Jodha Akbar, Chidambarm’s Budget and the nuclear deal

Marvas request to the king to wave the taxes in the dry prone region - Movie
Business Lobby asking tax wavers and exemptions with the finance minister
Sugarcane farmers asking for price support – Vidharba farmer suicide.


Ajmer daughter given to Akbar as a part of Diplomatic card to save the state of bloody war or even be for the sake of fear - Movie
US wanting the nuclear deal to go through with India and china’s opposition to it; needless to say the US intentions are quite ubiquitous. Left equivocal opposition sinning almost the same raga in the same way as china does!!!!!!!!!!!!


Tolerance of the king morphed by historic interpreters; always seen on religious scale by the respective clergies. – Movie.
Politicians and vested interests influence the ban on movie on the grounds of historic discrepancies. Though the discrepancy is highly debatable like any other historic events, the motto seems to be to secure the interest of divide and rule.



Tolerance is the way forward says the king. – Movie
Everybody says that realizing and following it is a different story.

The king is so far from the ground facts and makes a disastrous decision, doesn’t have the time and patience to understand the vaasthavikta (Ground reality) – Movie
Despite the much fashioned open door policy in our companies, Management is so up and blind to see the ground realities. In other words “Vaasthaviktha” of a process is often not understood accurately by the top brass while they influence or make decisions on such processes. Not even are the voices heard from the ground force. Later on the management tries to clean the stink of not knowing the facts.

Analyst’s role to recommend the king of taking the right decision based on reality / data & in the wake of all the factual situations
Today we look at our personal and vested interests and see whats in it for me than to see whats in it for the organization. NO doubt one needs to look out for what he gets but not by undermining / influencing the company strategy.


King is so far from the facts – doesn’t have the time and patience to understand the vaasthavikta (Ground reality)

National security integrity and sovereignty stands topmost above all under all circumstances for each of the elected representative. - Movie
The integrity of the electoral constituency and its integrity is all that matters today.
Ex - Nandigram, Vidharbha, a lot more political game frames.

Three things run big. Politics (Power and money), religion, Love and all of them supersede the rest.

Is history to be interpreted or learnt as a collection of facts?
Can a history have different versions?
Would an event be anything other than true?
In probability theory an event can either be true or false, if we equate history as an event in the past, it can only be one the same event can’t be two, and either it has to be a separate event not true to the other.
What is a nation?
What unites the country?
I’ll leave this for you to ponder.

BANG BANG BANG I'm BACK from DESERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oomph martini, beer, food, ***, tandoor, music, coffee, chats, party, loafing, meeting, …., blogging etc etc etc all was under siege while I agreed to sacrifice em for learning advanced analytical techniques from profound professors at www.businessanalytics.in. for the last four months. Feels like I just came out of vacation in desert and had excess “khaghurs”
It was more like a zipped executive MBA in statistics in just 3 months. For about every hour that was taught I was supposed to put in at least 6 hours to digest them. Well it is worth it, I realized the fact that the analytics just does not end with Business Intelligence tools.

While I smoke this night and around my bed lies fat books that I carry along with me to office every day. Every tiny time I get I try to turn over some pages only to realize that 24 hours is not enough to gain expertise in the subject. It’s just not the statistical part that’s throttling me, to add to it I got to learn playing with SAS. Oh yeah it’s easy it’s more of English than Greek and Latin but practicing it all with little time while I burn the midnight oil, lol I feel I’m becoming a nerd and no one would marry me….


My birthday passed by, it was a very interesting date with the date and the data that day while I dined with colleagues. Needless to say gifts cheered me a little while I was trying to fight my case with the bank to get my big cheque en-cashed, it is still hanging in the air, thanks to strikes, bundhs, kotak and all the hopeless banking services

Lets get to the point now, hmmm I don’t seriously know where to start, so many things running in my mind.. Well let me put it this way, post the analytics class, and trying to relate it back to my work god help all the companies there is such a great disjoint in what we do and what we are suppose to do. I reiterate my point as –

Where the business goal transcends teams, cultures, geography;
Where exists harmonized processes within a cross functional Analytical Team;
Where the outputs of the team are successfully amalgamated with the interest of the stakeholders
Where recommendations come out from the depth of data blended with business sense and logic;
Where tireless striving on actions stretches its arms towards perfection and success countering all the internal and external forces;
Where the team / Organization is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought
And action by rationalists;
Into that heaven of analytics, oh my Father, let my country and my organization awake.

