Tag Archives: predictive modeling

The Real Business Intelligence

Ashith Bolar, Director of Research, Amick Brown

In the state of the art of computing, every company generates a large amount of data, and it goes without saying that every organization does some sort of data analysis on this data. Big and small companies invest in Business Intelligence in some shape or form. The ubiquity of big data infrastructures, such as those from SAP, as well as Hadoop and its various distributions also has enabled even smaller and medium sized businesses (SMB) to perform data analytics at scale.

glass wall meeting

Loosely speaking, Business Intelligence (BI) is a set of techniques and tools used to transform raw data into meaningful and actionable information. However, simply based on that definition, virtually every exercise in data analytics can be considered as Business Intelligence. The true value of a BI is only realized when the latest tools and technologies are applied in order to determine the historic, current and predictive views of the business.

One of the applications of BI is Predictive Analytics (PA). PA encompasses a large and fluid set of tools based on statistical and mathematical techniques to analyze historical data and subsequently build predictive models. The idea is that historical data contains patterns that, if recognized and correctly applied, can be used in predicting the future. This enables a company to predict and proactively respond to the future state of the business, say customer behavior, market conditions, etc.

growth graph

Take a look at your current BI system. Are you only analyzing  historical data, and at best enumerating the current state of your business? Or does your Business Intelligence platform help you model the future and enable you to predict the course of your business? Are you able to identify risks and opportunities well before they occur?

PA captures patterns and relationships among the various factors in your business, giving you a deeper perspective of risks or potentials associated with your current course of business. This enables you to make optimal changes to your business in order to make the most of the current and future market conditions.

Current technology offers very cost-effective means of Predictive Analytics that SMBs could implement with virtually no upfront cost.  SAP’s Predictive Analytics Software gives you a robust set of tools in this space. These tools run on your enterprise data and any supplementary data that you provide.

SAP’s Predictive Analytics Library (SAP-PAL) provides the following list of capabilities:

  • Predictive Modeling : automated set of tools to build predictive models
  • Predictive Scoring : identify and evaluate relevant variables in predicting
  • Predictive Model Management : enable end-users with limited knowledge of the science of predictive analytics to ask what-if questions
  • Predictive Network and Link Analysis : explore the links between your customers and network of strong social influencers with analytics
  • Predictive Data Management : automated data-set preparation for predictive modeling

Amick Brown can help you realize the predictive powers that you have with your SAP and BI platform provides you.