Win with Advanced Business Analytics: Creating Business Value from Your Data

WHAT IS PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS?

In the age of big data, demanding customer expectations, and increasingly aggressive competitors, organizations are moving from traditional analytics/reporting solutions that provide a snapshot of the past (hindsight) to solutions that provide an accurate picture of the present and a prediction of future trends (foresight). As a result, predictive analytics is one of the most powerful approaches that companies can use to compete with analytics.

During the last few years, there have been a lot of discussions around predictive analytics. For example, Forrester’s paper “Predictive Analytics and Data Mining Solutions” provided the following definition of advanced predictive analytics: “Any solution that supports the identification of meaningful patterns and correlations among variables in complex, structured and unstructured, historical, and potential future data sets for the purposes of predicting future events and assessing the attractiveness of various courses of action. Advanced business analytics typically incorporate such functionality as data mining, descriptive modeling, econometrics, forecasting, operations research, optimization, predictive modeling, and simulation, statistics, and text analytics.”3

From a business perspective, the most important aspect of predictive analytics is its ability to provide an accurate, forward-looking perspective to your organization. Supported by traditional analytics, research, and business intelligence, advanced ...