“Since our inception in the year 2012, we have maintained a consistent zeal in finding the next best thing in Marketing spend optimisation analytics space”, says Santosh Nair, Founder and Director of Analytic Edge. And this startup has been able to achieve just that. It is interesting to note that Nair started his journey with a degree in Agricultural Sciences with specialisation in genetics, but his interest towards numbers and patterns inclined him to get a PhD in stats.

“When Vijay, Rahul (co-founders) and I were thinking of starting Analytic Edge, we wanted to bring unique value addition to our client services”, he said.

With offices in Singapore, USA, Switzerland and India, Analytic Edge has been providing technology enabled analytics solutions in marketing and sales effectiveness. They integrate technology, industry knowledge and cutting-edge statistical techniques to deliver “fast, cost-efficient and actionable business insights”. This is what sets them apart from other players in the market.

“Other suppliers who are in the similar technology/consulting space of Marketing Mix just run models for their customers and come up with a presentation for their respective clients. This only gives a high-level view of what has happened with their Marketing investments for the respective years analyzed, but the client does not have access to the calculations and the algorithms used to come up with the desired results”, says Nair.

The Analytic Edge team has developed a no black box solution called Demand DriversEDGE, that gives their clients an access to calculations and algorithms used in different stages of the Marketing Mix journey and hence a more comprehensive view of the journey their data takes to reach the insights that they present.

Product portfolio at Analytic Edge

Boasting a range of products in the analytics driven industry, few of their solutions include—

Demand Drivers, which is their flagship product that gives deeper insights and access to the methodology. Following are the notable advantages the tool offers.

* Speed to Insight – They leverage a cloud-based automated technology platform for marketing analytics which means shorter project timelines and speed to insight for our clients

*Cost-efficiency – The productivity gains from their technology platform enables them to deliver marketing insights cost-efficiently which allows their clients to scale coverage of analytics

*No black boxes – They provide clients with full access to cloud-based platform where statistical models and data transformation assumptions are open for inspection, discussion and debate

*Flexibility – Their platform can be customized to adopt client-preferred methodologies and best practices. They also have flexible engagement models – project-based, resource-based and subscription-based

*Ability to Scale Rapidly – They can scale rapidly since they leverage technology and have access to a large talent pool of analytics resources.

Customer Loyalty is another product in their portfolio that was designed specifically to get a 360 degree view of the customers. It helps clients with better segmenting, targeting/re-targeting and relevance by understanding the customer’s’ path to purchase.

Sharing a case study where their clients could overcome challenges through their analytics dedicated solutions, Nair says that one of their customers had a challenge in measuring ROI on their market spends and were seeking their assistance on optimising and allocating their media and trade budgets. This is how they solved the problem in hand:

APPROACH USED: Marketing mix modelling analysis to measure the impact of advertising, promotion and trade activities on sales including effectiveness and ROI of various tactics using our proprietary Marketing spend optimisation analytics platform (Demand DriversEDGE).

BUSINESS IMPACT: The insights became an integral part of Client’s planning process, helping brand teams make decisions on how much to spend on each marketing activity and which campaigns or tactics to prioritize. The insights are leveraged for Year till Date diagnosis and Year to Go planning.

Leveraging data analytics

The startup believes that there has been an ongoing buzz around continuous marketing measurement and that they have further enhanced it and made it a reality by developing a platform, Demand DriversEDGE, helping their customers measure their marketing investments if not real-time to near real-time.

“We are leveraging the latest and greatest innovative solutions on digital attribution, cross-media attribution, brand reputation drivers, attribute-based pricing, assortment optimization & category forecasting, all these solutions of ours are machine learning and AI based and hence it helps them generate accurate forecasts over a period of time”, he said.

Analytic Edge incorporating recent technological developments

“These days everyone is talking about IOT, AI and Machine Learning. The impact of these upcoming technologies in huge. At Analytic Edge we have consciously tried to build our products on Machine Learning and AI based modules. We have made it so easy for our customers that it is just a plug and play solution where our client can utilise these new technology powers in a week’s time of implementation. And this is where we stand to gain in consumer confidence”, says Nair.

Challenges in the space

The startup believes that for any evolving space the first challenge is consistency and quality assurance, while the other is agility and adaptability.

“We have a sector that has growing number of talent pool and growing number of customers relying on this pool. It is the job of organizations and leaders to enable this talent pool in consistently delivering quality. If we have anything to learn from the debacle of the software industry, it is the importance of ability to adapt and change to the ever-evolving markets. And this is where emphasis should be given to workforce training and adaptation. Growing demand and timelines cannot be an excuse to stay latent”, says Nair.

Work culture at Analytic Edge

The founders are a firm believer of “attitude before aptitude”, with a belief that if one has the right attitude towards work and self-development and the right kind of work ethic, the rest can be taught. The startup has a bunch of analytics enthusiasts with a wide mix of talent and experience ranging from 3 years to 25 years, but most importantly, a willingness to push the boundaries and explore.

“I feel that we have the right mix of talent required to drive into the next generation of marketing spend optimisation analytics. The team is highly energetic and have the right analytical mindset to deliver the ideal end result to our clients, hence we have a lot of happy and a growing customer base”, shares Nair.

“My advice to the beginners in the analytics sector is think business more than technology. The math is fine but if you can relate a statistical problem to its business implications and vice-versa, you have the added advantage of relating better to your clients and their businesses. Also accumulate as much domain specific knowledge as you can absorb. As you grow further in your career, that would be a major differentiator”, he says in the concluding.