In an exclusive interview with InBusiness.ae, Roman Izquierdo, Head of Analytics Practice, Delta Partners talks about the evolution of data analytics and their latest service line that empowers analytics offering. 

 

Data Analytics is becoming more and more crucial for businesses. How do you explain that?

The digital revolution has led to an explosion in the amount of data being generated and captured. Thanks to new technological frameworks, we can now digest and treat it for the benefit of decision making at large. Today’s executives are waking up and realising that their direct competitors are successfully leveraging analytics forcing them to increase their competitiveness around the topic. Relying on data and mastering tools/techniques for its treatment becomes a priority in C-levels agenda, not only to protect their revenues and to optimise their operations but, even to survive in the new business environment

 

How is Delta Partners helping clients in their digital transformation?

Delta Partners works with clients to secure part of the digital value being created. We help them understand their role in the new disrupted value chain, and support them by defining and developing key initiatives for them to play their new role: digital enablement, adaptation and transformation of their value propositions, building partnerships with other players (i.e. commercial agreements, local JV, minority stake investments).

Our clients appreciate our extensive exposure to the TMD industry and our solid relationships with telco and digital players. We have a dedicated digital practice based out of San Francisco allowing us to bring best practices from the heart of this revolution.

Since analytics is a critical element of our client’s digital transformation, we enable them to leverage their data to redefine and target their new propositions and equip them to monetize the rich information they have.

Can you give us more details on your recently launched Datafarm and how does it enhance your operations?

During the last 10 years, we have developed an extensive and well-recognized experience in leveraging analytics and driving insights to resolve c-level exam questions. We have honed our unique and deep expertise in processing and transforming massive amount of arid data into powerful insights. We have realised that there is an opportunity to bring forth our ‘behind-the-scenes’ analytics prowess to enable our clients imbibe this unique and effective analytics culture within their day-to-day functioning. DATAFARM is our new dedicated service line to drive that. Moreover, it will allow us to expand our reach within our existing clients by engaging them on long-term and operational initiatives. DATAFARM will drive analytics enablement and analytical execution through our dedicated team of data scientists, data engineers and analytic­­al consultants.

What differentiates it from previous methods?

While we continue to employ analytics as an enabler to tackle key C-level exam questions in our standard advisory services, analytics takes the centre-stage in DATAFARM engagements. Since the new service line involves enabling our clients to inherit these unique capabilities from us, these engagements would be more long-term and operational in nature, always keeping an eye on the strategic goals.

This could even sometimes translate into running end-to-end analytics acceleration programs under a Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) model where DATAFARM will establish required dashboards, analytical models and even develop client’s teams with new methodologies and capabilities.

How does it help clients transform their Business Intelligence and Data Management Ecosystem?

DATAFARM broadly encompasses two kinds of offerings – analytics enablement and analytical execution.

By analytics enablement, we refer to the range of activities required to ‘build and run the BI/data factory’, covering topics on data sourcing and data readiness, not limiting to the management of transformational BI programs, management of data ecosystem, Big Data enablement etc.

On the other hand, analytical execution involves activities and programs required to ‘extract value from that BI/data factory’ which includes areas such as systematic reporting, insight generation, advanced analytics modelling, customer base management analytics, internal and external data monetisation etc.

What do you foresee for Data Analytics in the next few years?

There is no doubt that the analytics industry is going to continue evolving very rapidly in the next few years. Enhancement in capabilities to capture and analyse data and its critical role in driving a competitive edge would lead to rapid adoption of advanced analytics in almost every field.

In the case of telecom operators, a step-change is needed for them to become ‘truly analytical organisations’. It will be critical for operators to build a data-driven corporate strategy and transform the operating model around that. We expect telecom operators to significantly increase their focus on analytics by adopting a clear BI & Big data strategy, deploying new Big Data technology frameworks and methodologies, and last but not the least attracting talent (e.g. advanced analytics data scientist, data engineers, business translators) who can extract value from these data assets.