A WHITE PAPER BY HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW ANALYTIC SERVICES. The Asia Innovation Series. In association with

Transcription

1 A WHITE PAPER BY HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW ANALYTIC SERVICES The Asia Innovation Series In association with

2 24 A Harvard Business Singapore s Perspective JAYSON GOH Jayson Goh is the chief information officer and executive director of infocomms & media at the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB). He joined the EDB in 1999 and currently oversees the development of the IT, computing, e-business, software, Internet, telecommunications and networks, digital media, and electronic systems sectors in Singapore. He is also the executive director of EDB s Planning Division, which oversees medium- to long-term economic development strategies. Jayson has strong expertise in infocomms trends in the Asian market, and here he talks about the vast potential in the region for global organizations via big data and analytics. THE SINGAPORE PERSPECTIVE IN BRIEF: n In 2011 alone, more than 1.8 zettabytes of data were created, and data is expected to increase 50 times by n Currently, more than 80 percent of the world s data is unstructured, presenting both challenges and opportunities arising from the global data explosion. n Singapore has established itself as a global data management hub with more than 50 percent of the commercial carrier and carrier-neutral data center space in Southeast Asia. n Data analytics has been identified as an important growth sector for Singapore. By the end of 2017, it is expected to contribute S$1 billion in value-add to the economy. Singapore plans to nurture a pool of 2,500 multidisciplinary data analytics professionals over the next five years. n Public-private partnerships in Singapore among the government, global corporations, and local universities drive innovation in big data and analytics. n Looking at new opportunities, there is strong potential for Singapore to emerge as a compelling location for proprietary data banking services that allows digital assets to be integrated and managed at both the organization and individual consumer levels. THE RISE OF BIG DATA AND ANALYTICS In the Harvard Business Review webinar on big data and analytics, sessionists discussed the tremendous opportunity for global organizations presented by the emergence of big data and analytics. While sessionists agreed that opportunity abounds, there are also challenges for organizations yet to embrace an analytical culture. IN A NETWORKED world, the proliferation of data is at once a cause, an effect, and a given. Data is increasing at an exponential rate. According to a study by EMC, in 2011 alone more than 1.8 zettabytes were

3 A Harvard Business 25 created. This is equivalent to 28 billion 64GB smartphones, or the equivalent of four such smartphones for every person in the world. The amount of data created is expected to increase 50 times by With increased digitization, the rise of social media, and the proliferation of mobile platforms, companies are faced with the challenges of data explosion. Enterprises could find themselves overwhelmed by copious volumes of data. This is further compounded by the fact that more than 80 percent of the world s data today is unstructured. Despite these challenges, we have also recognized the opportunities that big data presents. What was once seen as a small and segregated part of the IT industry is now being recognized as a valuable resource by enterprises, which can uncover new business insights, offer fresh perspectives, and enhance productivity. The question that the world is grappling with is how to unlock the value of this new resource. According to Gartner, analytics is a capability that enables one to organize, assess, and analyze information in order to learn and understand a business process or domain-specific activity. Technology companies are developing new solutions to help customers not only manage the growing volume of data but also transform the deluge of information into actionable insights in real time in order to extract business value. For Singapore, data is fast becoming a new natural resource that can be refined and modeled into a form that can be used to drive economic growth. As a country with no natural resources, Singapore recognizes the importance of analytics in unlocking the value of data. Singapore Aims to Be a Global Leader in Applied Analytics Today, Singapore has already established itself as a regional data management hub. According to a study by BroadGroup, Singapore accounts for more than 50 percent of the commercial carrier and carrier-neutral data center space in Southeast Asia. Now we seek to help companies unlock the value of this repository of data through analytics. Through continued investments in our talent base, infrastructure, and regulatory framework, Singapore is rapidly establishing itself as a global leader in applied analytics, where companies create new and improved products and services through the use of digital intelligence. Singapore provides the domain expertise necessary for the contextualization of industry-specific problem statements and translation of insights from analytics into domain-relevant applications. Analytics is an important enabler for different industries. We have identified seven focus areas, which include consumer and retail, urban services, security, supply chain and logistics, manufacturing, healthcare, and finance. These are areas that have high potential for value creation through data analytics. In fact, Singapore is enjoying leadership in many of these industries. Against the backdrop of trends including the rise of the Asian digital consumer, urbanization, and transformation of the manufacturing sector, analytics capabilities are becoming increasingly critical for companies in consumer businesses, urban services, and manufacturing. The emergence of the Asian middle class and the increase in the use of mobile phones and social networks as well as the growth of e-commerce have brought about an explosion of consumer data. This provides an opportunity for consumer-facing companies to apply analytics to understand and anticipate consumer

