Leading the analytics division at Vodafone, Kavita Dwivedi has an experience of more than a decade in areas of marketing and consumer analytics with global clients. A sought out professional in predictive modelling and fraud management across domains such as banking, insurance, telecom, Dwivedi has worked with the likes of Infosys, IBM, Brillio.
At Vodafone, she heads a team of data scientists, consultants and analysts to deliver projects using machine learning algorithms, predictive modelling techniques, data analysis and visualization. She manages the advanced analytics projects at Vodafone and is instrumental in expanding the influence of analytics in enterprise space through group enterprise. An expertise in B2B enterprise analytics, she also comes with experience in consulting and advisory services in the area of Enterprise Risk Management.
In a candid chat with Analytics India Magazine, Kavita Dwivedi, Head, Enterprise Analytics at Vodafone Global Services, spoke about her journey so far, her role at Vodafone, the trends in analytics industry and much more. Read the complete interview as below:
[dropcap size=”2″]AIM[/dropcap] Analytics India Magazine- How has the journey been so far at Vodafone in terms of adopting an analytics-driven approach?
[dropcap size=”2″]KD[/dropcap]
Kavita Dwivedi- 9 months into the role at VGS and it has been a really incredible journey. I had 10 years of Consulting experience in Finance domain and having largely worked in Third Party Consulting companies in Advanced Analytics space. This was a change where I was taking a risk by changing my domain to Telecom and moving to work in a captive. On both counts, the risk has worked.
AIM- Vodafone Analytics helps organisations make better decisions by providing valuable insights into movement and usage patterns. Can you describe in detail how Vodafone leverages analytics?
KD- Vodafone leverages analytics in areas across the telecom life cycle. Be it Sell, Build, Run across the customer life cycle, we believe in providing the customer a delightful experience so that they get best value of our services, buy again from us and continue to be with us. Analytics is in the DNA of the organization as we leverage advanced analytics models and Big data environment to understand customer behaviour, profile them, device targeted campaigns, help resolve issues faster and thus be the best telecom service provider across B2B /B2C customers.
AIM- What is your take on the state of analytics in the country? What will Vodafone’s strategy be towards driving the technology?
KD- Analytics in the country is going through a positive evolution cycle. Different sectors, industries have realized that to be a leader and a strong competitor you need to have analytics as part of your process in marketing, operations, finance, product innovation, pricing, customer service and social media analytics. The maturity cycle across different players is different but the truth is all of them are moving higher up the analytics journey.
AIM- Describe few technological trends and impediments you notice in the analytics space. How do you embed those trends into your solutions?
KD- Analytics is going to drive businesses for the next decade right from the way they sell, manage their finances, operate, audit, report, interact with customers, product design and pricing…and the list goes on. These are times of real time decisioning, making an impact before your competitor and keeping a tab on online customer pulse. The mining of petabytes of data in seconds to make business decisions and building a product to support this will be the key game changer in the coming years. Analytics will move from a purely services industry to a healthy mix of product and services based industry. So Big data Analytics, combined with M2M and real time recommendation systems are going to rule.
AIM- What are the most significant challenges you face being at the forefront in analytics space?
KD- The top 2 challenges that I have faced being in forefront of Analytics journey is:
- Driving the Value of Analytics and its Usage within the Organization – It’s the most difficult task for Consultants, Analytics leaders to get a buy in from Business Owners that Usage of Analytics Insights and forecasting using the right data can not only accelerate their growth but also help them make the right decisions . Analytics is still considered as a luxury and not a key part of running day to day business in most of the organizations. And that’s what is separating Analytics First Organizations from others.
- Hiring the Right Analytics Talent- This has been a real challenge in even the past decade and will continue to do so. Talent in Analytics has to be a good mix of people with good domain understanding, Analytical background and Business Consulting, and this combination is rare. With new areas like Visualization in real time, Big Data Analytics, AI it is becoming even more challenging to pick people who have been there and done that. The Supply demand gap is huge and top universities globally need to play an important role to bridge this in the next decade.
AIM- Would you like to leave a piece of advice for all start-ups in this space eyeing to make it big through leveraging analytics.
KD- Startups are mushrooming, important is to see who has the right attitude, drive and passion to drive it to be successful. Also it’s increasingly becoming difficult to create a niche space for yourself in the space and forecast the customer needs at least a year in advance so that you can be ready with the right product/services when market peaks. A perfect example was how Paytm grabbed the market share post demonetization. You have to be agile, respect talent and be a leader in innovation.
