Actionable Insights using

Advanced Analytics:
Making Data work for You

RRD Special Report

For TCS Internal Circulation Only

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Introduction
Imagine if you are playing chess and you knew every outcome of your move, what if you could know the next move of your
competition, and get multiple recommendations on your counter move with an outcome shown to each of your
choice….could you ever loose such a game?

Much like a chess game imagine if the future of business decisions are no longer based on the human instincts, but rely on
technology and mathematics to predict every outcome of your business decisions.

In the ever competitive playing field of business, advanced analytics provides a competitive advantage to its players to
guarantee success.

What is Advanced Analytics?

Advanced analytics is a broad category, to put it in simple terms
it can typically be regarded as future-oriented analysis which
predicts the outcome or trend based on the structured or
unstructured data collected. It also provides recommendations
based on the predicted outcome and can be used to help drive
changes and improvements across business practices.
It is helping companies to create more precise real world models
of their customers and other stakeholder’s around them. These
various models were applied throughout their business to help
arrive at better decisions. Advanced analytics can help achieve
cost effective, top line revenue growth in every area of the
business that translates into real market value for the company.
Advanced analytics can be broadly classified into Predictive and
Prescriptive analytics.
Predictive Analytics
The art of predictive analytics simplifies the uncertain future. It
addresses the question of what will happen. Before it even
happens, this is a question lingering in the minds of all industry
leaders and predictive analytics gives them a glimpse of what the
future holds.
Predictive analytics makes use of advanced quantitative methods
to derive insights from data both structured and unstructured.
These derived insights ultimately shape business decisions to
improve business performance. Predictive analytics can take you
from guesswork to prediction by showing you where you are
now, and where you can go next.
Amazon recently filed a patent for their latest
system, officially known as “method and system for
anticipatory package shipping”.
It is an algorithm-based system, which can
conceivably ship products before you even place an
order, with advanced analytic techniques Amazon
is able to predict what its customers are most likely
to buy and when.
WalmartLabs, bought Inkiru Inc. for their
“predictive analytics” technology which is capable
of pulling data for the retailer’s merchandising and
marketing campaigns to target shoppers when
they are most likely to buy. With this capability
Walmart propelled forward in predictive analytics
with expertise in site personalization, search, fraud
prevention and marketing.
Walmart modified its shipping policy for products
based on big data analysis. Walmart leveraged
predictive analytics and increased the minimum
amount for an online order to be eligible for free
shipping. According to the new shipping policy, the
minimum amount for free shipping is increased
from $45 to $50 with addition of several new
products to enhance the customer shopping
experience.
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Prescriptive Analytics
So now that we know our future what should we do? What is the best course of action? How can we use this information and
convert it into action which is beneficial to the company now and for the future.
Best Buy was able to determine through analysis of member data that 7% of its customers were responsible for 43% of its
sales. The company then segmented its customers into several archetypes and redesigned stores and the in-store experience
to reflect the buying habits of particular customer groups.

Descriptive
Human Input
What happened?
Traditional
Analytics
Diagnostic
Human Input
Why did it happen ?

Predictive
Human Input Decision Action
What will happen ?

Advanced Decision
Analytics Support
Prescriptive
What should I do ? Decision
Automation

Figure 1: Traditional and Advanced Analytics

Prescriptive analytics uses various mathematical and statistical techniques to arrive at the best course of action and fills your
quiver with the best actionable insights for decision making (refer figure 1)

Traditional Vs Advanced Analytics

Advanced Analytics is the new kid in the block and has already impressed some of the top leaders in the industry. The major
differences between traditional and advanced analytics are as given below

Traditional Analytics Advanced analytics

Makes use of simple arithmetics Makes use of complex data science
Comprised of business intelligence (BI) that
Focused on forecasting future events and behaviours
examines historical data
Addresses the descriptive analytics requirement i.e. Allows businesses to conduct what-if analyses to predict the effects of
what happened? potential changes in business strategies

Provides a general summary of data collected Delivers deeper data knowledge coupled with granular data analysis

IT and business leaders must expand their efforts to move their organizations from using only
traditional BI that addresses descriptive analysis (what happened) to advanced analytics, which
complements by answering the "why," the "what will happen," and "how we can address it".
- Alexander Linden
research director at Gartner
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Advanced Analytic Techniques

Advanced analytics goes beyond traditional analytics to explore hidden relationships and patterns between data to predict
trends and provide recommendations for the best course of action.

