Now that the use of predictive analytics is going mainstream, firms on the leading edge of technology are exploring prescriptive analytics, which automates the insight-generation process and promises quicker results through the elimination of human bias.
David Judge, Vice President of Leonardo | Analytics at SAP, writes about the transition to predictive analytics at TechRadar:
The promise of analytics has always been about freedom of information and knowledge. The challenge has been how to glean meaningful knowledge from data and present it to an end user in a way they can understand and use to make critical business decisions in a timely manner.
Traditional analytics has focused on providing humans with tools to assist us with understanding data so we can become the interpreters of data. Human minds are very bad at detecting trends and patterns from raw data, so we create tools that give us the ability to manipulate data into visual constructs that the brain can better interpret. The next level, advanced analytics, gives us new solutions with advanced statistical techniques to uncover patterns in the data and serve up results to the end, rather than relying on humans to build visualizations (which can be subject to bias).
There is a natural progression towards advanced analytics – it is a journey that does not have to be on separate deployments. In fact, it is enhanced by having it on the same deployment, and embedding it in a platform that brings together data visualization, planning, insight, and steering/oversight functions.
Judge cautions that there is a big caveat behind all this promise of predictive analytics. When you automate the analysis and remove human judgment from the process, there is a real possibility that a catastrophic mistake can be made on a large scale. Human supervision cannot be eliminated except at great risk.
