I just read an article titled “Making Analytics Actionable” by Michael Vizard. He makes two good points – predictive analytics is not new and analytics needs to be actionable. I could not agree more.
On the first – predictive analytics has been around for a long time. We used to call it forecasting. It was difficult then, and it is difficult now. Forecasting gurus, or should I say Predictive Analytics gurus have thrown every mathematical trick at the data to predict the future. It reminds of a quote by the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, who said “No one knows how to forecast. If they did, they would be in a different business.” I think by different business he meant forecasting money on Wall Street. But we all know that has gone! And now may be the quants on Wall Street would agree with him as well.
On the second point – yes, analytics should give you actionable information. As I hear from our customers, time and time again, they do not need more data. Companies are drowning downing in data. (maybe “downing” is the right word!!! We are downing in data! It is a downer!!!) In the name of Business Intelligence, they now have the capability to slice and dice this data, creating more data! The purpose of analytics is to convert all that data into something meaningful and actionable. If the analytics does not accomplish that, it is just another BI tool.
As you investigate analytics for your business, here are a few best practices:
The answer to the question “What do I do with this?” should be actionable tasks that a business should be able to run with. That is called Business Analytics. The reason the third point exists is because you, the user, would only come back to it over and over again if it made your job easier. That is the key to business analytics. “Take all that data and convert it into actionable tasks and make your job easier”. How is that for a tag line!
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