The extensive range of tools and techniques used in advanced analytics are constantly evolving. Some of the common
techniques used for predictions and providing recommendations are shown in figure 2.

Correlation Maxdiff factor and principal

Conjoint Analysis
Analysis components Analysis

Structural Equation linear and non-

Cluster Analysis
Modelling linear regression

Relative Importance
Analysis

Figure 2: Advanced analytic techniques

To keep this report focused on the application of advanced analytics in retail, we have not delved into these advanced analytic
techniques. Details about each of these advanced analytic techniques could be obtained from the URLs given in reference
section below.¹

Advanced Analytical Applications –

How is it helping retailers?
Connected consumers are driving a revolution in retailing. As the
21st century shoppers moved one step further to the omni- Targetdata a marketing firm that combines big
channel experience, retailers were left with petabytes of data data and analytics to help businesses target
from technologies like IoT, social, mobility, etc., and were consumers, has built a model that can predict with
struggling to derive actionable insights from the dense flow of 75% accuracy the likelihood that a home will be
data. sold/bought in the next 30, 60 or 90 days hence
Advanced analytics opened up a whole new world of giving an opportunity to retailers to target
opportunities for the retailers who could now use the data consumers during the major life event of moving.
collected in new innovative ways to gain more customers, as
discussed in the paragraphs below:
Amazon was a pioneer in predicting the customer
buying potential by customized product
Identifying potential customers: Predictive analytics helped recommendations. It is now even able to recognize
retailers identify and sell to new customers before they reached between preferences of customer for themselves
out to the retailers. Retailers were able to anticipate accurately and gifts
the time an individual would need their service and target selling
specific products for individuals rather than waiting for the
individual to go shopping.

[1] Correlation Analysis: http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/glossary/correlation.html

Conjoint analysis: https://www.sawtoothsoftware.com/download/techpap/undca15.pdf
Principal component analysis: http://www.cs.otago.ac.nz/cosc453/student_tutorials/principal_components.pdf
Structural Equation Modeling: http://documents.software.dell.com/Statistics/Textbook/Structural-Equation-Modeling,
linear and non-linear regression: http://www.graphpad.com/guides/prism/6/curve-fitting/index.htm?reg_the_differencese_between_linea.htm
Cluster analysis: http://www.norusis.com/pdf/SPC_v13.pdf
Relative importance analysis: http://www.r-bloggers.com/the-relative-importance-of-predictors-let-the-games-begin/
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Personalised marketing: By leveraging advanced analytics
retailers could now understand customer buying behaviours,
which are used to create more relevant and effective email and
web site marketing campaigns to better target customers, hence
enabling a greater degree of personalization.
Understanding the needs of the customer: Advanced analytics
enabled retailers to know their customer more in depth than
before by learning from their shopping patterns, interests in
social media, online search behaviour and recommend products
that the customer is planning to buy. With this the brand
engagement touched new levels giving it a new definition of
personalization.
With these capabilities retailers can rationalize their promotional
and marketing spend and spend it at the right time thereby
improving the conversion rates.
Fraud management: With the Predictive analytics model fed
with streaming data from the stores in different locations,
retailers can identify unusual patterns of product and inventory
movement. Retailer losses from breakage, embezzlement, and
simple human error can be identified through the use of
analytics. Apart from this retailers can now predict with a greater
deal of certainty when fraud instances like return fraud, employee
fraud, receipt frauds, etc. will spike especially during the times of
higher customer footfall in a month thereby saving millions of
dollars.
Demand forecasting: With Advanced analytics supported
forecasting retailers are able to better manage their supply chain
functions and inventory planning to cater the varying demands
of the market. Retailers are now able to predict the varying trends
and consumer preference and align their business functions
according to the predicted demand and sales at store level.
Retailers are fast enhancing their capabilities in advanced
analytics making it faster, more efficient and accurate to cater to
their digital savvy customers thus opening new revenue
opportunities.
Macy’s Saw 12% Boost in Online Sales from
Macy’s.com with the implementation of Predictive
Analytic tools which allowed them to target
individual customers with their marketing
campaigns.
Target’s predictive analytics program can deduce
whether an individual shopper possesses
characteristics that make them particularly good
targets for a specific marketing effort.
UK-based retailer Burberry integrated all its
channels - from stores, online, mobile to social
networking sites to profile their customers in real-
time. All store employees at any location can
identify a customer, at almost the moment they
walk in, know about their past purchases and are
able to make personalized recommendations.
South Korea-based retailer NS Shopping has
integrated mobile and social channels into its retail
environment and uses Big Data analytics to obtain
a centralized, real-time view of customer and
product data from across all channels. This
information is used by the company’s e-commerce
and marketing teams to provide shoppers with
personalized product recommendations.
“Surge pricing” a patented technique from Uber
which uses advanced analytics for the
implementation of “dynamic pricing” by
monitoring traffic conditions and journey times in
real-time, prices are then adjusted as demand for
rides changes. This encourages more drivers to get
behind the wheel when they are needed and stay at
home when demand is low.
Airbnb uses advanced analytics to algorithmically
generate pricing for their listing by predicting
demand on a given day by scanning and modelling
various events in the web throughout the day.
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Retail Analytics – The Journey So Far

