‘India is emerging as a growing hub for analytics’

NICE Systems, headquartered in Israel, is a global provider of both cloud and on-premises enterprise software solutions that empower organisations to make smarter decisions based on advanced analytics of structured and unstructured data. NICE helps organisations of all sizes deliver better customer service, ensure compliance, combat fraud and safeguard citizens. Over 25,000 organisations in more than 150 countries, including over 85 of the Fortune 100 companies, use NICE solutions. In an interaction with BusinessLine, Sanjay Gupta, Managing Director, South Asia and Middle East, shared his thoughts and perceptions. Excerpts:

How big is the market for analytics in India?

The analytics/data science/big data industry in India is currently estimated at $2.03 billion annually in revenues and that is growing at a healthy compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23.8 per cent. The industry in India is expected to almost double by 2020. India is definitely emerging as a growing hub for analytics. We are optimistic about our growth across all aspects of analytics.

We see increasing interest from our client base to explore how analytics can help them improve efficiencies across their call centres, retail and branch operations and into the back office, where efficiencies are becoming increasingly important to cost management goals. And by using analytics to improve efficiencies, enterprises are, at the same time, able to improve their customer experiences.

How big is the market for robotics in India?

Robots are gradually taking over the world. According to IDC, robotics is considered to be one of the six innovation accelerators that propel digital transformation, opening new revenue streams and changing the way work is accomplished. It believes that robotics will change the model of business operations in several industries, drive innovation and have a profound impact on the IT functions of enterprises.

According to Gartner, by 2021, the majority of service providers will use intelligent automation. This, coupled with lowering the cost of commodity services, such as infrastructure maintenance management services, will increase margins by 15-20 per cent annually.

In short, it means that the service providers will use smart machine technology that will lower the cost of service delivery.

Which are the promising sectors for NICE in India?

NICE has very strong exposure to banking, financial services, telecom, BPO and manufacturing. And we will continue to build on these sectors.

Tell us how each of these sectors contributes to NICE’s India business?

The majority of the business comes from workforce management (WFM), real-time adherence (RTA), engage and analytics. Promising segments are robotics and analytics. NICE products deployed in sectors such as banking, financial services, insurance and BPOs are the largest contributors. For our newer solutions like RTA, we see traction with the manufacturing segment as well. So the traction is quite positive in all the segments I mentioned earlier.

Do you think the current economic scenario will impact NICE’s growth in the Indian market?

We help the world’s leading companies improve their business performance and take the right business decisions. Our solutions have a very clear return on investment (ROI), with strong value propositions. We help our customers gain productivity benefits, which become even more relevant in the current economic situation.

There are many companies that compete mainly on the quality of customer service they provide. Regardless of the economic scenario, this fact will not change.

NICE’s solutions help organisations stay in close touch with their customers, understand their needs, likes and dislikes, and accordingly align the workforce to service and retain the customer base. Hence, we don’t expect much impact on us.

How was your client acquisition in the last two financial years? What kind of deployment have you done?

We have customers from all the sectors I mentioned before — top BPOs, leading banks, telcos, financial services, etc. For instance, one India-based global BPO deployed NICE’s leading analytics solution to generate in-depth insights into customer and agent behaviour in order to help clients reduce business risk and increase their revenues.

NICE enjoys global market leadership in the area of speech analytics with a total market share of 47.2 per cent. For example, Citi uses NICE’s voice prints to authenticate customers quickly and effortlessly.

NICE will continue to build its comprehensive suite of customer experience solutions, allowing customers to take advantage of omni-channel opportunities by utilising our highly sophisticated analytics technology in the cloud. Our strategy is to approach the Indian market with our analytics solutions that are now enhanced following the acquisition of Nexidia.

Additionally, we have invested in adding new solutions to our portfolio to address new needs of our customers, such as robotic automation and Adaptive Workforce Optimisation (AWFO).

At the same time, we are also approaching mid-market and SMB solutions. NICE is pushing the envelope of the Customer Experience Analytics (cXa) line of business. The firm is also investing in the channel partner ecosystem. The focus is on recruiting specialised partners.