4 26 A Harvard Business behavior, enabling them to, for instance, provide personalized and contextualized real-time offers and to optimize pricing and merchandising mix. In Singapore, Singapore Management University (SMU) launched LiveLabs in 2012 to enhance the country s capabilities and standing as a preferred location in consumer and social analytics. SMU LiveLabs is a city-scale research test bed with progressive technologies for companies to run large-scale consumer behavior trials and experiment with novel mobile services on real people in real environments. As a result, real-time consumer insights can be extracted through user-generated content. These insights could help companies develop and tailor initiatives that are more relevant to customers. Today, there is a growing ecosystem of end-user and service provider companies undertaking consumer analytics in Singapore. Rakuten, Japan s largest retailer, has established its Consumer Analytics Lab to enable customer profiling and targeted marketing. Service providers such as Accenture and Deloitte have also established their analytics practices in Singapore, focusing on areas such as supply chain planning, risk management, business forecasting, and performance. With the urbanization of cities, there is also a growing need for tools that can help governments better understand the usage patterns of public service and detect inefficiencies. This can be addressed through the use of insights garnered from data analytics to enhance management of city-states such as Singapore. Being in the heart of Asia, Singapore is the epitome of a modern Asian city, which makes it an ideal living laboratory for companies to test innovations in a real-life environment. An example is the IBM Smarter Cities Collaboratory, where IBM partners public agencies in Singapore to design, develop, and test innovative urban technological solutions in water, energy, and transport systems for eventual export to global markets. In one of its first projects with the Land Transport Authority (LTA), Singapore s transportation management agency, IBM focused on smarter transportation solutions to mitigate traffic congestion. This research built on IBM Research s existing studies on traffic prediction to develop new analytics solutions that could enhance our land transport system. In Addition, EDF and Veolia have set up a joint Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Cities to develop complex modeling and analytics tools for urban planning. In partnership with Singapore s public housing agency, the Housing Development Board (HDB), they will develop, test bed, and commercialize these tools from Singapore. The global manufacturing ecosystem is undergoing a dramatic transformation with the advent of disruptive technologies such as robotics and 3-D printing. For manufacturing companies, analytics allows for the enhancement of manufacturing processes based on the data generated by the manufacturing line. Analytics enables better production planning and real-time health monitoring, both of which give better control to manufacturers. Furthermore, it also supports equipment companies in their shift toward new business models by enabling them to better predict equipment condition and optimize their maintenance intervals. In Singapore, Rolls-Royce and the Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC) established the Computational Engineering Laboratory in December 2011 to conduct joint research in intelligent data analysis. The applications of data analytics are vast. Over time, it is envisioned that data analytics will become increasingly critical as an enabler for cross-cluster innovations.

5 A Harvard Business 27 Analytics Talent to Serve the Global Market In the Harvard Business Review webinar on talent, sessionists debated whether Asia has the talent to lead innovation in the 21st century. While the talent base is uneven market to market, some markets are clearly in a leadership position. Data analytics has been identified as an important growth sector for Singapore. By the end of 2017, it is expected to add S$1 billion in value to the Singapore economy. There is a global shortage of analytics talent, as these professionals need to build up multidisciplinary skills and capabilities in computer science, statistics, and mathematics as well as have a deep understanding of different industry domains. Such domain knowledge is imperative for identifying the relevant problem statements and data for analysis as well as to interpret the results correctly. In some instances, analysis of data also requires the relevant cultural and geographical context to ensure accurate interpretation. To develop the necessary data analytics talent pool, Singapore has moved rapidly to put in place the necessary programs. There are currently 10 data analytics courses offered across the local universities in particular, five have been established in the past two years alone to offer a multidisciplinary approach to data analytics with a focus on application in specific domains. There are also close collaborations between the private sector and local universities to ensure that graduates possess the relevant industry skill sets and knowledge. For example, the National University of Singapore (NUS) and IBM recently announced a collaboration to establish the NUS Centre for Business Analytics. The mandate of the centre is to help students and mid-career professionals gain the latest skills in business analytics and prepare them for high-value jobs in the future. The centre offers a new master of science degree in business analytics (MSBA) that began in August 2013, combining NUS s research capabilities and IBM s industry expertise. All these developments contribute toward building a sustainable pipeline of industry-relevant talent that will support Singapore s push into data analytics. Overall, we aim to nurture a pool of 2,500 multidisciplinary data analytics professionals within the next five years. Capturing the Asian Digital Consumer Beyond having expertise in data analytics, companies also need the ability to make sense of data within the context of each market. In doing so, they will be able to translate insights into relevant products and services for clients in specific geographical regions. To be successful in the Asian market, for instance, companies need to understand Asian consumers and how they interact with their brands. This can be achieved through the fields of consumer insights and data analytics, which support consumercentric innovation for companies in the region. In most of Asia, consumer insights is not yet a developed field. Being located in the heart of Asia and as a gateway from the West to the East, Singapore is now home to a diverse range of Asian nationalities and companies. The availability of a pool of talent with pan-asian expertise enables companies to understand the behavior and preferences of the Asian consumer. With Singapore s connectivity in Asia, established R&D infrastructure, and well-educated workforce, many companies have chosen Singapore as a location to develop and test bed new solutions for the Asian consumer.

