Data is already the most important asset in numerous organizations and its importance is constantly on the rise. Hence, an organization needs to be data driven. With the emergence of new technologies, the amount of data a company deals with has almost quadrupled, which makes it a challenge to keep all data in accessible form to all. It is important for the data engineers and data scientist to analyze data and take right decisions for the benefit of the organization. Just keeping records and collecting a lot of data does not make an organization data driven.
The practice of a forward looking analysis and diving deep into the facts to fetch the reasons behind certain happenings keeps the organization on data driven grounds. A company who wishes to be data driven must ensure that the sources for the data are reliable and trustworthy. In short, any industry right from hospitality to manufacturing is bound to keep the data alive and easily accessible to all within the organization. Data driven is all about creating tools, models, and abilities which help the organization in achieving its long term objectives.
Pic 1: Trends in Data influencing decision making by Stephen Dale
(sources Stephan Dale and PWC)
If we take the case of the Outsourcing industry, data has a huge role to play in its very existence. Customers are enjoying the benefits of outsourcing by exporting crucial tasks to outside experts yielding better quality, lower costs or other desired results. Similarly to other scenarios, a company cannot take an outsourcing decision in a flick of time. They have to think several times on whether they should outsource or not, what should be outsourced, when it should be outsourced, where it should be outsourced, and lastly how it should be outsourced (e.g. refer to the pliXos views on the “Outsourcing Dilemma”). All these stages require enormous amount of data to be gathered and analyzed to take an unbiased decision towards the well-being of the organization.
Fortunately entrepreneurs have come up with innovative plans to revive the Software outsourcing market. There are companies like pliXos which offers a combination of different cloud based software tools intended to provide the right information to each customer in any phase of Sourcing life cycle.
The rise of digital technology has revolutionized the business in every vertical. So is the case in Information Technology Outsourcing. It is important for IT companies to be aware of the innovations taking place. Software development typically is a complex process and companies should generate and consume a lot of data from initial to final stage.
For a technology based data driven organization there are certain prerequisites regarding data collected on which it runs.
Reliable:
The sources from where the data is being collected should be reliable. People are generating more data than ever before, with 40 zettabytes expected to be created by 2020. For software companies the data collected should be right and from an authentic source. Data has to be absolute clean, unbiased, useful, and of course trustworthy. Companies like pliXos provides innovative platform and tools to provide valuable and trustworthy data to its customers with minimum fee. Its B2B Marketplace provides useful and reliable data about providers for application development. Also it helps a company to analyze whether it should go for an in-house job for software development or look for service providers outside their organization.
Data accessibility:
The data collected should be easily accessible to all. Often companies look for software service providers for their software projects. It is really difficult for companies to decide where to go and which profile to select for their upcoming projects. pliXos simplifies this process by providing access to a well selected database of service providers who have proven records of their work. Consequently customers not only get a chance to view the SW service providers from different places around the world but also to analyze the differences in choosing one from the list i.e. costs associated, time involved, their performance ratings provided by other customers etc. In this context pliXos plans to extend its cloud based marketplace by a dedicated mobile app. Analyzing SW service providers goes mobile enabling to handle such projects with ease.
Alerting:
Data collecting process should also be accompanied with alerting. In a software development project the customers should know about the progress of work. This keeps the customers objective and the outsourcing contract run parallel to each other. Companies like pliXos have cloud based tools and concepts such as Outsourcing Director which provide meaningful data and keep the customers informed about their projects so that it does not go off track.
One question which has to be addressed in this regards from every company, sooner or later, is how to identify the right service provider with the right characteristics. To support this process pliXos has developed a free B2B Marketplace is focused on outsourced software development (Application Development & Maintenance). The B2B Marketplace connects businesses at all sizes with IT Service provider from all parts of the world.
Pic 2: Scientific based Provider Rating as developed for the pliXos B2B Marketplace
The provider rating gives an easy to understand rating of providers by combining Software Quality, Service Quality and Company Quality. A perfect example for data driven analytics. Furthermore, customers get access to a second rating solely by other customers. Data a customer will hardly get by himself or via any other B2B platform.
Pic 3: Customer’s feedback on providers developed for the pliXos B2B Marketplace
Analytical:
Transforming data assets into competitive form is done by analysis which drives business decisions. Visibly cloud technologies are gaining much market and enables companies to take more prompt and important decisions. In case of software market, a good software project often is complex and may take more time and effort than estimated. This also takes away a good amount of money from the customer’s pocket. To manage this complexity pliXos has a service “Sourcing Advisory as a Service - SAaaS®” which helps customers in full governance and – if wanted - takes 100 percent of the responsibilities as a prime contractor. This helps the customers to complete the project in estimated time and budget.
In short pliXos sees itself as a provider of solutions to problems faced by most of the software companies in accomplishing as well as governing their IT outsourcing projects successfully. The latest developments in automating processes along the full outsourcing life cycle have been combined in a SaaS-based tool-suite to radically simplify global outsourcing. Structured data delivers more transparency, improves sourcing relationships and creates more outsourcing value.
Comments or interested in digging deeper? Contact us directly This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Or follow us @pliXos_com, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, Youtube, Slideshare.
Sources:
1. Stephen Dale
2. PWC Global Data & Analytics Survey 2016
3. Creating a Data-Driven Organization by Carl Anderson
