BUSINESS ANALYTICS... ...The power of knowing what’s next! Sweta Jobanputra 12170 HR

In today’s ever changing market, especially the Indian market, leveraging the power of technology and remaining one step ahead of the competition is one of the key motto to success. Applying intelligent information systems and how it could help in making transformational decisions is the talk of success these days. Here comes the power of Business Analytics and how it helps in decision making through predictive analytics.

Predictive analytics is a relatively new concept to many in the software market. So what is Predictive Analytics? “Predictive Analytics is about taking effective action based on data that is used to draw reliable conclusions about current as well as future events”. So now the question is how does a company know if it’s abilities fit into the Business Analytics background. To start off with, like any other company using Business Analytics capabilities, the primary question is to report “what happened”. Using various software tools such as SPSS or even SAS, the company performs analysis to dig out the route causes of “why it happened”. Moving on, the managers then monitor on what is happening now and whether or not any change is required, and then the final step helps the company “predict” about “what might happen”. If a company successfully maps these questions to Business Analytics capabilities, using the software mentioned above, then its easy to analyze what functionalities can help the company address and answer the four key questions.

Since I have extensively mentioned technology, we’ll now see what the technologies that make up predictive analytics are. Applying software such as SPSS helps in predicting just about anything, be it the current market scenario or how the customer trends are going to change in the future. All one needs to do is to identify the variables that would be key considerations for making the decisions, collect data specific to each variable through surveys, questionnaires etc, enter the data into the software and then analyze using various statistical techniques.

Analysing through SPSS and reaching a conclusion about a decision, is just about making a few permutations and combinations of one or more than one variable. For example, using the command “Frequencies” one can get a count on how many people, or more specifically how many women are satisfied with the clothing of a particular store. And what more? The satisfaction levels of the women buying clothes from store 1 v/s store 2 can be analysed as well. This could help the company actually identify whether or not the audience is satisfied with the store or not, and if not, what is the problem and how can it be solved.

Imagine using the tradition approach of collecting data and reporting manually, and then finally making the decision, by the time the decision has been arrived, the market has moved forwards. This is where using technology and softwares such SPSS helps in quick decision making, and we all know, that is what we need to cut through the competiton.