One on One with Nuevora's Phani Nagarjuna

All consumer-facing companies have mountains of customer data, but until recently the value proposition for all that data was left largely untapped. More and more, companies are realizing there is big value tied up in their big data, and are relying on analytics experts to help them navigate that particular jungle. Phani Nagarjuna, founder and CEO of Big Data Analytics & Apps firm Nuevora, says that misconceptions about the expense and difficulty of implementing analytics solutions are putting the brakes on many companies taking a deeper dive into their data, which could be costing them valuable insights into the needs of their customers, or even driving them away to competitors who are better able to anticipate what they want.

Consulting: What are clients demanding?

Nagarjuna: The biggest area right now they see for analytics is around the demand side. How do we understand consumers or looking for ways and means to understand their consumers and their products, how they're working in the marketplace, and taking those learnings back and infusing them into their marketing processes. That is the biggest opportunity out there. Clients are looking for experts, consulting talent, a combination of technology and human prowess to come and help them create a roadmap of this is where we are and this is where we want to go with respect to understanding our customers. If we understand them better, we can deliver the right product or service. If you can do that better, smarter, faster, cheaper than the other guy you will have a competitive advantage. So clients are looking for a blueprint of how do we use analytics to go from where we are to the next frontier.