Google alumni launch Singapore-based analytics startup Sparkline

• To provide firms with customised data analytics and strategic solutions
• Analyses a company’s online and mobile data to extract insights

SINGAPORE-based web and mobile data analytics startup Sparkline has been launched, at a time when city-state’s government has identified analytics as a key national focus area and has committed to training 2,500 analytics professionals by 2017.
 
Sparkline, founded by three Google alumni, would provide firms with customised data analytics and strategic solutions, providing insights that improve a company’s bottom line, the company said in a statement.
 
Sparkline claimed it is already advising companies such as Google, SingPost, Malaysia Airlines and INSEAD.
 
As consumers live their lives online, their searches, consumption and transactions produce huge volumes of data. IBM estimates 90% of data today has been generated in the last two years, mostly from online searches, social media, shoppers, travellers, banking, offline transactions, and images.
 
And yet, less than 1% of the world’s data is analysed and so provides useful insight, Sparkline said.
 
“Sparkline analyses a company’s online and mobile data to extract insights that improves marketing, merchandising and business operations,” said its managing partner and cofounder Vinoaj Vijeyakumaar (pic).
 
“For example, working with hotel room booking site Amari, our analysis and solutions delivered a 47% increase in hotel room bookings. We make businesses smarter, more efficient and more profitable,” he claimed.
 
Fellow managing partner and cofounder Aleetza Senn said that data can provide valuable real-time insights into actual behaviour, and help companies better anticipate demand and better serve customers.
 
“But the data itself creates significant challenges – complexity, size, volume, speed – that many companies are not equipped to manage,” she added.
 
To address the challenges, Sparkline provides services in four key areas:

• Assessment and strategy: Including technology and business audits;

• Technology solutions: Implementing the most appropriate technology;

• Insights and actions: Tracking data against KPIs (key performance indicators), testing and iterating to identify the most valuable channels and customers; and

• Training: Customised training to bring teams up to speed on data. It delivers the services by using the analytics tools of its global technology partners – Google, Adobe, Marketshare, Optimisely and others – to analyse marketing, products and customers.

“The data analytics space in Asia in a huge opportunity. IDC has estimated the Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) big data technology and services market will be worth US$1.76 billion in 2016, up from US$258.5 million in 2011,” said managing partner and cofounder Timo Josten.
 
“We are already working with great companies, and are currently recruiting data analysts, system integrators and account managers to capture more of the growth,” he added.
 
Khairul Syahar Khalid (pic), head of advertising and promotions at Malaysia Airlines, said his company approached Sparkline for its data analytics expertise, to help increase conversion rates on its website.
 
“The results we have achieved have been very encouraging. Working with Sparkline has become more than just data analysis; they are business advisors as well. The higher conversion rate that we are seeing is an added bonus,” he added.
 
Google South-East Asia managing director Julian Persaud said, “Businesses hoping to make the most of the web need to understand online behaviour and digital analytics.
 
“Companies like Sparkline have the talent and expertise to fuel the ecosystem and enable this important knowledge transformation,” he said.
 
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