Exclusive Interview with Anshuman Bhar, CEO & Founder, Aays Analytics

Financial planning and analysis are an inevitable part of charting a company's growth plan. Cost-efficiency, optimal allocation of resources, and tracking KPIs all become routine tasks for FP&A teams, often making it difficult to have foresight in terms of predictions. This can happen despite having a good amount of data and a well-gathered analytics team. Aays analytics, a data analytics company is on a mission to bridge the data inventory gap through research and development thereby facilitating intelligent decision-making, particularly in the finance realm.  Analytics Insight has engaged in an exclusive interview with Anshuman Bhar, CEO & Founder at Aays Analytics.

1. Kindly brief us about the company, its specialization, and the services that your company offers.

Founded in Dec' 2018, Aays partners with global conglomerates and fast-growing organizations to contextualize the analytics journey using deep functional expertise in finance and corporate affairs. Solutions are typically targeted to the CXO office, FP&A, controllers, and finance operations. Usually, functional context is rare to find in the analytics transformation program run in large enterprises which results in lower adoption and eventually in failure. The teams operate in multiple silos which affects innovation and scale and the majority of the time is spent developing backward-looking insights / KPIs which indicates the lower maturity of finance analytics programs.

To address these gaps and leapfrog the art of decision-making in large enterprises, we have also invested in a small R&D team to productize some of the learnings and use cases for modernizing the finance function. Our solutions and products will address the above gaps through the democratization of AI/ML highly contextualized for the finance function and is an open platform that enables innovation, customization, and scale.

2. With what mission and objectives, the company was set up? In short, tell us about your journey since the inception of the company.

We have set up this organization with a core vision of powering decision-making in all organizations by leveraging data and consulting techniques augmented with AI/ML. To realize this objective, our ambition is to become the world's most preferred organization for talented professionals across the globe and to empower them to create innovative and powerful solutions.

The journey has been fascinating so far and we are constantly working towards that vision. Some of the milestones we have achieved so far in the journey:

• We are preferred partners with Microsoft, big data technologies viz. Databricks, Dremio.
• We have developed pre-built consulting frameworks and have co-created use case focussed modules for certain industries viz. CPG etc. Such modules not significantly accelerate time-to-insight but also improve analytics adoption.
• To drive innovation, we have invested in a small R&D team to productize some of the learnings and use cases for modernizing the finance function. Our solutions and products will address the above gaps through the democratization of AI/ML highly contextualized for the finance function over an open platform that enables innovation, customization, and scale.
• In our endeavor to become a people-first organization, we have started a concept of a "Happiness Index" among employees to ensure that we not only develop and nurture professionally but also provide an environment for personal growth.

3. Tell us how your company is contributing to the IoT/AI/Big Data Analytics/Robotics/Self-Driving Vehicles/Cloud Computing industry of the nation and how the company is benefiting the clients.

In traditional setups, business-critical insight generation from data coming out of large and complex ERP systems is often siloed; data assets are non-scalable and are not meant for building AI/ML capabilities. Teams operating in multiple silos affect innovation and scale with the majority of the time spent in developing backward-looking insights / KPIs which indicates the lower maturity of analytics transformation programs. We will revolutionize the way analytics programs are run in large and complex data landscapes. In this context, we are building a modularised and open platform that provides the ability to combine consulting frameworks with big data ecosystems and develop highly contextual AI/ML capabilities.

We are building focussed modules for finance functions leveraging hyper accelerator ecosystems viz. Microsoft Azure, big data technologies, and enterprise ERP systems viz. SAP. These modules will have in-built AI to provide predictive capabilities to businesses that are customizable and scalable. This will result in faster insights, and higher analytics adoption and will lead to the democratization of AI/ML in organizations so that predictive capabilities can be leveraged.

4. Kindly mention some of the major challenges the company has faced till now.

1. Our customers usually face big challenges in building a repository of high-quality data in a large, complex, and scattered data landscape. Most organizations are struggling to collect data in the right granularity and quality let alone derive insights from it. Hence, the overall investment in such projects is very high resulting in which it being difficult to convince stakeholders to take analytics transformation initiatives.

