Machine Learning Thursdays: A Christmas Treat

Winter is coming and you can feel the Christmas magic in the freezing air!

Now is the time to think about the ideal gifts you would like to offer to your loved ones—and receive from them.

What could be better than treating yourself with an SAP Predictive Analytics book?!

SAP Predictive Analytics: The Comprehensive Guide explains how to create predictive insights for multiple purposes and various industries, from marketing optimization to demand forecasting to preventing customer churn, just to name a few. It will be released on December 27 by SAP PRESS and it can already be pre-ordered now.

The book has been crafted over the course of this year by me and my co-authors Andreas Forster, Laurent Tessier, and Pierpaolo Vezzosi. By way of introduction, here are a few words about this fantastic author team:

• Andreas and Laurent belong to the Global Center of Excellence for SAP Predictive Analytics. They travel around the globe to support current and future SAP Predictive Analytics customers, offering their impressive product and industry expertise.
• Pierpaolo is a long-time veteran of SAP analytics product management teams, currently focusing on SAP Leonardo. Pierpaolo has been a product manager for SAP Predictive Analytics for two years, paving the way in the early days.
• I joined the SAP Predictive Analytics product management team two years ago, with a focus on customer and product success. I am also part of the SAP analytics product management teams.

Why This Book Now?

SAP Predictive Analytics contains a very powerful automated concept to creating predictive models. If you are new to the topic of predictive analytics, this automation opens the predictive world to you. If you are a data scientist, this automation will save you time by taking care of recurring requirements.

The book has been designed both for people who don’t know the solution yet but are keen to use it to enter the world of predictive analytics and drive predictive projects, and also for existing customers and consultants that are already using SAP Predictive Analytics.

Whether you are currently in an IT, project management or data scientist role, you’ll find information in the book that you can directly apply and use to address the use cases you’re working on or that you’re willing to tackle.

Inside SAP Predictive Analytics: The Comprehensive Guide

The book is structured into four main parts: Getting Started, SAP Predictive Factory, Automated mode of SAP Predictive Analytics, and Advanced Workflows.

The first part is logically named Getting Started.

• The benefits of using predictive analysis are detailed and examples from different industries are provided.
• SAP Predictive Analytics solutions are presented from a high-level standpoint.
• The reader is walked through the practical installation of SAP Predictive Analytics.
• Finally, a concrete project methodology is recommended and illustrated based on a practical example.

The second part focuses specifically on the SAP Predictive Factory, the next-generation user interface for SAP Predictive Analytics. SAP Predictive Factory is a major investment from SAP in the past years.

• First, the user interface principles are presented.
• The successive chapters explain the creation and the management of automated time series forecasting models, automated classification models, and automated regression models.
• Each chapter is illustrated with a specific example that the reader can put in practice.
• The concluding chapter details how models can be managed and operationalized to continuously deliver relevant insights.

The third part covers all the remaining capabilities offered in the Automated mode of SAP Predictive Analytics.

• This part starts with a general description of the user interface.
• This is followed by chapters dedicated to the creation and practical use of clustering, social, and recommendation models.
• Each chapter is supported by a practical example.
• In the last chapter, the reader gets to know better the data management component, Data Manager, in full detail.

The fourth part covers the Advanced Workflows.

• These advanced workflows include the use of Expert Analytics, the integration of predictive outcomes in applications, the hints, tips and best practices that we derived from our practical experience, as well as a perspective on what’s coming next for SAP Predictive Analytics.

We’re sure that  SAP Predictive Analytics: The Comprehensive Guide will prove a very useful resource for all the readers that want to be successful in their predictive projects by using SAP Predictive Analytics. Why not order it today?

With the holiday magic in the air, what time could be better than now to move your business to the next level with predictive analytics—in 2018 and beyond?!