Analytics: A Peep into the future

We are often intrigued by the terms Data Science, Number crunching, Modeling, Regression, Cluster Analysis, Factor Analysis, Normal Distributions..Phew!!.the list goes on and on. All of these jargon's come under the bigger umbrella known as "Analytics". So, What exactly is "Analytics"? In simple terms it is the study of the cause and effect of any event of interest. Let us take a simple example: In a class of 60 odd students there is a particular set of 5 students who are always in the top 5. To set it up as an analytics problem statement, I may ask what causes those 5 in particular to come in top ranks? What are they doing differently from the rest of the pack?To drill down even further I will try to list out all qualitative and quantitative parameters which in some way or the other have a bearing on the outcome, perform the root cause analysis and then come with a reasoning which validates the end result.

Companies nowadays rely heavily on predictive analytics to achieve their business objective. This not only helps them achieve cost cutting but also gives them the freedom to explore untapped potential. Data in the raw form doesn't carry any value. It is only when data after getting sorted, filtered and derived to suit our needs is when it becomes of value. Analytics find its utility almost everywhere, be it an FMCG company which (as Kotler states it) looks at Segmenting, Targeting and Positioning its customer base or a Financial Institution which tries to find ways and means to minimize its NPA's, all have time and again leveraged on analytics to improve their bottom line.

I was pleasantly surprised to know that nowadays even sports teams are leveraging analytics to their benefit. No wonder we see so many laptops being carried by the players and the coaching staff :-). As technology has advanced over the last number of years data collection has become more in-depth and can be conducted with relative ease. Advancements in data collection have allowed for sports analytics to grow as well, leading to the development of advanced statistics as well as sport specific technologies that allow for things like game simulations to be conducted by teams prior to play.

Analytics is certainly a very interesting, lucrative and an evolving field as far as career options are concerned. There is huge demand for people who are skilled in emerging technologies like R, SAS, Python etc. Being techno-functional is the need of the hour and the industry surely elevates people possessing such skills.