Anuradha Bankar
Head - Analytics, BI & DW
e-Zest Solutions
Anuradha Bankar is a member of:
Early Days to How I Got Here
I started my career as a SAP Consultant. I got opportunity to work in
client facing roles on site. That boosted my confidence and understood
business-IT scenarios first hand. I led various projects in SAP-BI in
different capacity in London for 6 years before returning back to India
for good.
Lately I have managed to distance myself from SAP and
learnt other BI tools. As BI practice head @ e-Zest I evaluate best of
breed tools and technologies like Microstrategy, Qlikview, SAP BO,
Pentaho and other open source tools to architect BI solutions for my
clients.
Decision That Mattered
I strive to work in challenging environment. My career moves are always
linked to provide me to do something different and give me opportunity
to explore new things. When I found myself in very comfortable job, I
knew it’s time to take up next challenge. I have left full time job to
be an independent BI consultant and was part of one of the largest BI
initiative in the UK.
Moving back to India I decided not to work
for large organization but where I find new challenges to overcome
often. At e-Zest, I am happy to work with cutting edge technologies like
Big Data Analytics, Cloud or Mobile BI and generate customer value in
the process.
Turning Points
In my opinion, all inflection points in IT career are not linked to the
expert capabilities you acquire in your career journey and not your role
or designation. In that perspective, moving to London early in my
career in to one of the most demanding environment at BP was clearly the
first inflection point. I could develop my client management skills
there. Later I chose to join a start-up in London where I could develop
my-self into an all-round IT professional and started taking
accountability for large IT projects. In India I took up the challenge
to lead BI practice that put me into business development role which I
was never into.
Work and Role- Then and Now
In
my current role, I am heading the BI Practice in e-Zest. In this role I
am no longer married to one BI platform but work with several of those.
The technology in this space is quite dynamic and I have a bright team
whom I can rely on from time to time. I have not handled technology
diversity of this scale before. Another area that distinguishes the
current role is the business development aspect in my current role which
was never a part of my responsibilities.
Two Years Down the Line
I am seeing the convergence of Mobility and Cloud with BI technologies.
But traditionally, the IT expertise is developed in silos with
technology solutions being the common denominator. In two years I will
focus on the problem domains where sophisticated BI technologies can
bring fresh value with emerging cloud and mobility solution stack.
Business Intelligence Today
Analytics has been continuously evolving. Today we are living in a world
with enormous digital information that needs to be processed for your
business decisions. With new emerging tools & technologies, it is
now possible to get stunning data visualizations which was not possible
before.
Trends to Watch Out For
I foresee Big Data Analytics to be a game changer in analytics world. I
see immense potential in the technology and the power it has in bringing
radical change in the current potential of BI.
My Advice if You Are Starting Out
Pay attention to numbers and visualization as BI is all about it.
None
of your fancy charts can work if your users do not understand them.
Hence work closely with business users and make sure you understand the
business process.
Must Focus Areas in the BI Domain
World is moving towards Mobile. Mobile BI is all about user experience
and how you can visualize the information in the best possible way in
the small screen available to you. It requires lot of thinking and
storyboarding before than traditional reports.
