According to a recent survey report by Analytics India Magazine, the leadership perspective on the outlook of analytics services remains extremely high despite the overall downturn in the global and domestic economy. The sentiment indicates that the demand for analytics services is expected to rise and this is backed by almost 92% of the leadership.
The report titled, Analytics India Leadership Sentiment and Outlook, now in its 6th year, aims to identify and understand the sentiment and outlook of the Data Science leadership. The research covers the pulse of the Data Science function across areas of hiring, expansion, maturity, and portfolios, to name a few. It gives a first-hand glimpse of the viewpoint of the Analytics Leadership and confidence of the leadership in how analytics benefits businesses across various domains.
The timing of this study is especially significant as it comes at a time when the overall economy and demand for analytics services is facing a downturn and the ensuing recession due to COVID-19 pandemic. While the report suggests that the overall positive sentiment of the leadership has reduced, it does not imply that the leadership sentiment has turned negative. It is expected to bounce back once the market improves.
The report suggests that in terms of the level of confidence in contribution of Analytics over the next one year, which was divided into confident and extremely confident, half the respondents were found to be Extremely Confident, while the other half are Confident.
It also found that the sentiment around hiring plans is moderate this year, with 58% of the leadership looking to increase the analytics workforce. This is down from last year when 87% of the leadership was looking to increase hiring over 2018.
According to the report, the net sentiment score has fallen significantly this year to 58% from 85% last year. Although the Net Sentiment score is the lowest in three years, it is still positive, indicating that the leadership and organizations will carry out net hiring in analytics in the coming year.
In terms of challenge, the biggest challenge that the leadership feels that the analytics space will face this year or in the coming year is finding the right talent. However, this is expressed as a challenge or concern by 45% of the leadership, down from last year when it was 58%.
As per the report, the leadership sentiment around the challenge faced regarding Knowledge or Awareness of Analytics among Customers has also reduced from 50% last year to about 17% this year. This signifies that awareness of customers and clients around analytics and its corresponding business benefits have both significantly increased.
Another big challenge the leadership believes is that Data Exists in Silos with 23.7% of the leadership expressing this as a concern. This is followed by lack of post-implementation maintenance, where about 19% of the leadership see this as a challenge.
In terms of analytics adoption, 40% of the leadership believes that analytics is at an early stage of adoption across organizations, this is up from 38% last year.
The survey was well represented across India and globally. Within India, majority of the respondents were from Mumbai, followed by Bengaluru, Delhi NCR and Pune. in terms of the designation that represented the survey, About 61% of the respondents are heading or leading the Analytics divisions of their organizations. The CIO level is also well represented in the survey and the valuable responses accounted for 4.3% of the overall respondents
