Concentrix increases its focus on analytics and digital

Concentrix works on analytics solutions across sectors such as banking, financial service and insurance, automobiles, retail, healthcare and travel. Concentrix serves clients across the United States, India, Japan, Korea and other Asia-Pacific markets. Dataquest had a chat with Anuj Kumar, GM India and South Asia and Global Lead – Analytics, Concentrix to know more on how the company is chasing opportunities in the big data and analytics space.

How do you see Big Data and Analytics adoption trends and how is Concentrix focusing on Big data?

As a company we are focused on being more impactful to our clients and delving into high value areas. When we talk about high value areas, we do not mean high price. Rather it is high value delivery to our clients. For more than a year we are focusing on 4-5 discrete areas which are critical to our customers. And these areas are other than the normal operating CRM BPO which we do. One of these areas is of course process transformation - which we have done till date. We are giving it further impetus. We have commenced a consulting practice internally which centers around analytics and digital. This practice is in line with the market trends and the requirements from our customers, small and large.

Have you built the product or are you implementing analytics at the banks or the retailers whichever your clients are?
We work on standard, off the shelf products. Our expertise lies in being able to operate all these products from Oracle, SAP, IBM, etc. We are not in the business of building cutting edge IP. We are not in the business of selling a tool which customers should buy and start operating. That is what IT companies like Oracle, SAP and IBM do. Our focus remains on using various tools and techniques, which are familiar with, so that we can help our customers in the best possible way.

What are the challenges that come while deploying analytics or big data in different verticals?
One of the biggest challenges is privacy and security. Besides, the regulations globally differ from country to country and organization to organization. There are countries where the governments do not allow data to be hosted beyond the boundaries of the country. This poses a challenge. Besides, in scenarios where the organizations are not allowed to move data outside their networks particularly banks, we have to move out of our delivery center to offer services. However, the challenges have given birth to new business opportunities.

Talking about the analytics globally, how big is the market, what are the growth trends and which are the verticals where most adoption is happening?
The analytics BPS market particularly, going by analysts globally, is somewhere in the range of $ 4 billion and growing in mid 20s. We find banking, insurance, healthcare, retail and CPG as lead adopters.

For analytics, we have teams based in India, in Korea and, a part, in Eastern Europe. Across these teams we service the entire world. It is an emerging area of endeavor for us. We are embedding analytics into many new solutions possible. We are showcasing an offering to almost all our entire client-base. The entire client-base is aware of our capabilities. We are happy showcasing our capabilities through pilots, proof of concepts and regular commercial engagements.

Is it possible for you to share some of the customer names?
I can tell you that the leading life insurance companies in India and leading healthcare companies globally are our customers. As discussed earlier, we continue to focus on the 5 sectors - banking, insurance, healthcare, retail and CPG.