Emerging advanced analytics tools provided retailers with real
time data on their customer preferences and have increased the
speed and efficiency of their go-to-market strategies.
Individual retail business functions are increasingly leveraging
advanced analytics to improve planning and efficiency.
Traditional retail operations are now evolving as an analytics
driven function ensuring elevated performance resulting in
considerable financial savings.
Some of the major analytics implementations in retail scenario are:
Customer Insights Analytics: Obtaining a 360-degree view of
customers and their browsing and buying preferences provides
retailers with in-depth insights about the customer behavior.
Customer analytics makes use of the data from various customer
touch points to analyze and convert them to actionable insights.
This customer info will help implement optimal cross-channel
marketing strategies which are personalized and tailored to the
customer buying behavior.
Application Areas
When a customer is profiled from the data obtained from various
touch points, it provides the retailer with a powerful tool for
knowing the customer and to anticipate their next buying
decisions through any channel.
Market basket analysis helps retailers to identify their customer
and classify them based on their demographics and buying
behaviors. Retailers can then influence their next purchase
decision by effectively targeting their selling strategies.
Customer churn modeling helps identify/anticipate the customers who will be lost to the competition based on their
buying behaviors and shopping patterns. Retailers can further try to influence those customers individually to provide
offers and promotions to retain them.
Advanced analytics is increasingly being adopted
by both mid-market organizations and large
enterprises to gain a competitive advantage in their
markets. A study commissioned by Dell Services
and executed by the International Institute for
Analytics (IIA) showed that more than 70 percent of
their respondent companies are actively using or
has near-term plans to use analytics in their
everyday decision-making
Retailer Target was able to “laser target” each
customer with his or her specific needs for specific
products. In early 2012, the New York Times
reported the story of a Target analyst who was able
to determine if a customer was pregnant based on
the pattern of previous purchases, that information
was then used to advertise targeted products.
Walmart is leveraging advanced analytics to
develop predictive capabilities on their mobile app.
The mobile app generates a shopping list by
analysing the data of what the customers and
other purchase every week. The shopping list can
tell customers the position of their wants and helps
them by providing discounts to similar products on
Walmart.com.

