The next time you are in Singapore and are impressed by the traffic management systems, think Wipro. The Bangalore-based IT services company has been working with Singapore’s Land Transport Authority (LTA) since 2009 to set up a data warehouse and make use of analytics to mine large data.
The project was conceptualised by the LTA and was much more than streamlining systems and transportation. The Singapore government wanted to create an experience for commuters by improving its services.
The LTA worked with Wipro on the design and implementation, and the LTA chose data warehouse, data integration and data quality, and analytic technologies from Teradata, Informatica and SAP Business Objects, respectively. For this, the LTA created a huge data warehouse called Planet. It went live within 12 months.
Planet would pool data from various business sources and support queries against three years’ worth of public transport transactions (4.6 billion records).
Phase-1 of the project, which was completed in 2010, has increased the system’s storage capacity to three years’ worth of records for public transport transactions, compared to three months’ records in the old system. The time it takes for extraction, transformation and loading has reduced by 67 per cent, while the time required for queries has dropped by 99 per cent.
In the old system, a query of 100 million records would have taken 18 hours to complete, but it takes barely 15 minutes in Planet. The new system offers features such as ad hoc queries and predictive modeling. Within the first three months of operation, users ran more than 4,000 new queries and created 70 new reports (in addition to 30 legacy reports) for policy reviews, analysis of new transport schemes and trend patterns to optimise resources.
For Wipro, this deal is significant for several reasons. First, this reiterates the company’s focus on the analytics and information management, which has been a focus area for CEO T K Kurien. Two, this validates Wipro’s foray into the public sector, outside of India.
Analytics has been a key focus for the company, especially since Kurien took over as the CEO. It was one of the three areas where the firm would be differentially investing. While Wipro had already been offering services and application in the data warehousing and business intelligence segment, these were much more fragmented.
“We weaved the various elements from the different part of the organisation and merged them under one single umbrella that reports to the CEO directly. We combined three large chunks into one service line, which has data warehousing, business intelligence and reporting, and statistical modelling and data scientist,” said K R Sanjiv, senior vice-president heading the company’s analytics and information management services unit.
In the last fiscal, the unit grew 25 per cent and its contribution to the company’s revenue was 6.6 per cent. Sanjiv has managed to grow the business to 7.1 per cent of the firm’s revenue for the second quarter of FY13. The service line has a total employee base of 8,600 and services over 300 clients.
“We have identified 18 areas across industries where analytics can be amenable and create impact on business’ key performance indicators (KPIs). For these 18 areas, we have clearly mapped the entire value chain and how do they can come together and create a solution to increase KPIs for that business,” added Sanjiv.
To be able to be address this, the company has also created a structure that addresses all the components, which it calls a three-in-a-box approach. “Under this, each team has a domain expert, scientist or analytics expert and technology expert. These people then talk to customers and how they can solve their issues. We have also created labs-on-hire, where companies can hire these labs and run a proof of concept before signing the cheque,” said Sanjiv.
The 18 areas identified will see the company making acquisitions. For instance, the recent acquisition of Australia’s Promax Applications Group. The acquisition gave Wipro expertise in the trade promotion planning, management and optimisation for consumer packaged goods (CPG). “For some of these we would like to grow organically, and we have done that, and in some we may look for acquisition. Especially if it allows us to leapfrog into the segment,” said Sanjiv.
Some of the areas that the company has identified include customer centricity in the telecom vertical, supply chain, etc. “So far, the majority of deals we have come from the banking and finance services, but we are also seeing traction in energy and utility and pharmaceuticals,” added Sanjiv.