2. Building Talent base and talent retention. Good Talent is rare and nurturing them is a challenge. Getting specialized people who have business context and data context is a difficult search because they are rarely available.

3. Analytics transformation program is a complex journey and it takes a lot of persuasion and empathy to bring all stakeholders – project sponsors, business, and technology professionals – on the same page. Most analytics programs fail due to a mismatch of expectations on multiple fronts – either the broader goals are not clearly laid out, or the total cost of ownership is not estimated, the time to complete is often underestimated, or the value realizable is difficult for businesses, etc. So, the challenge is to bring the right skills and talent mix to manage the project expectations well.

5. How is IoT/Big Data/AI/Robotics evolving today in the industry as a whole? What are the most important trends that you see emerging across the globe?

• Big Data Fabric: Industrialising the analytics journey with Big data fabric architectures can not only accelerate the insight generation process but also empower the business networks with enhanced security across the cloud networks.
• (Data as a Service) DaaS – Industrializing data and developing modularised, re-usable data engines is one of the foundations for high Speed to market for analytics and reporting needs. At Aays, we are revolutionizing this concept with our customers to drive complex analytics transformation journeys with DaaS as a fundamental pillar
• Democratising AI/ML in analytics solutions and integrating the same in business workflows provide a significant competitive edge to businesses. We are building the AI/ML layer in Order-to-cash, procure-to-pay functions for customer segmentation, vendor clustering, and driving many other complex decisions.
• DataOps: DataOps, is a methodology and practice that focuses on agile, iterative approaches for dealing with the full lifecycle of data. It incorporates the Agile methodology to shorten the cycle time of analytics development in alignment with business goals.

6. How is Machine Learning (ML) shaping the IT/Big Data/Robotics industry today? How is it changing the role of CIOs and Leaders?

• Finance AI and Hyperautomation: By adding artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to robotic process automation (RPA) systems, finance functions are not only automating the workflows but also providing an intelligence layer to drive business value.
• AutoML – At Aays, we are building AutoML capabilities within our modularised use cases to achieve faster results and democratize AI/ML functionalities within business stakeholders.
• Augmented Analytics – Nowadays, AI is bringing efficiencies in the conventional IT operational processes and significantly improving the operational process thereby resulting in releasing the mind space, and budget of the CIO to focus on delivering business values rather than just counting the beans. Machine learning and AI are enabling data preparation, insight generation, and insight explanation to augment how people explore and analyze data in analytics and BI platforms. It also helps create citizen data scientists by democratizing AI through self-service. Given this transformation, CIOs and business leaders need to shift their gears to machine-augmented thinking and encourage all stakeholders to continuously work towards this. This not only needs an understanding of how technology / ML works and how it can impact the business functions but also require orchestrating a cultural change within the organization to increase adoption of ML and build capabilities around it. Further, due to the democratization of AI/ML, CIO now has to support a wider audience than what was done in the past.

7. What are your growth plans for the next 12 months?

• Revenue growth: We are aiming to reach the top-line by $10 Mn in the next 12 months
• R&D Center of Excellence: Develop a center of excellence to create use-case focussed modules like lego blocks leveraging the cloud native ecosystem
• Started UK and Singapore entity
• Expand in Europe and UK

8. Which industry verticals are you currently focusing on? And what is your go-to-market strategy for the same?

• CPG and Automotive are the top industries we are targeting
• Our go-to-market strategy is to deploy business outcome-driven analytics solutions for our customers. In this endeavor, we have taken the following steps:
  1. We are productizing our learnings in the CPG space to create use-case focussed accelerators on top of ERP viz. SAP
  2. We are leveraging big data technology ecosystems to co-create accelerators and products which will significantly reduce the time to market and Capex to derive business value.

9. What is your Leadership Mantra?

People are at the heart of all transformation and one needs to be empathetic and provide them with the right environment so that they transform into leaders.