The Role of Predictive Analytics in making Smarter Business Decisions

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Predictive analytics uses techniques like data mining, statistics, modeling, machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence to analyze data patterns and predict future outcomes from it. Predictive analytics will help you make better business decisions based on insights and trends found by extracting information from data sets. This information will lead to a better understanding of your customers and help you identify potential opportunities for your business. Predictive Analytics will also help you optimize your resources and improve margins across your entire business, contributing as a major factor to business growth. According to a report by Zion Market Research, the global market for predictive analytics is projected to reach approximately $10.95 billion by 2022. This is not surprising, as a large number of companies are already heavily relying on predictive analytics as a tool for looking into the future more accurately and reliably. It is evident that the more data you can process, the better the insights. Using a range of statistical analytics and algorithms, analysts can uncover trends and patterns from your existing data sources with powerful predictive analytics software. Take for example, Netflix, a streaming service that is all the rage these days. Every time that you log into your account, you will see a dashboard that is more customized for your preferences. This is presented taking into account what you have already watched. It then uses this “data” to predict what you “might” like to watch.

Need for Predictive Analytics for Your Business

Let us take a practical use case. Samaira is an entrepreneur who has started her own business of developing and selling a niche software product to other companies. For months, she has been trying to make sense of all the data her team has been providing from market research for the new product they have been planning to launch. Unfortunately, Samaira has now realized that the huge amount of data is taking way too long to interpret and derive trends from! She has invested her business time and money in this process but the outcomes are frustrating and unsatisfactory. She notices that her competitor Lilly is succeeding at the same business! She learns that Lilly has been using ‘Predictive Analytics’ that has given her insights to important questions like, “What kind of customers are looking for this product? Is this the right time to launch a new product? What percentage of companies will invest in the new product? “And so forth. Lilly has not only saved on capital invested to employ human employees to perform this complicated task, but also obtained relevant insights from data faster that will help her make quicker business decisions.

Predictive Analytics to improve Business Sales

Predictive analytics is thriving in domains like sales and marketing, where data insights are helping businesses make better decisions. These are some important points on how Predictive analytics can help your business flourish by helping you improve your Sales process.

  • Your Business can utilize a forecasting model to predict sales using data comprising of the past sales performance, industry characteristics, competitive information, and customer behaviors.
  • Predictive analytics helps you understand who is likely to buy your products and services, and when is a favorable time to pitch your product! It can help you identify first time customers and loyal customers and make smart decisions based on this knowledge.
  • Predictive analytics can help you with your product launch. It will help you understand whether a new product or service is likely to succeed with your customer. Knowing the potential of your product in the market means that you don’t waste time with false starts and expenditures with no profits; and instead focus on products that have a greater chance of succeeding. Imagine being able to save capital and being economically efficiently because you now understand what has worked in the past, what is working currently, and what will work best in the future for your business.
  • Predictive Analytics can assist your salesperson by analyzing clients behavioral and psychological data. It can trigger the right content to help answer client questions, manage objections, and help salesperson moves the client through the sales process more efficiently.
  • Your salesperson can now generate potential leads more efficiently using Predictive analytics. Data from “closed sales” can be analyzed along with demographics and other information to target the prospects most likely to engage in your business.
Future of Predictive Analytics

The use of predictive analytics will see an upsurge in diverse fields like automobile, health care, aerospace engineering, banking and finance, and others. A survey conducted by Deloitte highlighted that predictive analytics could help businesses achieve competitive advantage (68%), find new revenue opportunities (55%), and increase profitability (52%).

Engaging the Experts

Our Predictive Analytics experts help companies strategize efficiently through a better understanding of their data. Our experts use a variety of predictive analytics, data mining and machine learning techniques to enhance your data prediction models and predict relevant patterns from your data. Use of predictive analytics will help executives, managers and other decision-makers make the right choices in targeted sales and in new product launches.