking on Information led transformation, the inaugural thoughts were shared by Mark Register - Vice President (APAC), IBM. He shared his views on how organizations are operating with Blindspots which literally means that the decision makers within the organization don’t have access to the right information.
So he pointed out
• how to leverage information for smarter business outcomes
• how to make the planet smarter& lead information change
• how to proceed along an information-led transformation
• how to get started
• And how IBM can help you
Now the question which all of us are facing today is that we don’t have access to the right information at the right time which can help us in taking right decisions, which in turn is hampering the growth of an organization. Organizations are struggling with information explosion and trying to cope up with these challenges. He pointed out that organizations will reach a tipping out where they will feel blind folded on decision making. So there is
• Lack of insight – 1 in 3 managers frequently make decision without the information they need
• Inefficient access- 1 in 2 don’t have access to information they need to do their jobs
• Inability to predict- 3 in 4 business leaders say more predictive information would drive better decisions.
Today top performers have right managerial system for them to seek, evaluate & act on opportunity. They are armed with state of art tools to support decision making like
• Dashboards & visualization
• Analytics & predictive tools
• Content management
• Content analytics

Interestingly IBM’s Global CIO study 2009 indicates that leveraging analytics is now the top priority for CIO’s. Business intelligence & analytics was identified by 83% of respondents as the top focus area to increase the enterprise competitiveness. CIO’s at high growth rate companies are 61% more likely to proactively turn data into actionable information.

V Subramanyam - VP Channel Management IBM India, spoke about the information management system and how useful information needs to be segregated to reduce data churning. He gave typical examples of companies like Incois which has used the seismic data to generate safety alerts, HDFC Ergo which have enabled faster turnaround in processing insurance claims by proper information management.

Uday Gurkar – CA – Former GM(Business planning & Analytics at Aventis Pharma), spoke about CFO’s prospective on new areas like GAAP, IFRRS, XBRL, fast close, rolling forecast & actual Vs budgeted MIS using tools like IBM COGNOS.

Famous Commentator – Harsha Bhogle also gave some very interesting insights into information led transformation which are taking place in all sports specially CRICKET! Like how Duckworth Lewis is calculated in a game hampered by rain, how data analysis is helping in cricket, how players are profiled based on their past performances & previous statistics. Countries like US use best sports analytics using data mining & information mining. It was a really interesting & interactive session with Harsha with lots of fun filled experiences off the field & on the field of cricket was shared by the star commentator.

Nitin Singhal – Country Manager IBM (Business Analytics) also shared his views on accelerating the information led transformation giving examples from the industry like
• Human Resource Analytics – Talent analytics, performance management, productivity management & workforce management.
• Sales Analytics- pipelining performance, foresee performance, sales segmentation, Customer relation, Pricing & program performance
• Procurement Analytics – Spend analysis, Vendor analysis, Contract management, operation efficiency

He concluded his session with the point that analytics are key to Business optimization & IBM smart analytics system can help you in
• Smarter communication
• Smarter Insurance
• Smarter Banking
• Smarter Government

Post lunch session was a dedicated session for information technology track

Nagendra Nyamgondalu – Senior Manager, Information Management Solution & Datawarehousing (India/SA) shared his views on how internal business processes need right information at right time. He gave typical examples of slow sales cycles, cutbacks, reluctant clients & intense competition – business leaders are really feeling the heat to act fast, but a single bad decision today could be fatal. So what is the key to working smarter? It is in having the right information & insight to drive smarter business outcomes. His session explained how IBM smart analytics system can give your organization the insight it needs to work smarter in this challenging environment by putting the right answers in the hands of your decision makers today while putting your business in the best position to quickly adapt & grow to answer the questions of tomorrow. He explained how this unique, deeply integrated & optimized, ready-to-use analytics solution leverages a flexible infrastructure of IBM software, servers & storage – to quickly turn information into insights.

Data growth is estimated at 30% annually. Yet you are directed to cut costs. How do you do that without cutting performance, reliability, scalability or IT’s capacity to support your company’s objectives? It may not be immediately obvious, but your enterprise database affects all those variables. Is Database administrators expenses a large part of your IT budget? Is your storage infrastructure growing by leaps & bounds? Parag Pithia, Senior Manager -Information management system IBM India/SA explained the ways that your enterprise database can help or examine the ways that your enterprise database can help or hinder the bottom line, he clearly pointed how to uncover cost savings while delivering performance, automation, productivity, Green IT & more…

Managing content centric business processes & gaining control speaking on the same Harpreet Dhariwal – Advisory IT specialist Information management system IBM India/SA put emphasis on how much of your information is over-retained, irrelevant or duplicated? So do you have a clear compliance agenda and a roadmap that guides you towards that? Are you struggling with tactical compliance and e-discovery agenda by delivering capabilities and a prospective approach to reduce complexity, lower risk & cost and improve business agility?

The entire event was a day-long affair, but the mix of ideas and experiences presented was enough to keep the audience hooked till the end. With industry moguls sharing their first-hand success and failure stories and exploring the possible reasons and hence remedies for leveraging information technology in the right manner was a truly enjoyable and learning experience for me.