analytics toolsPredictive analytics is quickly transitioning to being omnipresent, given how policy-makers and marketers alike have discovered the magic of historic data that is sourced from within. From being able to shorten the time taken to track cybercrime, to actually limiting the extent of the crime or from being able to assess market demands to actually designing products that match those requirements, predictive analytics present a solution to most problems that were earlier deemed ‘invincible’.

Predictive analytics uses an amalgam of data mining, machine learning, statistics, modelling and artificial intelligence so as to discover opportunities as well as potential risks that together evaluate the course ahead. As a result, the insights form the foundation on which you can base your most effective decisions. Here are 4 core benefits from the list.

1. Enhanced customer satisfaction

Survival is hard in a buyer’s market. Between social media’s ruthless reach and multiple review aggregators, if your market perception and service/product standards don’t match, you’ll see a sales downhill sooner than the last negative review got published. The only way to stay strong is to then keep the said buyers happy.

Predictive analytics is that opportune window. Predictive analytics boils down those insights that help you understand buying patterns, retention bandwidth, future requirements and accordingly design your application, software solution or even your FMCG product and its placement. Furthermore, you can embrace ‘intent’ based personalization to give your audience a version of the product that is most likely to meet their expectations. And as a cumulative result, you will always be one step ahead of both users and competitors.

But be sure to know where to draw the line and keep your users informed of the level of information you store. The infamous facebook scandal has opened a pandora box of sorts that you can no longer ignore!

2. Hybrid visibility into core business functions 

Your decisions are only as strong as the information that justifies them. In that sense, 360-degree visibility across business development, operations and marketing amongst other functions is critical to envision a brand that lasts the tests of the digital era. These insights, moreover, need to encompass both outcomes of your past decisions as well as tangible goals that you can draw for the upcoming route map. Planned Ascent (plannedascent.com) provides a pragmatic, tailor-made blend of business coaching, consulting and where appropriate, connections with trusted others.  The company follows three-phased approach to deliver the outcomes you want whilst remaining agile in response to developments.

Predictive analytics not only map these data-points for you but also give you actual grey aries where these points merge to form data mines that you can benefit from. A classic example would be of how future media consumption would disrupt the themes and layouts that are currently being created for both actual physical copies of books as well as ebooks.

Current publishing houses not only have to envision the book for readers with short attention spans but also need to market it on mediums that themselves compete with books ( such as online content aggregators or e-magazines). So analytics that map reading patterns of audiences would be a great starting point.  

3. Abnormal Pattern Recognition in case of external threats

Given the alarming rate of organized cybersecurity invasions, having your data secured by a combination of predictive analytics and machine learning is touted to be the best safety net you can get yourself. This technology will go beyond the ‘fine digital prints’ of cyber crime that conventional software are limited to tracking, while the new crop of threats go beyond traceable patterns and tend to be more sophisticated.

As much as industry insiders find exponential scale to be a major concern with predictive analytics, it is still largely a beacon of hope for industries that are particularly concerned about their data, as in the likes of defence engineering. So to speak, predictive analytics can track your business growth and at the same time it can predict adversities and keep you safe.

4. Forecast of future demand pipeline

Ultimately, a strong understanding of the market that you are catering to includes a fair estimation of the products that your audience want. Products they’d want currently as well as those they’d want a few years down the line. It is here that predictive analytics is turning a new leaf even as we speak.

Predictive analytics can in a sense analyze the narrative between people and processes such that you can map the loop from its starting point, (often the intent) to right up till the actual outcomes – purchase, influence, restructure, comparison or surveillance.From secret service organizations, government policy-makers to marketers, everyone is seeing value in predictive analytics and its ability to predict outcomes.

How have you embraced predictive analytics? Be it through an external software product or as a tool you’ve developed internally, has it proven to be effective in these areas? Share your stories.

As the subject matter expert of Saviom’s resource management tool, Aakash Gupta writes extensively on efficiency sciences and the role software play in the space.