Australian and NZ IT Industry

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Business intelligence as used by the local IT industry

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By Beverley Head
Monday, 22 March 2010 16:07

Business IT - Technology

Fewer than a third of Australia’s chief financial officers have the right mix of ICT and business analytics to let them swiftly recommend business responses to market changes prompted by the Henry review of taxation or an Emissions Trading System.

This is one of the local findings from IBM’s biennial CFO survey. IBM released the results of its global survey of 1,900 CFOs earlier this month and will tomorrow issue more local findings unearthed from interviews with 88 Australian and New Zealand CFOs.

According to James White, an IBM Financial Management Practice Executive, who was involved in the local interviews, just 25 of the local companies could be considered both efficient and effective. These were organisations which had achieved a degree of financial efficiency in that they had standard chartered accounts available for the CFO to access and review, and also had tools and processes to use that data to deliver “genuine business insights.”

According to White; “Whilst Australian CFOs are increasingly being credited with more strategic influence at the enterprise level, more than 50 percent of CFOs indicate that their finance organisations are still not effective in the areas of strategy, information integration, risk and opportunity management.”

He added that 60 per cent of CFOs were planning major changes in order to be able to better respond to change.

White said that a range of local organisations had been interviewed, including two of the four major banks, two insurance companies and a number of water authorities and mid sized utilities. AXA was one of the institutions consulted, and according to its CFO Geoff Roberts, finance departments today need: “Consistent data standards and information processing across business units, and timely, automated financial and operational metrics” which would pave the way for deeper analysis and faster decision making.

Although 25 ANZ institutions interviewed for the survey were classified as both efficient and effective, two organisations were identified as having good ERP platforms but next to no business insight across the group. One of those was an international conglomerate operating in the fast moving consumer goods sector, with seven different business units.

As White acknowledged; “this is a little unusual.” However he said that both the organisations were subject to significant regulatory burdens, which had led them to concentrate on developing a standard set of books rather than invest in tools and processes to encourage enterprise scale business analytics.

In Australia White said that “Most organisations have cracked the rear view,” and were starting to “get better at the current view.” However there remained a paucity of “genuine forward and analytic stuff - risk based predictive modeling.”

In part he suggested this was due to the constant need for investment in the ERP systems given the rising tide of red tape that organisations had to navigate.

Australian CFOs he said were in the main pretty confident about the quality of their finance data. “Where they fell down is in the area of enterprise level business insight.”

Nevertheless this was what would be needed for enterprises to nimbly respond to rapidly changing market conditions and remain competitive both locally and internationally. White said organisations such as Rio Tinto for example would need to combine financial analysis and business intelligence to rapidly tweak its business model should China revalue the Yuan. Similarly Australian organisations needed to be prepared to conduct scenario modeling in order to determine the effects of, and plan for, the looming Henry review of taxation or any Emissions Trading System the government is able to introduce.

IBM’s analysis however suggests that at present only 28 per cent of Australian and New Zealand companies are up to the challenge.

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Australian Financial Review, THU 10 MAR 2011

By: Paul Smith

The Australasian general manager of Indian technology giant Tata Consultancy Services, Varun Kapur, will leave his role at the end of the month. He will be replaced by the company's director of banking and financial services, Deborah Hadwen.
The change will be of interest to a number of key Australian customers, which rely on TCS for important parts of their technology operations.

TCS does work on legacy applications at Commonwealth Bank and last year won a five-year contract worth $50 million to ?provide infrastructure management for AGL Energy.

It is also a key supplier in the ?technology systems overhaul of Superpartners' troubled $70 million nextGEN program.

It retained its position on the project last year after delays in the core systems replacement program.

TCS yesterday confirmed to The Australian Financial Review that Mr Kapur would be moving to a ?senior? role? in? India ?in ?a ?few ?months.
It said the local operation was in a formal transition period and Ms Hadwen would take full control on March 31. Mr Kapur would remain at the Australian operation for a few months.

"Deborah is a very experienced and dynamic executive who has worked closely with Varun for many years. She will add strength and local knowledge to TCS's operations," the company said in a statement.

TCS's global chief executive, Natarajan Chandrasekaran, said late last year the company was planning to boost its staff numbers in Australia to support a push to win business in the government sector.

It is focusing particularly on predictive analytics, mobility and internet-based "cloud" services.

In November, TCS signed a 10-year contract valued at (pound stg.)600 million ($960 million) to provide administration services for the National Employment Savings Trust, the UK government's flagship pension scheme.

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By David Binning on Mar 18, 2011

Plans to sign partners.

NASDAQ-listed business intelligence vendor QlikTech has established its headquarters for Australia and New Zealand in North Sydney.

Local managing director Mark Sands said QlikTech’s vision was to place business intelligence in the hands of many, rather than the few, which has traditionally been the approach of traditional enterprise vendors.

“We are pushing for the consumerisation of enterprise apps.”

QlikTech competes with big players such as SAP, Oracle, IBM and SAS, although it notes key points of differentiation, especially in the largely untapped mid-market.

“Those vendors have never really cracked selling value to the mid-market,” Sands noted.

In addition, the company is targeting opportunities here and in New Zealand in the public sector as well as health.

To date QlikTech’s sales in Australia were handled by two master resellers, Sydney-based Inside Info and Vision Intelligence in New Zealand.

The company has a further 15 resellers, with that number expected to grow over the next 12 to 18 months.

“In order to cover the breadth of opportunity we believe is out there we need to work with additional partners,” local managing director Mark Sands.

The company already has 14 staff and its analytics tool QlikView was deployed at about 500 customers in Australia and New Zealand.

Most of these sites, which include the likes of ANZ, Amcor and Sportsbet, had the product co-exist with enterprise platforms such as SAP and Oracle.

QlikView was traditionally sold into verticals such as finance, retail, consumer packaged goods, logistics and distribution.

Demand for its analytics tool QlikView is growing strongly, the company said, largely due to its ability to be deployed selectively to particular areas within an organisation.

He said the growing number of companies deploying 64-bit systems will see increased demand for analytics products such as QlikTech’s QlickView.

“The lid has come off in terms of the scale of operations that QlickView can now support.”