Tech tonic

Calcutta, July 29: Accenture is betting big on its India operations in information management. This will help the company cash in on the business intelligence (BI) segment, which is set to double globally from $6 billion in the next few years.

Information management, in which Accenture has an experience of over 15 years, includes BI services. Under these services, Accenture analyses structured and unstructured (portal and content management) data for companies to give them a competitive edge.

Traditionally, the US and the European countries have been the largest BI markets. However, Asia-Pacific has now become the fastest growing market globally. It is growing at an annual rate of 50 per cent.

“The Indian business intelligence market is about 4 per cent of the Asia-Pacific market. The Indian market grew at a CAGR of 25 per cent last year, making it one of the fastest growing BI markets in the region,” said Royce Bell, chief executive officer of Accenture Information Management Services.

Bell called India the “crown jewel” in Accenture’s global delivery network in information management.

“The demand continues to be strong and we are committed to growing our practice in India. Over the next two years, we will double our information management capability headcount in India,” he added.

As companies are expanding globally through mergers and acquisitions, BI and information management become important, said Bell.

Accenture has set up a centre of excellence in India for data management.

A Health and Life Sciences centre caters to the needs of healthcare clients. It provides analytics to clinical trials data.

In information management, unstructured data is proving to be the greatest challenge globally.

Around 80 per cent of the companies fail to provide their staff with complete access to unstructured data such as email and web content.

Only 64 per cent of the companies are aiming to address this issue in the next three years, according to an Accenture global CIO survey.

Around 57 per cent of the respondents saw business intelligence as a core component to gain a competitive edge within three years. Sixty per cent of the respondents are barely using it for competitive differentiation because of lack of funding.

According to Gartner, BI technology was given the highest priority by chief information officers in 2006.

Small and medium businesses in other Asia-Pacific countries such as Singapore are also trying to utilise BI tools. However, the high cost of such technology is proving to be a deterrant for these companies.