Let’s Cross the BI-Analytics Chasm

As we stand at the doorstep of Analytics world and clearly understand that we need to cross the chasm between BI and Analytics, we hesitate to take the leap. We hesitate, as we fail to understand how exactly to leverage it.

If you do not know how to ask the right question, you discover nothing.

-W. Edwards Deming

It is easy to go astray while using analytics as we have heaps of data from our retrospective analysis. Deming’s quote clearly fits for the situation of most companies today and hence raises an alert that we need to explore what are the possible arenas of Analytics.

With the impressive BI implementations, we just comprehend Descriptive Analytics. Predictive Analytics is complementary to BI and we can say that it is the rudimentary step that we already took on the voyage of ‘making the data confess’.

From the word we realize, Predictive Analytics deals with queries like ‘Can we foresee answers to questions that cannot be addressed by business intelligence?’ Thus Predictive analytics is future-looking analysis predicting what is likely to happen (usually accompanied with a probability) and a justification from descriptive analytics to answer why it is likely to happen.

If we consider a retail store and customer analytics, here are some brief pointers to what questions can be dealt with Predictive Analytics.

Descriptive vs Predictive Analytics
Descriptive versus Predictive Analytics

Some detailed pointers are-

BI and Analytics
BI and Analytics

On a high level, if we have to look at importance of Predictive Analytics, it would be

Significance of Predictive Analytics
Significance of Predictive Analytics

BI now, is giving companies a platform to perform Predictive Analytics and if we look at future scope of shifting to Predictive Analytics, we would be creating a platform for Prescriptive Analytics. Prescriptive Analytics powers informed decisions. Instead of following the most popular or loudest opinion, using data to take decisions is always a better option. While we don’t always have to agree with the data, our understanding will definitely be increased and enhanced by it.

Comments

8 thoughts on “Let’s Cross the BI-Analytics Chasm


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