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Author's profile photo Tammy Powlas

BI Innovations – Go Beyond BI with Predictive Analytics Webcast Summary

This was an SAP webcast this past week.  The presentation is here.


Figure 1: Source: SAP
Most not using predictive solutions today (of those attending the webinar)

Not a single solution for predictive


Figure 2: Source: SAP/Gartner

Evolution from raw data, clean data, to BI for prepared reports, analytics, OLAP analysis, then move  to predictive modeling, until you can do recommendations based on company

This slide doesn’t mean you are going to evolve your existing technology; companies who work with data move on evolutionary line

Figure 3: Source: SAP
This doesn’t mean the same people doing BI today will do predictive

The speaker said there is a “chasm”

People who do BI and people who do predictive are different

You have to expect some difference in workflow to introduce predictive functionality

Figure 4: Source: SAP

It is different at different companies

Figure 5: Source: SAP

Advanced analytics encompasses predictive analytics

Idea is you have a lot of data about the past; you know who your best customers are, and how products are performing in the market, when machines have issues, who are the best employees

Advanced analytics applies mathematical algorithms against data to see if hidden patterns exist in data

Figure 6: Source: SAP

Where will you use the model?

Understand how past behaved, and apply model to new data and will give you recommended actions

Operational analytics usually means there is a machine at the end; the goal is to be quick

Exploratory analytics – look at past data, look at model, rules to better understand business.  Usually a human looks at results and decides

Predictive can be used in both situations.

Figure 7: Source: SAP

Question asks whether you hire data scientists for predictive projects

Data scientists are hard to find, so most are using BI people

Figure 8: Source: SAP

Why is there a chasm between predictive and BI?

Humans have a limited ability to comprehend while a machine does not

The data for predictive is typically bigger than BI with a lot of columns and rows

Machines can handle complex questions than a human can

Figure 9: Source: SAP

With BI, humans slice and dice, aggregate, filter, simplify, and the goal is to make visualization simple so anyone can understand

Advanced analytics, start with data, enrich data, to give more information to machine so machine finds interesting data

Figure 10: Source: SAP

BI and advanced analytics are “complementary”, says the speaker

With BI you can identify an opportunity or a risk

What you can do with predictive, give more data to machine and let machine tell you what to do to take advantage of opportunity or risk; machine can tell you next best action

Figure 11: Source: SAP

Most attendees do not have data scientists in their company

Figure 12: Source: SAP

SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analytics is the flagship product

The solution is used by a data scientist or BI users familiar with predictive workflow

It can work as a stand-alone solution or with the predictive libraries in HANA

You can embed the model in application, such as hybrid marketing

The model can be exported as Java code, C++, and then copy code in your own application.  The end user uses it without knowing the complexity

Figure 13: Source: SAP

Examples of embedded predictive analytics we use everyday

Question & Answer
Q: Can you please suggest how can i do my sales data analysis on map (shape files / postgis / google map) ? is BI the product for it ? or any other ?
A: the whole BI suite (Web Intelligence as well as Lumira and Design Studio) could support such a scenario. With partner extensions available with the Analytics Extension Directory (https://analytics-extensions.enter.sap/) add even more richer visualizations in the mapping space in these products. The predictive information would be persisted in your DB of choice (best integration with HANA & Hadoop, but any other DB would work as well) or computed on the fly (e.g. in streaming environments) and SAP’s BI tools

SAP Predictive Analytics uses social analysis where things are and when they are there and an impact

Q: Can I access universes with Predictive Analytics?
A: Yes, there is a query panel

Q: How to use predictive with BW?
A: If you build specific queries to provide details you can use Predictive

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