Predictive Analysis: Benefits, Examples

Google Trends show that over the past five years, interest in predictive analytics has risen dramatically. Business intelligence and predictive analytics, commonly referred to as advanced analytics, are becoming intertwined.

 Are the two related & what benefits can firms expect from combining their business intelligence and predictive analytics efforts? Let's start with the definition of predictive analytics and then look for answers to this and many other questions.

Predictive Analytics - What is it?

Many businesses utilize predictive analytics, a vital analytical technique, to assess risk, estimate future market trends, and determine when maintenance is necessary. To find patterns and trends in the data, data scientists take historical data as their source and employ various regression models and machine learning approaches.

 Predicting future events with a high degree of accuracy is the fundamental aim of predictive analytics. It distinguishes predictive analytics from prescriptive analytics, which use optimization techniques to find the best solutions to address the trends revealed by predictive analytics, and descriptive analytics, which aids analysts in assessing what has already happened.

 With a high degree of precision, predictive analytics is a science that can offer future insights. Every firm can now use historical and current data to accurately predict patterns and behaviors in milliseconds, days, or years in the future with the aid of advanced predictive analytics tools and models.

Data Science

Certification Course

100% Placement Guarantee

View course

Predictive Analytics – Examples

Companies globally employ predictive analytics in a wide variety of applications. People who adopt the technology come from various industries, including banking, healthcare, commerce, hospitality, pharmaceuticals, automotive, aerospace, and manufacturing.

Here are some of the predictive analytics examples. 

1.  Customer Service

By using effective and sophisticated analytics and business intelligence, businesses may more accurately predict demand. Imagine a hotel chain that wants to determine how many guests will be staying in a specific region this weekend & can ensure they have enough staff and equipment to handle the demand.

2.  Higher Education

 Applications for predictive analytics in higher education include recruitment, retention, fundraising, and enrollment management. Each of these sectors benefits significantly from predictive analytics since it provides insightful information that would otherwise be overlooked.

• Using information from the student's high school years, a prediction algorithm can grade each student and advise administrators on how to serve students throughout their enrollment.
• Models can provide fundraising professionals with essential knowledge about the best events and approaches for contacting potential and existing donors.

3.  Supply Chain

 Because it ensures that resources in a supply chain are used as efficiently as possible, forecasting is a crucial issue in manufacturing. For instance, the shop floor and inventory management are crucial spokes of the supply chain wheel that depend on accurate estimates to operate.

 The data used for such estimates are regularly cleaned and improved using predictive modeling. Modeling ensures that the system may ingest new data, such as data from customer-facing activities, leading to a more precise prediction.

4.  Finance

 Every company must maintain regular financial records, and predictive analytics can help predict the future health of your company. One can predict sales, income, and expenses to create a picture of the future and make decisions using historical data from prior financial statements & data from a massive industry.

5.  Insurance

 By comparing prospective policyholders to the existing risk pool of similar policyholders and taking into account prior occurrences that resulted in payouts, insurance companies analyze policy applicants to determine the likelihood of having to pay out for a future claim. Models that match attributes to information on former policyholders and claims are commonly used by actuaries.

6.  Healthcare

 Large-scale uses of data from electronic health records, federal repositories, biometric data, claims data, and other sources include projecting the chance of patients getting specific medical disorders and the course of diseases in individuals. Predictive analytics is useful for managing supply chains, identifying patients at high risk of readmission to the hospital, and other applications in the field of health administration.

7.  Software Testing

 Throughout the whole software testing life cycle, predictive analytics can help businesses improve their operations. It can help reduce the complexity of analyzing the enormous amounts of data produced during software testing by modeling the results.

 Monitoring deadlines and using predictive modeling to determine how delays impact the project will help businesses keep the release schedule on track. They make course corrections in specific areas before the entire project is delayed by recognizing these challenges and their root causes.

 Through social media analysis and trend spotting, predictive analytics can gauge company clients' attitudes and help them foresee any response before it happens.