Supply chain

Merchandising
Customer
& In-store
Insights
Analytics

Marketing

Figure 3: Analytics in retail business functions

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Retail Marketing Analytics: Major retailers are taking marketing

and campaigns to the next level by leveraging analytics to target Target has a Guest Marketing Analytics
individual preferences rather than for the demographics. department, responsible for delivering Target the
competitive advantage of knowing its customers
By gathering and analyzing data from customer touch points,
better than any other retailer. An Active Data
retailers are able to customize offers, messages, product
recommendations and marketing strategies tailored to the Warehouse effectively manages complex user
particular customer. This in turn helps retailers increase customer queries on large data volumes in a mixed workload
retention and to maximize their loyalty efforts. environment across the entire enterprise then
identifies patterns to better understand shopper
behaviour. Target then uses this data to send
Application Areas
coupons to customers tailored to their shopping
An effective marketing strategy helps organizations gain new
Walmart's advanced algorithms analyse credit
customers and then retain them by enabling multiple
shopping experiences through different channels. Marketing card purchase history to provide specialized
analytics helps in enabling a particular marketing strategy recommendation through targeted and event-
and also gauge the effectiveness of the strategy. driven email marketing to its customers.
Segmentation analysis helps in the acquisition of new
customers by collecting data on different demographic segments buying a particular product. The data is further analyzed
to provide actionable insights based on the buying behavior of each segment. A custom promotional scheme tailored for
the customer segment needs can be effectively marketed to convert other prospects into customers.
Marketing mix modeling analyses the effectiveness of the organization's current marketing strategies and sales initiatives
and provides data driven recommendations for future initiatives and campaigns to achieve maximum reception among
customers which in turn helps in improving the brand image and ensure maximum ROI and market leadership.

Targetted Tailored marketing Increase customer Maximize loyalty

promotions startegies retention

Retail Merchandizing & In-Store Analytics: Retailers make use of merchandising analytics to ensure that they have the right
product available at the right place and at the right time. Further, analytical solutions help in analyzing the impact of changes
in product category mix and product placement decisions on revenue to optimize inter-departmental mix and in-store space
allocation.
In-store analytics makes use of customer behavior data and helps to improve in-store experience for the customer by
predicting their likes and dislikes. Retailers have a powerful tool to innovate and modify the In-store experiences which is
better suited to the customer behaviors and shopping patterns.

Better Product placment

Optimal product Support In-store Modify In-store
decisions/ Track product
category mix pace allocation shopping experience
performance
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Retail Merchandizing – Application Areas

American retailer Guess uses advanced analytics to
An effective merchandise planning sells the product by itself.
provide a real-time view of best-selling products
Merchandise analytics gives retailers the knowledge of where a
and available inventory to its executives. Its
product should be and at what time.
analytics solutions run on large customer data sets
Product affinity analysis gives retailers recommendations on to analyze merchandise sales, create customer
the products that are most likely to be purchased together, segments and develop sales promotions.
hence this helps retailers in store planning to prompt cross
selling. Swiss retailer Globus uses Big Data in-memory
computing and advanced analytics to gain
New product analysis can help analyze performances of new
products in the retail store and with that data retailers can
valuable insight into its merchandise performance.
optimize product placement and assortment planning to It has the capability to process vast amounts of
improve the sales of new products. product data in real-time, analyzing sales patterns
and promotions for thousands of products across
Assortment optimization and demand forecasting
time frames, shops and regions within minutes.
techniques provide retailers with insights on the performance
of their assortments and to maintain an optimal level of
products to meet the demand of the customer.

In-store Analytics - Application Areas

In-store customer analytics helps retailers in creating a better In-store experience for the customer.
Predictive analytics can help retailers understand how their customers feel about the stores today and predict how the
experiences they provide will affect their future choices.
Analyzing the customer footfall and movement can help them predict the location where the marketing posters/banners
should be kept for maximum visibility.
Footfall analysis and measuring the frequency of shoppers' visits to the store can help retailers strategically locate key
SKUs in the store for maximum visibility.