Shall start a new tide of analytical boredom soon until then keep dripping and sipping fun

Business week piece on R&D

Untill I get off the work Pressure, an interesting piece from BusinessWeek.


Why are companies slow to make full use of their offshore brainpower? Because managing a globally integrated product-development team is difficult. One obstacle is "not invented here" syndrome: Developers at headquarters tend to look down on suggestions from offshore affiliates. Internal competition between different R&D teams within the same company remains rife.On top of this, many companies lack harmonized work processes and systems,and few have enough staff with international experience. The bottom line: "Few companies are currently reaping the gains from this globalization," ---Booz Allen-INSEAD stated.

The Generic BI Architecture

The chart below shows more or less an architecture of Busines Intelligence delivery right from the data generations Stage to the Report Generation & decision Support. The flowchart is divided into 3 phases, Phase1,Phase2,Phase3. I shall discuss Each of them very briefly (Click on the pictures for better viewing of the text in the diagram)



• The phase 1 of the diagram involves collecting the Transaction data from various operational data sources (ODS) that are deemed essential for records storage by the business.

• The data from all these various sources is extracted to one region for further manipulation. This is a very complex region where the data is brought on platform from various sources.

• Here the data may be extracted real time, hourly basis, daily, weekly monthly etc depending on the business need & other constraints.

• The phase 2 starts when all the data that is in the single platform is then made into a single format & made relevant in terms of removing all the inconsistency that may be prevailing.

• Again even this complex process is extremely important & is termed as data integration.

• Once the data is made consistent it is further normalized as per certain rules & standards of data warehousing & as required by the business.

• The data is stored constantly in the Data warehouse & is segregated in to different tables for relevance while storing.

• There are so many other complex processes involved here & in the previous phases, I wouldn’t be going deep into it.

• Once the data storage part is complete then comes the reporting part.

• Cubes are created for faster retrieval from the data warehouse & to view its multidimensionality.

• Data marts are created so that the relevant stakeholders can extract the data or do reporting from the data relevant only to their functional unit.

• Scorecards, Dashboards, & other reporting can be done directly from data warehouse or from data marts or from cubes as may be the need.

• The reporting part also involves a certain amount of analytics but most of this is very limited. Unless the end user is very well versed with the OLAP tool, data, analytics a very good outcome for supporting ad-hoc & complex business decisions become very difficult & most of the BI projects are not able to deliver this. This not only due to the tool but also due to several other factors. Thus versatility needed for the analytics team gets hampered & thereby the BI project outcome. All the million dollars go in a ditch.

The bewildered state of a Business Analyst!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Time again I have tried to emphasize what a business analyst is & should be doing. In my previous topic “Critical Skills a Business Analyst must have” I have given a framework on what is expected of BA based on the Gartner theory & industry expectations. It’s sad to see most of the generation getting swayed by terms & jargons & trying finding what they want in the wrong place & at last ending up smelling socks. Well the industry in the mother of all the confusions!! For those of you who still feel that Business Analyst is obscure, I think this should help.

• Systems analysts who generally analyze the requirements & thereby find the system needs to fulfill such requirements. Act as business/system liaison between business and application developers.

•Requirements analysts - who generally do the requirements elicitation & understand what people say and to detect what they might be hesitant to say blah blah blah

• Business system analysts these are generally the victims formed by those companies who believe in MPD (Multiple personality disorder) & cost cutting. They want you to do both the work of requirement & system analyst & a little of other things also until you go completely mad & run out of the company heels over head. Oh well did you think the fancy title is good? Try your luck.

