Business Analytics + SaaS

Other then being excited about a mini blog experiment project i'll embark this weekend, here's one intriguing mind titbit from Mr. Lau Shih Hor, CEO of Elixir Technology, in a seminar today:

Do you ever wish you can predict the future?

In reality, huge companies with large pool of resources have been investing heavily to do this via Business Analytics (BA), and they can to some extent read, analyse, and predict behaviors of their customers and inventory levels etc. They purchase this capability via established BA vendors like SAS, the company that gave me a scholarship which I will soon intern for.

However, what happens to smaller companies in Singapore with limited resources? Is there really no avenue for them to tap on such intelligence for themselves? This remained as a question until Mr. Lau shared with us his current quest to create a world where Business Analytics meets SaaS to serve SMEs in the long tail.

Though he could not disclose the specifics of his projects due to NDAs and various confidential experimentations, he shared enough to explain how BA SaaS work. Being someone who likes to pick up knowledge on any new technology and fires up with passion once these dots are connected to deliver business value, I can deeply relate to this subject matter. (Some past 'dots' I have explored - Technical: Done a scalable project with A* IHPC, cloud project on Google App Engine, data warehouse project on school facilities, data mining research on huge traffic data Business: Developed a simplified trend analysis tool for a local food chain to understand their business needs)

Thus, I am now constantly thinking of the mechanisms behind this new business model. It seems like in near future, this market will go through some vast improvements, and like how I am currently intrigued by the mechanisms of Social Media, I am also intrigued by the thought on how BA SaaS will work out. -- Just imagine, what will our world be like if in the near future, every food outlet/ retail outlet you go can predict and recommend accurately what you would like to eat and what products you'll buy based on your past habits?

Ok, that's all of my scratching-on-the-surface thoughts on the subject matter, any further elaboration will make this blog post a report. :P. For the benefit of those of you who may be lost with all my jargons despite the wiki links, here's a simple diagram I drew out to try to explain everything(will make it better resolution after class later) so that you don't leave this post empty handed:

Have a great day! :)