Retail Supply Chain Analytics: With retail companies gaining UK-based retailer Tesco uses sophisticated
real-time insights into customer buying behavior and trends, they modelling tools to simulate performance of its
are able to fully satisfy customer demands and expectations by distribution depots and supply chain functions
adapting their supply chain functions to cater to the customer based on historical sales data to optimize stock.
needs.
It has an in-house analytics team that performs
Retailers enjoy the harmony achieved between customer regression testing to understand correlation
demand and efficient supply chain functions of the enterprise. An between factors such as weather data and special
optimum inventory level can be maintained by predicting offers among others, and sales patterns to enable
customer buying trends and changing supply chain functions to
smooth functioning of its supply chain functions.
lower the costs and maximize revenue through more efficient
inventory management and execution of logistics operations. Amazon developed a new algorithm for joint and
coordinated replenishment of its stocks with a
forecasting approach at the SKU level. This is
Application Areas accomplished by analysing historical demand,
The primary role of every efficient supply chain function is to event history and future plans thereby forecasting
decrease the time-to-market for products without for each of its fulfilment centre the inventory plan,
compromising on cost and quality. When an organization procurement cycles, and purchase orders.
uses inventory analytics to optimize its inventory by
predicting the sales growth vs the current inventory levels, it
brings down the inventory cost and helps in maintaining safety stock levels.
Demand analytics helps in real time correlation of the forecasted demand vs the actual sales and provides
recommendations on the need to increase or decrease the current stock of a product to maintain the optimal inventory
levels.
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To help organizations make the best of their CAPEX spending Network analysis will provide recommendations for the best
sites for building or maintaining a warehouse to control the delivery network.
Logistics analysis and optimization will help organizations with the best flow paths to be selected by optimizing the best
routes and shipment scheduling to fulfill customer demand within the shortest possible time and also help in
tracking/lowering additional expenses associated with logistics.

In the near future, data flow from Internet of Things (IoT) and wearable technology will add to the massive inflow of data
which retailers are already struggling to segregate and analyze. Therefore, the increase in digitization and IoT will propel the
need for more advanced analytic techniques to be incorporated in various other retail operations.

Other areas of applications for retailers

Location Intelligence streamlines business processes and
identifies unique geographies for winning the market share.
The goal of location intelligence is to select the best “geographies
of opportunity” by providing a fit-to-purpose spatial analytic
solution. Many of the leading retailers are beginning to use
location analytics to plan their site for new stores which could
maximize customer footfall.
Until it added Location intelligence analytics to its
business intelligence system, one of Americas
leading retailers was wasting money in how it
routed 10,000 technicians who make 11 million
home-repair calls each year.

Predictive Simulation allows retailers to test, measure and

iterate changes in the store design, merchandising, staffing
models and in-store marketing all without incurring the real cost
of changing it in the store . It has also helped many retailers to
ensure optimal product performance by taking into account
many different variables and creating and altering different
models or designs virtually.

Vendor Landscape
In 2013, the worldwide business analytics software market grew 8.2% to reach $37.7 billion. The market is now forecast to
grow at a 9.4% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2018.

Some of the major players and their footprint in advanced analytics area is presented in the table below.

Software Vendors Footprint in Analytics

RapidMiner was placed in the 'Leaders'
quadrant by Gartner in its latest magic
quadrant for Advanced Analytics
platforms. Its platform has a code-free UI
and is available both in the cloud and as
an open-source client/server platform.
RapidMiner Studio provides an easy-to-use visual environment for
predictive analytics without any programming.
RapidMiner Radoop helps build and deploy predictive analytics in
several minutes. It automatically creates and executes the optimal
analytic execution plan for the client's unique Hadoop cluster

