[kictanet] Why are companies in Africa - From Telcos to Big Ticket Retailers - blind to the immense possibilities of BigData?

[Ali Hussein]

Muraya, Kivuva

Thanks for your input. My take is that most of us have no patience for building organizations to last or we are just employees waiting for a pay cheque at the end of the month..sad but true.

For as long as we don't tie performance to tangible results we will continue to look at such opportunities as theories to be read as a link from a blog post, twitter feed, LinkedIn or Kictanet. 

Let me demonstrate. 

A few weeks ago I berated Telcos in this country about sending useless and unnecessary spam to me and others. Guess what? Almost immediately after the SMSs doubled!!

It's like they were daring me UTA DO? :) 

now I know for a fact that this particular Telco implemented SAS 

http://www.sas.com/

So what do you make out of that? SAS is a market leader in Business Analytics and Intelligence. In fact together with IBM they have literally been responsible for a new software segment - Enterprise Marketing Management. According to Gartner they are at the top end of the leadership quadrant in this space.  

http://www.gartner.com/technology/reprints.do?id=1-1CPB65F&ct=121102&st=sb

http://www.marketingscientists.com/

With this, one is forced to ask a question. Are these Multi-million dollar enterprise capacity building projects just a fade? Why invest so much money then fail to fully utilize them? Is it a cultural issue? Are we lacking in customer performance metrics? Or do we just not care?  

Or maybe our fat balance sheets and profits are luring us into a false comfort zone.

Ali Hussein
CEO | 3mice interactive media Ltd
Principal | Telemedia Africa Ltd

+254 713 601113

"The future belongs to him who knows how to wait." - Russian Proverb

Sent from my iPad

On May 18, 2013, at 10:47 AM, Kivuva <Kivuva at transworldafrica.com> wrote:

> That is good observation Ali. I think it boils down to exposure.
> 
> If necessity is the mother of invention, how much "big data" problems
> do we have to necessitate this interesting science?
> 
> With IBM setting up a research lab at CUEA, which is open to
> researchers, I don't think we have an excuse.
> 
> Some ripe areas of research on big data in the region are
> 1. Shopping trends,
> 2. Google, FB, and twitter usage trends,
> 3. Meteorology. Do we collect enough data?
> 
> -- 
> ______________________
> Mwendwa Kivuva
> For
> Business Development
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