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

DIVERSE APPLICATIONS FOR DIVERSE BUSINESS PROBLEMS

Whether analyzing insurance claims, creating attrition models, implementing a segmentation model for a wireless service provider, building global acquisition and retention scoring models for a global online retailer, predicting the spread of the H1N1 flu, or simply predicting the behavioral indicators of Canadian high school smokers, predictive analytics can help. The use of predictive analytics is pervasive in many aspects of today’s life. From aspects such as suggesting a new book to buy on Amazon to selecting advertisements to display on your mobile device, modern-day companies are leveraging data, coupled with predictive analytics, to uncover insights about their customers, business environment, and important product features.

Predictive analytics even lends itself to matters of government and public policy. For example, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, an academic at New York University, has made some impressively accurate political forecasts. In May 2010, he predicted that Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, would fall from power within a year. Nine months later, Mr. Mubarak fled Cairo amid massive street protests. Since then, de Mesquita has made hundreds of prescient forecasts as a consultant both to foreign governments and to the U.S. State Department, Pentagon, and intelligence agencies. What is the secret of his success? “I don’t have insights—the game does,” he says, referring to the analytics that enables his predictions.5