Predictive Analytics - The Benefits:

Predictive technology has a plethora of potential uses. Therefore, the advantages are essentially limitless. Here are some ways that predictive analytics could be used in business.

1.  Predicting customer churn

 To identify when customer churn is occurring, predictive models can use historical and transactional data to identify the behavioral patterns that precede it. A business might then be able to keep the consumer by taking action by acting quickly.

2.  Boosting the customer experience

 By figuring out what customers like and foreseeing what they might want next, predictive technology can assist organizations in giving customers a personalized experience. By developing an understanding of normal consumer behaviours and preferences, organizations can utilize it to help them plan and design experiences, which can improve the customer experience more broadly.

3.  Detecting and preventing fraud

 Predictive analytics' strength lies in its capacity to recognize trends, which enables it to identify anomalies. Businesses can use predictive technology to identify odd behavioral patterns of behavior that could be signs of fraud.

4.  Time-saving and efficiency

 Predictive technologies can handle a large portion of the work involved in everyday, low-risk decision-making, freeing up employees to work on more lucrative or high-risk strategic tasks.

5.  Predicting and preventing risks

 Predictive analytics models can identify possible hazards, their causes, and their likelihood & will materialize by examining trends and patterns from the operating past. Then, companies can use the data to develop risk or crisis management procedures in advance.

Predictive Analytics – Techniques:

Data analysis techniques such as data mining, machine learning, and others are incorporated into predictive analytics. Let's take a look at predictive analytics techniques.

1.  Classification Model

 There are two main types of machine learning algorithms: classification-based and regression-based. While classification algorithms are important for categorizing data, both types have different predictive analytics applications.

 For instance, they can assist businesses in determining if a specific website visitor is a "buyer" or "browser," or whether a subscription is a "monthly" or "yearly" type of consumer. Organizations can distribute resources, both human and non-human, more effectively by using classification models. For instance, businesses are better able to maintain adequate quantities of inventory and avoid overstaffing a store during particular hours.

2.  Regression Model

 When a company needs to forecast a numerical number, such as how long a potential customer will wait to cancel an airline reservation or how much money they will spend on auto payments over time, they can use a regression method.

 For instance, a popular regression technique that searches for a correlation between two variables is linear regression. Regression algorithms of this type look for patterns that foretell correlations between variables, such as the association between consumer spending and the amount of time spent browsing an online store.

3.  Decision Trees

 A decision tree is a machine learning-based analytics technique that forecasts the prospective risks and advantages of performing particular actions using data mining techniques. It is a graphic representation of the potential outcomes of a decision that looks like an upside-down tree. It can address complex questions and resolve all kinds of categorization challenges when utilized for analytics.

4.  Neural Networks

 Neural networks are data processing systems with biological inspiration that estimate future values using past and current data. Their architecture mimics the pattern detection mechanisms of the human brain, allowing them to find intricate relationships hidden in data.

They consist of numerous layers that accept data (input layer), compute predictions (hidden layer), and deliver output (output layer) in the form of a single prediction. They are commonly used for image recognition and patient diagnostics.

5.  Text Analytics

 When a business wishes to forecast a number, text analytics is utilized. It is based on methods from linguistics, statistics, and machine learning. It aids in foretelling a document's themes and examines the vocabulary employed in the given form.

Data Science

Certification Course

Pay After Placement Program

View course

Starting with Predictive Analytics:

Even if it's not precisely easy to get started with predictive analytics, almost any firm can do it, provided they remain dedicated to the strategy and are prepared to put in the time and investment needed to get the project rolling.

 A great strategy to decrease start-up costs and shorten the period before financial rewards start to flow is to start with a small-scale pilot project in a crucial business sector. Once a predictive analytics model is put into use, it often requires little maintenance because it keeps developing useful information for years.

 If you're interested in learning more about predictive analytics techniques that are frequently employed in today's market, check out the StarAgile consulting Data Science online course. Enroll in a data science course right away with us!