Sop Mis

‘Fortune 500’- every time I hear this word, a series of intricate questions conjure up in my mind. What can be the forces that actually drive these companies to pinnacles? Is it brilliant planning coupled with some powerful decisions and risks behind them? Or is it a blend of robust strategies and superior executions? No doubt all of them do play a crucial role, but then what is it that aids in devising these strategies? There has to be an element from which they are formulated.It was after working with Reliance Industries Ltd (Retail division), one of the Fortune 500 conglomerates that I finally discovered the key element - ‘Information’. Leveraging of the raw data to fullest, synthesizing it into meaningful information and providing analytical support to it, is one of the powerful strategies employed by companies to gain the competitive edge over its rivals. But I also observed that the current trend in Business Intelligence (BI) is now shifting gears from mere reporting of intelligent data to more of higher level analytics, predictive modeling andextracting hidden patterns by combining methods from statistics and artificial intelligence with database management. The major process with which I was associated at Reliance was gleaning of the enormous transaction data generated everyday from disparate sources and then strategically storing it. In this process, I acquainted myself with SAP BW thereby firmly cementing my warehousing concepts. Also my SQL knowledge deepened, as I learned how to increase the efficiency of the queries for lightening speed extraction of data using various mining algorithms, especially the association rule that mines buying patterns. Pattern recognition played a crucial role as it facilitated efficient profiling of customers, and also helped in indicating on which sets of customers, promotion campaigns should be launched by monitoring their buying patterns. It was astounding to note that by just extracting right sets of information we can