Thought Leaders in Big Data: Interview with K.R. Sanjiv, SVP Analytics and Information Management Services, Wipro (Part 1)

K. R. Sanjiv is the senior vice president of analytics and information management services at Wipro, a global IT, consulting and outsourcing company that provides services to companies by leveraging their data. In this interview Sanjiv defines the term big data and shares his opinion on what the future of big data will look like.

Sramana Mitra: Sanjiv, tell us a bit about your role at Wipro and what the company is doing in the field of big data.

K. R. Sanjiv: You can view the organization’s structure as a set of horizontals and verticals. Verticals are by industry and there are six verticals we have defined. We have retail, CPG [consumer packaged goods], energy, etc. Those cover all the customers we have.

We also have six service lines. Service lines are responsible for a certain set of technologies around which service offerings will be built for each of those industry verticals. I look after one of the service lines, which is a business around what we call analytics and information management services. Essentially the focus is on advanced analytics, with statistical modeling, predictive mining, etc. It is also related to information management, and big data is a part of information management. This is all related to data, information structure, etc.

The third component is everything that is related to visualization – how people consume data. These are the three blocks under which the analytics and information management service line is focused. We offer these services across all these industries across the globe. It is a fairly large business. We currently have around 8,000 people and a revenue base of around $750 million in this space. That is what I look after in this space.

SM: How many customers are you catering to?

KS: Between 300 and 350 customers.

SM: Are these all Fortune 2000 customers?

KS: Yes.

SM: So, the problem domain we are talking about is big data in the context of large enterprises. Help us anchor this discussion on some of the most interesting big data projects that are happening with the analytics and information management business of Wipro.

KS: There is a lot of hype around big data, and if you look 18 months back we started with a lot of customers who were experimenting, doing proofs of concept, and dipping their hands in the big data platforms that were available. Over the last 18 months we have seen customers derive real value out of big data. Our projects are across industries, so I am picking up one just to highlight the kind of work that is being done around big data. In fact, I would like to highlight two or three projects that bring out different elements of big data and the value that is being created.

The first one is something we are doing for one of our clients. It is not so much about the volume that is involved in this case, but more about how to derive value from unstructured information that is in the enterprise. This is a high-tech enterprise. They sell high-tech equipment to consumers globally. They run a call center to help their clients. Say a call comes into the call center and somebody says, “ I have an X laptop from this company, and I want to give it to my daughter. I want to transfer software from my laptop to my daughter’s laptop.” The call center will probably help and do it. In 10 minutes they would close the call and notify us that it was done successfully. But look at what information was missing: the fact that it is probably a middle-class household, the fact that […] a new laptop has been bought, the fact that it is a family who lives together, etc. There is so much information that is being lost.

We get this information extracted and pass it on to their sales team. The amount of revenue they could generate from of those leads is very high. I am not allowed to share details, but it was a very substantial amount. This is an example of the kind of information that is lying within a organization. If you can extract information out of it, you can either use it for a cross-sale, up sale or even improving the customers’ experience. Somebody likes something and another person doesn’t like it – somebody likes to be called over the weekend, and somebody doesn’t. All that information will be available from internal sources. It is not a volume game, but it is about getting insights from different sources of data that are lying around.

This segment is part 1 in the series : Thought Leaders in Big Data: Interview with K.R. Sanjiv, SVP Analytics and Information Management Services, Wipro
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