KNIME offers a free, open-source,
desktop-based advanced analytics
platform.
According to Gartner, KNIME's platform
provides “an extensive breadth and
depth of functionality,” which made
them a leader in this segment
KNIME analytics platform is given the title of a modern data
analytics platform that allows companies to perform sophisticated
statistics and data mining on their data to analyze trends and
predict potential results.
KNIME Analytics platform is highly customisable to the
company's requirements and it provides over 1000 data analytics
routines like text mining, social media analysis etc. Setting up of
collaborative platforms and sharing data is also part of the
package.
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Software Vendors
IBM is an "unshakable leader" in the
analysis of big data predictive analytics
solutions according to Forrester's
evaluation.
IBM's Smarter Planet campaign and
acquisitions of SPSS, Netezza and
Vivisimo represent its commitment to
big data predictive analytics. IBM also
provides solutions for customer
analytics, operational analytics,
predictive analytics for Big data, threat
and fraud analytics.
IBM recently announced 20 new
industry-specific solutions with pre-built
predictive analytics capabilities
including for retail that is aimed at
merchandising, in-store and supply
chain operations.
SAS is often termed as "an analytics
powerhouse" by most of the analyst
reports. Doing justice to its credentials
they have a wide variety of tools and
solutions to help clients in the analytics
space.
Footprint in Analytics
IBM Watson Analytics is a cloud-based analytics service which is
used for fast, accurate and actionable insights into business
operations
IBM PureData is an expert integrated data system designed and
optimized specifically for the demands of an operational analytics
workload.
IBM Social Media Analytics: IBM Social Media Analytics Software
as a Service (SaaS) helps organizations understand and act upon
the social media impact of their products, services, markets,
campaigns, employees and partners. It analyzes billions of social
media comments and provides customized results in configurable
charts and dashboards.
IBM Cognos: IBM Cognos Business Intelligence turns data into
past, present and future views of your organization's operations
and performance so their decision makers can capitalize on
opportunities and minimize risks.
IBM Digital Analytics is the analytics center that fuels the IBM
Digital Marketing Optimization Suite. They claim a competitive
edge by benefitting not just from state-of-the-art analytics, but
also from comparative benchmarks and knowledge of how the
best performers are achieving their successes.
IBM ILOG Optimization services (IBM ILOG CPLEX Optimization
Studio) is an optimization modeling development toolkit for
mathematical and constraint programming.
IBM Stream Computing & Context-aware Stream Computing
delivers real-time actionable insights when and where it is
needed, in the business moment. IBM InfoSphere offers a
complete stream computing solution to enable real-time analytic
processing.
SAS Predictive Modeling Workbench: A product aimed at
improving and accelerating the predictive modeling life cycle. It
enables clients to conduct analytic data preparation and develop
descriptive and predictive models.
SAS Analytics Pro Access is an analytical tool set that can
manipulate, analyze and present information in order to unify
computing efforts and get a single view of client's data.
SAS Factory Miner helps quickly and easily build and retrain
hundreds of predictive models across multiple segments, then
automatically pick the best model for each segment.
SAS Visual Statistics enhances predictive analytics through in-
memory processing and a visual interface that helps rapidly build,
test and refine models.
SAS High-Performance Statistics solve Big Data problems with
powerful statistics software.
SAS Sentiment Analysis uses statistical learning and advanced
linguistic methods to understand expressed opinions.
SAS Enterprise Miner streamlines the data mining process to
create highly accurate predictive and descriptive models based on
large volumes of data.
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Software Vendors
SAP is a newcomer to big data and
predictive analytics but is a leader
according to Gartner due to a strong
architecture and strategy implied in its
solutions.
Oracle falls a tier below the leaders.
Oracle has a very large and diverse set of
capabilities provided by the many
products in its BI and analytics portfolio,
which is most often, used for large-scale
enterprise deployments. Oracle's
position on the Gartner Magic Quadrant
reflects a relatively fragmented product
vision compared with other large
vendors, and hence the low scores in the
Gartner customer satisfaction survey.
Services Vendors
TCS was Recognized as a 'Leader' in
Analytics Business Process Services by
Everest Group. According to Everest, TCS
has expertise in advanced predictive and
prescriptive analytics, especially in sales
and marketing areas. TCS has expertise
in customer, marketing, supply chain
and risk analytics.
Accenture focuses on offering industry-
and function-specific analytics
applications that clients can use to drive
business decisions. Recent acquisition of
companies like i4C, Gapso, Neo Metrics
Analytics has enabled Accenture to
move a step further in their analytics
capabilities.
Footprint in Analytics
SAP InfiniteInsight has automated most of the effort put in
analysis so that users can gain unprecedented customer insight
and make forward-looking decisions with ease.
SAP Predictive Analytics uncovers trends and patterns from Big
Data, the Internet of Things and existing data sources and
automates predictive modeling to build models within minutes.
SAP Lumira analyzes trends and makes smarter, faster decisions
with engaging visualizations that combine data from multiple
sources. It also allows integration of built-in analytics with both SAP
and 3rd party analytic tools to meet the needs of all users — from
data scientists and business users to application developers.
