Use of Data Analytics in the Corporate Sector of Bangladesh

Data generation across the globe is reaching new heights. The past two years alone have generated more data than all of human history before that. This powerful explosion has opened up a range of new opportunities for businesses across industries, from the Finance and Banking sector, the most traditional of the bunch, to Marketing and Advertising, E-commerce, and so forth.

When once actionable insights used to be derived manually from data on Excel sheets, a rather time-intensive task, modern Data Analytics today has paved the way for a much faster and more efficient analytical procedure with the use of advanced software like Hadoop, MapReduce, HIVE etc. The emergence of new fields such as Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning have all been contributing to the driving up of competition among businesses – it’s all coming down to how well an organization is able to harness the power of data.

Data Analytics for Financial Institutions

The financial sector of Bangladesh currently analyses credit information and ratings provided by Credit Rating Information & Services Limited (CRISL), a private company that rates companies, and Bangladesh Bank’s credit information bureau (CIB). While these often provide insufficient and often dubious information on client behavior and geographic location, an extensive analysis of client behavior at every financial touch-point (alongside its location), from the time when an account is opened to when one of those defaults, could identify fraudulent and risky accounts that can protect these institutions against financial vulnerabilities. Improved application of data analytics can take the guesswork out of the jobs of financial institutions and replace it with solid, timely, relevant information to support decision-making and improve financial governance.

Data Analytics for Telecom Companies

Bangladesh’s total number of Mobile Phone subscribers has reached 195.09 Million at the end of May, 2024, making customer segmentation one of the prime steps here to becoming a successful telecom operator. By identifying customer demographics and their needs, customer usage patterns, geographical usage trends, calling-circle data, behavior data from clickstream logs, or support call center statistics, companies can tailor calling plans, products, and services to ensure customer retention and maximum satisfaction from each group. Big Data Analytics can analyze network traffic accurately in real-time and optimize routing and service quality. The problem of call drop, which is possibly the biggest contributor to churn rate can be addressed by advanced analysis of Call Detail Records data, region-wise rate of call drops and reason for call drops, revenue loss due to those and finally recognizing patterns in those to bring workable solutions.

Data Analytics for Manufacturing Companies

Most manufacturing companies in Bangladesh rely on corrective or reactive practices instead of proactive ones. Predictive data analytics can predict equipment failure using either time-based or usage-based methods as well as answer questions such as, whether incremental maintenance or running the equipment until failure results in more cost-saving. It can guide inventory planning by forecasting future demand and supply using existing data, which in turn helps optimize reorder points to avoid and reduce excess stock, inadequate stock, and risks of obsolescence. Supply chain risk also can be minimized with the help of analytics; Companies can predict the time and the probability of potential delays and develop contingency plans. Moreover, they can also aid in price optimization by pooling in internal, company-specific and external, competitor information.

Data Analytics in Consumer Goods and Service Companies

In a report by Internet Retailing, it was revealed that one of the biggest complaints by customers is that companies fail to provide personalized experiences to them. With the increased adoption of online platforms by businesses in Bangladesh, customers are interacting with companies through multiple channels. Hence, targeting marketing campaigns to the right crowd, personalizing experience for them and improving customer engagement becoming more complex depends on developing a better understanding of the needs, behavior and preferences of the customers by mining, combining and analyzing the data from both traditional and digital sources. These can also help companies craft better product recommendations as data analysis gives you insights into how customers perceive your product and services. A lot of these works are still being done using intuition and past experience, when with advanced software much more accurate and discernable results can be obtained with new marketing initiatives.

The Future of Data Analytics in Bangladesh

A compelling argument in favor of the widespread potential of Big Data adoption in Bangladesh is that 91 percent of its total population has access to the Internet. So, alongside an uptick in data generation, awareness of the concept of Big Data and its potential is also increasing here. Data Scientist/Engineer jobs are on the rise. Nevertheless, the benefits of big data are still largely untapped by Bangladeshi companies. Softograph has been keeping a keen interest in big data analytics since 2012 and has been observing a rise in trends. Tech companies are leveraging the potential of data analytics to uncover hidden insights and concentrate their efforts where necessary. Softograph has helped similar companies harness the deep insights data analytics provide, and believes data analytics will play a major role in Bangladesh’s corporate sector in the future, if not already