We, at Interra IT, help our customers with their Digital Transformation programs with our digital offerings. Each of these engagements gives us a better view how our customers across the globe are redefining their businesses taking advantage of the fast-evolving Digital technologies and the ‘Data Assets’ that these evolving technologies are generating.

Digital Transformation is more of business transformation than technology initiative. Data (Analytics) is fast becoming the heart of it. I used the word ‘Data Assets’ above consciously – as this part of each business has changed completely and permanently! Gigantic and unprecedented amount of data is being generated now for each business as they embrace digital technologies such as IoT, Cloud, Social media, mobile apps, e-commerce etc. Nobody denies that this data contains very valuable business assets as they can provide deep ‘insights’ into each business which can make or break an organization. For example, increasing number of our clients in the Retail industry today are listening to its current and prospective customers, competitors and suppliers on various media like social media, websites, e-commerce sites, mobile apps etc. - this means analyze the data from these channels to get an ‘insight’ about its products & services and trends and adapt his business processes/ offerings to such insights. The same Retailer may also have to make his supply chain and warehousing intelligent by using IoTs, wearable devices etc. But processing such gigantic amount of data, coming from each of these disparate sources and devices, can be daunting. The trend today is not only about understanding the present, but to also predict the future through predictive analytic techniques (like Machine Learning) and align the business to such predictions. ‘Pervasive Analysis’ attempts to break such Analytics silos of the present-day organizations and takes it to each its relevant business process and role in a self-service mode.

‘Pervasive Analysis’ is not a technology, but a concept. However, the connotation and application of it has changed with the advent of digital technologies. ‘Pervasive Analytics’ proposes a changed way of doing business for smart organizations in future by embedding Analytics in all its business processes and for all its roles in the organizational pyramid. This deviates from the prevalent practice of Analytics being a silo serving only a select group of stakeholders which is mostly about the past (descriptive) or present (diagnostic). It attempts to extend the Analytics technology (including predictive analytics) for each of the relevant roles across the organization so that

each of them can carry out their daily tasks as data crunching ability and predictive analytics is being put to business use more and more. prescribed by such ‘insights’ which may be presented to each different role through intelligent and interactive dashboards. In real life, this might mean a sales person on the floor of a fashionwear store may deal (in terms of shopping assistance, promotion, special offers, and other aspects) with a customer guided in real-time by Predictive Analytics dashboard on his/her iPad about the propensity of the customer to buy certain kinds of goods. ‘Machine Learning’ is a technique which helps correcting such predictive algorithms in unsupervised mode based on error margins derived from past data. This technique, though present for quite a while now, is gaining wide usage as data crunching ability and predictive analytics is being put to business use more and more.

Pervasive Analysis is not a technology, but a concept. It proposes a changed way of doing business by embedding Analytics in all the business processes and roles in the organizational pyramid

A right implementation of Pervasive Analytics can prove to be a significant competitive advantage to any organization. As the technology evolves the avenues and amount of data available to be captured and analyzed with exponentially increase with time. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) enables real time capturing of information of inventory movement within, capable of recording data when the items are taken off the bins, or places in a bin or moved from one location to other. RFID coupled with Global Positioning Systems (GPS) can provide real time information right placement of the item in the inventory to the delivery to the customer. Internet of Things (IoT), which includes wearables on workers, sensors, smart equipment and other internet-enabled devices will have a profound impact on the quality and quantity of data available to an organization to support their analytics process.

The volume and extent of data available to an organization for Pervasive Analytics, makes it a perfect case of Machine Learning. Machine Learning provides the ability the computer to learn without being specifically programmed. Machine Learning algorithms learn from experience and improve performance with time to make accurate predictions. The existing data is divided into training and testing data. The machine learning models are trained on the training data and predictions are made and compared to the testing data. The algorithms are fine tuned to generate results matching or near to the test dataset. Once trained, the trained model is then used to make predictions.

Adoption rate of ‘Pervasive Analytics’ is increasing at the rate the underlying challenges are getting addressed. Such challenges typically include:

- Multiple data sources (both structured as well as unstructured) and versions which are not integrated

- Poor data quality

- Lack of a comprehensive, self-service Analytics strategy and coordination between business and IT on the same.

- Agility of the organization to embrace newer analytic technologies

- Lack of suitable governance processes

- Ability to invest in cleaning up all the above

‘Pervasive Analytics’ is often described as the ‘winning factor’ of tomorrow and steadily gaining acceptance across the globe across all industry segments. At InterraIT, we are happy to be a part of the above futuristic solution for many of our customers through our technology offerings and consulting services.