6 28 A Harvard Business To this end, Singapore has also identified natural language processing (NLP) as an important area to advance our capabilities in. NLP focuses on speech-to-text technologies as well as the ability to translate and interpret underlying sentiment and emotions. In Singapore, the Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R) partners companies such as Chinese search giant Baidu to develop natural language technologies for ASEAN languages. This capability provides unprecedented opportunities for companies to tap into the burgeoning ASEAN market. Another analytics-related capability is computational social cognition, which enables companies to model the perception and decision-making process of consumers. For instance, IHPC is spearheading the development of technologies to model the formulation of first impressions among Asian consumers. This will enable the prediction of consumer reaction to new brands and products. IHPC and Fujitsu recently signed a memorandum of understanding to explore the creation of the company s first Centre of Excellence for Computational Social Science and Engineering in Singapore. Beyond understanding the Asian consumer, companies can also optimize their operations in Asia by tapping into Singapore s capabilities in data mining and machine learning. I2R houses one of the largest data mining teams in Asia and recently won General Electric s Flight Quest competition for beating the industry standard in predicting gate and runway arrivals for aircraft by at least 40 percent. Such capabilities allow companies to better predict their operations in a cost-effective manner and to increase the quality of their services. Similarly, Visa has collaborated with I2R to research the application of analytics to transaction data to detect online fraudulent merchants. This provides the opportunity for companies to develop solutions to effectively respond to the evolving threat landscape in Asia. New Opportunities Singapore as a Proprietary Data Banking Hub Singapore could also capitalize on new opportunities arising from the digitization of consumer data. According to a recent study by McAfee, consumers place an average value of US$37,438 on the digital assets they own across multiple digital devices. In the United States, this value climbs up to nearly US$55,000. Such individual digital assets include photo libraries, personal information, and entertainment files. They are accessed via a wide range of devices and stored on disparate platforms. In the long run, consumers will be searching for trusted channels and repositories to keep safe their personal proprietary data and other digital assets. Singapore is known for integrity, quality, reliability, rule of law, and enforcement of intellectual property rights. We have recently further boosted our reputation as a trusted hub via the enactment of the Personal Data Protection Act to provide baseline data protection rules governing the use of data. Singapore s credentials as a trusted hub for data management, coupled with the buildup of capabilities in applied analytics, puts us in a good position to be a proprietary data banking hub, not just for enterprise data but also for individual consumer data. There is strong potential for Singapore to emerge as a compelling location for proprietary data banking services, allowing for the integration and management of digital assets. The current push in data analytics will support Singapore in playing such a role in the future.

7 Singapore s Vision Singapore aims to be a global leader in applied analytics. Leading companies across different industry domains are setting up their analytics operations in Singapore in order to create new value for their businesses. In addressing the industry s need for data analytics talent, research capabilities, and the relevant domain expertise, it is no doubt that Singapore will be a key partner for companies to unlock the value of data. ABOUT THE EDB The Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) is the lead government agency for planning and executing strategies to enhance Singapore s position as a global business center. EDB dreams, designs, and delivers solutions that create value for investors and companies in Singapore. Our mission is to create for Singapore sustainable economic growth with vibrant business and good job opportunities. EDB s Host to Home strategy articulates how we are positioning Singapore for the future. It is about extending Singapore s value proposition to businesses not just to help them improve their bottom line, but also to help them grow their top line through establishing and deepening strategic activities in Singapore to drive their business, innovation, and talent objectives in Asia and globally. To access more insightful content and video on demand please, visit