KIIT School of Management (KSOM), KIIT Deemed to be University organized its 1st National Business Analytics Konclave on 20th December, 2020. The theme of this year’s conclave was “Transforming Businesses using Data”.

Prof. Saroj Mahapatra, Director, KSOM, introduced everyone to the Industry Engagement Activities of KSOM and set the context of the conclave. He highlighted how data and its analysis are being used today in varied fields like water resource mapping, disaster management, weather forecasting along with various aspects of business management. He expressed the view that in the near future, the survival of a business will depend on the extent of application of data analytics.

Prof. Sasmita Samanta, Pro Vice Chancellor, KIIT Deemed to be University in her inaugural address, stated the increasing importance of business analytics because of the dynamic business environment and how it provides us with a system that we can trust and rely upon. She said that along with data analysis, AI is going to play a bigger role in different domains.

Dr. Ashwini Mathur, Solution Lead and Head Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Hub, Dublin at Novartis in his keynote address flagged the importance of having the right mind-set in the success of Analytics. He said that traditional businesses are collaborating with technology companies in order to solve their business problems in a competent manner.

He said that data science companies to be effective have to comprise of knowledge experts, data scientists, statisticians and storytellers.

Prof. S N Mishra, Dean KSOM summarised the discussions and offered the Vote of Thanks.

The inaugural session was followed by three panel discussions. The first panel discussion was on the topic – “Business Analytics Trends: An Industry Application Perspective”. The panel discussed about the imperative transition of companies from physical to digital in wake of the pandemic. This has resulted in enormous amount of data churn and the need to analyse the same. The varied perspectives of Descriptive, Inquisitive, Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics were also discussed. Analytics is a young industry and has a long way to go. The scope is humongous and the slow growth is due to capability gap.

The second panel discussion was on the topic – “Bridging the Gap between Academics and Analytics Industry”. The panel discussed about the various points that are important to bridge the gap between the analytics industry and academics and unanimously agreed on the fact that there is a huge gap between demand and supply with respect to resources in the analytics industry. The panel highlighted analytics is not about writing codes, but having domain knowledge and logical thinking in order to understand the issues and extract meaning out of data. The panellists advised students who want to transform into successful analytics professionals to inculcate skills ranging from critical thinking, communication to presentation. The panel opined the need for academia to conduct longer internships for students to have greater industry engagement.

The third panel discussion was on the topic – “Leveraging Data for Business Transformation”. The panel discussed about how important analytics is for gathering large volume of data at a much faster rate, churning them according to requirements for better business acumen. The panellists shed light on various concepts relating to Big Data Analysis and Machine Learning and spoke about how analytics helped in predicting the problems during this pandemic leading to increase in customer satisfaction.

The second half of the conclave consisted of seven workshops for the students with topics related to Building a profile in Business Analytics, Technical Skills for a Business Analytics role, Application of Business Analytics in Financial markets, Fintech, Supply Chain, Operations Management, HR Management and Marketing.

This was the first Business Analytics conclave organized by KIIT School of Management.  The Business Analytics conclave provided the students with an opportunity to interact with business leaders from across the nation. The conclave created a platform to connect industry professionals, academia and students.