Oracle Advanced Analytics tools are aimed at empowering data
and business analysts to extract knowledge, discover new insights
and make predictions—working directly with large data volumes in
the Oracle Database.
Oracle Advanced Analytics is integrated as part of the Oracle
Database and is a combination of Oracle Data Mining and Oracle R
Enterprise. It delivers predictive analytics, data mining, text mining,
statistical analysis, advanced numerical computations and
interactive graphics inside the database.
Footprint in Analytics
TCS had recently partnered with US-based analytics data
management provider Cloudera, to offer Big Data and analytics
services globally.
cBIDS (Consumer products Business Intelligence for Decision
Support) is a best practices framework that constitutes models for
various business processes and associated key performance
indicators (KPIs) and metrics hierarchies that allows rapid adoption
of analytics across the organization.
Demand Signal Management (DSiM) solution runs on the SAP
HANA platform and it senses demand from the downstream data
including sales, stock and market data thus helping in drawing
actionable insights through real-time in-memory computing.
TCS also has other products like Integrated Costs Analysis
Platform (iCAP) to monitor and analyze cost of serving customers
and Real Time Business Insights (RTBI) which helps to draw cross-
functional business insights.
Recent acquisition of i4C Analytics, an advanced analytics software
platform provider based in Italy has strengthened Accenture's
Analytics capabilities
I4C platform: i4C has a unique analytics platform called
Application Configuration Environment (ACE) this has greatly
enhanced Accenture's existing advanced analytics solutions.
Advanced Analytic Platform: Accenture analytics platform
provides Predictive, Prescriptive, and real-time analytics.
Accenture's Analytics Applications are flexible, quickly designed,
and fully integrated into client workflow processes.
Accenture Insights Platform, a cloud-based, end-to-end analytics
solution designed to simplify analytics and deliver real-time,
actionable insights to businesses for a competitive advantage.
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Services Vendors
Capgemini has expertise in CFO
analytics, customer analytics and has a
well-developed predictive analytics
service offering that spans all major
industries. Its predictive analytics line of
business is relatively small but competes
effectively against other analytics
services vendors.
Cognizant in 2015 made to the Hfs
Enterprise Analytics Services Winners
Circle.
Cognizant has capabilities in social,
mobile, and cloud analytical
technologies.
Cognizant has collaborated with
Zementis in 2015 to improve their
current capabilities in predictive analytic
technologies.
Infosys under new CEO Vishal Sikka is
fast building its capabilities in analytics
as it has significantly upped its
recruitment in this space even as it
continues to put its existing workforce
under training.
Infosys is one of Microsoft's leading
systems integration partners and it is
planning to expand its predictive
analytics offerings abilities to help
customers transition to Microsoft Azure
and hybrid cloud environment.
Footprint in Analytics
Accenture further focuses on the agile development of Advanced
Analytics Applications (AAAs), turn-key industry- and function-
specific solutions leveraging ACE.
Portfolio of advanced analytics services include forecasting
services, fraud detection services, marketing analytics services,
risk management services etc
Accenture has partnered with SAS for providing customers with
predictive analytics platform to improve their business.
Accenture and Revolution Analytics extended advanced analytics
and big data solutions to clients by using open-source software
Accenture Intelligent Processing Services address the main types
of non-compliance: under-declarations, ineligible tax credits, high-
risk refunds, non-filers, and tax collection inefficiency.
The Accenture Analytics Innovation Center in Barcelona, Spain, is
a showcase for Accenture's predictive analytics capabilities and
their ability to help the C-suite meet its most pressing objectives.
Elastic Analytics is a cloud-based offering which uses the Amazon
Web Services (AWS) technology platform to deliver Big Data
analytics capabilities to its global clients.
Integrated Category Analytics & Insights helps transform
decision-making and predict buying behaviour to adjust your
activities and propositions.
Business Data Lake is a next-generation information management
solution that delivers Big Data to all users. It combines Capgemini's
leading business processes and Big Data skills with Pivotal's
cutting-edge technology.
Alliances: Capgemini has alliances with SAS and E=MC² to provide
analytical solutions to their clients.
nXg device analytics is an analytics tool aimed at predicting device
failures and generate a holistic picture of device health.
BigDecisions is a sophisticated BI & Analytics platform which is
aimed at enabling clients to meet dynamic and changing business
demands.
iSMART is a social media analytics and reporting tool which
leverages big data and analytics to bring insights to the
management about their ROI of marketing campaigns, and
product sentiment.
iManage is an innovative solution framework to analyze, measure
and provide tangible insights into the sales reps and customer
interactions through a first-of-its-kind Customer Interaction Index
(CII).
Infosys HIMI Advanced Analytics claims to be a platform that
facilitates quick building of advanced analytic solutions. The
platform is said to handle heterogeneous data in structured and
unstructured form (text and image) that originates in disparate
sources.
Infosys Information Platform (IIP) is an open source data
analytics platform that enables businesses to operationalize their
data assets and uncover new opportunities. IIP features a data
science workbench that supports self-service exploratory analysis.
Other offerings include store sales analysis, product analysis and
customer analysis.
 13