• I love this role for all its challenges involved in practicing & living the unbridled forces that influence business. Simply put Business analysts are responsible for understanding the business and making recommendations for sustainability, risk mitigations, Business improvement & profits blah blah blah

For those of you who need a strong dosage of analytics I’d recommend be sure you understand what continuous & discrete data is, before you click on www.businessanalytics.in
For those of you who think have strong appetite for Greek & Latin with all the animation in between, if you would like to work in a warehouse & have the nerve to load & unload bulks of data & for more gyaan on this log on to http://www.keysoft.co.in/

Disclaimer - Both the institutes train in different domains, please exercise diligence before enrolling yourself into these & first decide which one you fit in.

Butterfly Says Happy Diwali To you !!!!!!

”One day, a small opening appeared on a cocoon; a man sat and watched for the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole. Then, it seems to stop making any progress.It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could and it could not go any further.So the man decided to help the butterfly: he took a pair of scissors and opened the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily.But it had a withered body, it was tiny and shrivelled wings.The man continued to watch because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would open, enlarge and expand, to be able to support the butterfly’s body, and become firm. Neither happened!In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a withered body and shrivelled wings. It never was able to fly. What the man, in his kindness and his goodwill did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening, were God’s way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings, so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon. Sometimes, struggles are exactly what we need in our life.If God allowed us to go through our life without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as we could have been. Never been able to fly.

I asked for Strength...
And God gave me difficulties to make me strong.

I asked for Wisdom...
And God gave me Problems to solve.

I asked for prosperity...
And God gave me a Brain and Brawn to work.
I asked for Courage…..
And God gave me obstacles to overcome.

I asked for Love...
And God gave me Troubled people to help.
I asked for Favors...
And God gave me Opportunities.

“I received nothing I wanted...
But I received everything I needed."
Live life without fear, confront all obstacles and evince that you can overcome them.
“I hope this little message on this Diwali Season would bring in the understanding that why we come across difficult situations in our life before we reach our ultimate destination............”I wish u a very HAPPY DIWALI to you and to your family members !!
May god bless this country, with peace & prosperity – Data Smith

(Courtesy – UIS HR)

Critical skills that a BA / BI team Must Have

As I have reiterated that all businesses are and should be dynamic to survive the storm of this competition, Business initiatives are invariably affected by the environment in which they operate, and they are shaped by many external forces including government policy, international relations, geopolitical stability, economics, market trends, terrorism, consumers, social changes, media etc. They are also influenced by several internal forces that influence the context, in which these initiatives operate, processes, staff turnover, corporate restructuring, policies, people, work atmosphere etc.

While the CEO / Decision making Body Decides on a strategy, an BA should have some skills in anticipating potential outcomes of such initiative / strategy / change, also see it in the light of the current market & company placements (Internal & external forces) & take necessary steps to protect the interest of the stakeholders.

Anticipating changes, analyzing potential impact, avoiding derailment of the initiative form one area where the BA / BI team / BI component need to be extremely strong, consistent & coherent.

BI teams, BA’s are key people in realizing a company’s vision & providing solution to the challenges that a company or an initiative has, will have & is having. More importantly the core challenge is in accurately answering the business questions that arise at different levels, articulate complex statistical & data jargons to a language understandable by the business, BU managers. & thereby induce radical changes.

Offering critical insights to both internal & external forces that affect initiatives, planning for operational excellence, having strong ability to analyze & see details, but at the same time conceptualize the big picture.* (This is a very important & interesting topic which I shall discuss in detail later on) In all aspects of business they should increase the efficiency, accuracy, speed of decision making in all the conventional, practical & creative decision making areas.

Finding new data patterns of the domain applying logic, new ideas, intuition (which comes by domain experience) should fuel the company’s prospects into a BLUE OCEAN & find potential un-dominated areas to excel, is also important for a BI team.

We should be the people / team with technical, Business, analytical, & strong communications skills (mails, verbal, written, non written, presentations etc).
This should help the team / BA / BI to frame business problems in understandable terms to help manage business implications, voice concerns on a strategy/initiative which may be at stake if the BI is not heard.