Print Summit 2020: Using data and AI to avoid minefields in business

Kaushal Sampat is a veteran of the information services industry. After spending 18 years at Dun & Bradstreet India in various capacities which included president and managing director, he serves as a senior advisor to Rubix Data Sciences. His mantra to the audience was: if companies and brands are really serious about analytics, they should also know how to nail it and get the maximum out of their data.

Sampat admitted the difficulty in selecting the right suppliers and vendors. Therefore, he requested the audience to know the 4C — character, capacity, capital, condition. After all, suppliers and vendors are key partners in business growth. While technical competence and commercial terms are important drivers of supplier selection, it is equally important to assess the risks associated with each supplier.

In a recent report surveying more than 500 companies, researchers outlined the basics of generating business value from data wrapping. For data to be effective, it has to do four things simultaneously — anticipate, advise, adapt and act.

The presentation outlined the method in moving from doing analytics to becoming data driven. Sampat said this has to be in the DNA of the organisation. Since that's what creates the performance-oriented culture and drives predictable growth for the organisation.

The presentation looked at problem statement which ensured a credit control team created a scorecard for assessing the dealers and distributors. Then it looked at data aggregation and how external data was collated from secondary and primary data sources for over 2000 dealers and distributors. The presentation also looked at credit analytics and risk monitoring system.

Sampat cautioned to be aware of early warnings and assess the risk of your throughout your business relationship. This was based on how statistics can gain deeper and more fine grained insights, also to get the data structured and based on that structure how to optimally apply other data science techniques to get even more information. The key: how to build a data-fluent culture.

Sampat holds a MBA from Bowling Green State University, Ohio, and is a member of leadership bodies including Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO) and Entrepreneurs Organization (EO). He and Ramachandran told the audience that Rubix Automated Risk Management and Monitoring System platform can help print and packaging firms navigate through all kinds of counterparty risks by providing them with a single-window view of the credit risk, supplier risk and compliance risk of all counterparties.