Services Vendors Footprint in Analytics

Wipro had recently replaced their
Advanced Technologies & Solutions
service line with the new service line
Wipro Analytics to deal with all new-
generation technologies such as artificial
intelligence (AI), machine learning,
advanced analytics, and big data.
Wipro offers services in customer analytics, profitability analytics,
supply chain analytics, operational analytics, merchandising and
pricing analytics.
Acquisitions: Wipro had acquired Promax Applications Group to
improve their capabilities in marketing analytics
Big Data streaming analytics platform: Wipro partnered with
Software AG for their Big Data streaming analytics product suite
that's designed for IoT data capture, integration and analysis,
facilitating quick business response to gleaned insights and
information.

The best way to predict the future is to create it

- Peter Drucker,
writer, professor, management consultant

Conclusion
Capitalizing on opportunities requires retailers to look beyond the horizon of traditional analytics and into the future where
every byte of data from the business ecosystem can be utilized to provide actionable insights which can have an impact on its
business.

Advanced analytics is going to play a more relevant and strategic role in the future of an organization. Every insight derived
using advanced analytical techniques can help improve business performance both internally and externally in an
organization.

Early adopters of this technology have already started leveraging their analytic capabilities to gain meaningful insights from
not just the data gathered from known sources but also “dark data” that has never been used.

Knowing when and what a customer wants is a powerful insight for the retailers to satisfy the growing customer expectations.
Advanced analytics helps retailers harness these capabilities to take them to the next era of innovation.
About TCS' Retail Business Unit
With over two decades of consulting and IT support experience with global retailers, TCS helps
retailers improve business processes and cash flows to drive top and bottom line growth.
Seven of the top 10 U.S. and six of the top 10 U.K. retailers partner with us on business
transformation programs aimed at re-imagining and growing the business.

Leading retailers leverage the TCS Omnistore Point of Sale (POS) and mobile POS solutions as
well as our merchandizing solution suite, OptumeraTM, that amalgamate our strong business
acumen, domain knowledge, and technology competency.

Our Innovation Labs harness technology trends such as digital technologies to incubate and
develop innovative solutions for retailers. Backed by a strong asset base and an information
hub that offers daily insights on the industry, retailers, and their competitors, we deliver
industry relevant consulting, solutions, and IT services and support.

Contact
For more information on TCS' Retail Solutions and Services, please visit
http://www.tcs.com/industries/retail-consumer-products/Pages/default.aspx
Email: retail.solutions@tcs.com

About Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS)

Tata Consultancy Services is an IT services, consulting and business solutions organization that
delivers real results to global business, ensuring a level of certainty no other firm can match.
TCS offers a consulting-led, integrated portfolio of IT and IT-enabled, infrastructure, engineering
and assurance services. This is delivered through its unique Global Network Delivery ModelTM,
recognized as the benchmark of excellence in software development. A part of the Tata Group,
India’s largest industrial conglomerate, TCS has a global footprint and is listed on the National
Stock Exchange and Bombay Stock Exchange in India.

For more information, visit us at www.tcs.com

TCS Design Services I M I 12 I 15

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