Predictive Analytics: I-knew-then-what-I-know-now

What’s the next game-changer for businesses?

Have you ever wondered about this?

It was and always will be - the human capital!

Newer technologies may emerge & you would have to rapidly adopt them … but what remains steadfast and always true – is that your human capital is your biggest asset.

Wouldn’t you love to always harness the strength of human capital?

Sure, you can!

Predictive Analytics is poised to revolutionize HR and mature organizations are looking deeper at the data in their arsenal & connecting the dots - & lo behold this data does tell a compelling story!

Today’s technology gives you the tools to look via this statistical microscope - at the patterns within your data. These patterns often times are the trends that you could potentially capitalize on and turn them to your competitive advantage.

There is no reason why you should lose a talented employee to your competitor.

If only “I-knew-then-what-I know-now” - is no longer a valid argument. Period.

If your HR is “technology savvy” & determined – it does not have to go only by hindsight – it can have the insight & foresight required to be on top of it’s game.

There is absolutely no reason why a long-term employee’s performance should fall because he has been demotivated for a while.

Predictive Analytics is powerful enough to have “seen” the likeliness of this happening & HR could have done a what-if analysis and taken corrective actions.

Yes, I so agree with you - this does require HR to be donning the technology cap – it can only then enjoy the game that unfolds!

Make sure your HR does not miss this highway signpost – cause that is the surest way of forging straight ahead!

Small is beautiful too!

McKinsey reports that while one is getting attuned to keeping track of the conversations happening in social media using often-used keywords and sentiment analysis, there is a possibility that one could miss out on the quiet whispers. These are the not-so-strong signals that could potentially provide us with additional clues.

So here’s the parody: its just not BIG data that is important … snippets of SMALL data could be meaningful too.

So ... off we go into the realm of acoustics … listening to the faintly audible lower decibels … not just listening to tweets!

Big Data & Artful Intelligence

Catch me if you can …

Yes, do cast a wide net. 
Data is everywhere ... all around you - can you catch 'em - but do focus on quality rather than quantity. 
You have heard this before: We begin with the three V’s: Volume, Velocity & Variety 
(that's the do-re-mi of Big Data)

Large Volumes of Structured data …

It’s the usual & the-not-very-exciting-stuff that lives in your internal databases; also in the public clouds. Always useful to have some outside data; gives you the ability to see how you compare with the outside trends.

To this we added the vast Variety of exciting Un-structured data. 
       Go ahead and happily include social perceptions. 
       Again it is critical to identify the ones that really matter to your business.        
      I can almost imagine some interesting ones. 

             Seriously, was this tweeted?

 Really, what was posted regarding this?

 How does Gen Y perceive this?

That status is so not cool!

What was pinned?

Yes, that too – the video that went viral?

Of course, with a high Velocity, you are almost capturing real-time data as well.
The in-memory columnar format – even better! Who wants a data-warehouse when you can have it alongside your transaction data.

Part or Whole …

Do you want to start with a Holistic set of data to get the big picture for your business?

Or

Do you want to start with a small set of Deeper, Segmented  data (think: specialized industries here)?

Analyze this …

What story does this data tell you?
Connect the dots and analyze from the business perspective.

Apply algorithms to derive intelligence and insights.

Missing Pieces …

Remember though to have a good data representation. Could there be any missing data that will affect the inference? What about the boundaries? Can't provide a skewed perspective, now can we?

Lay it out …

Time to provide some visually compelling and easy to understand insights for decision making.

Fast and Furious …

To this ever-changing data apply an evolving logic - logic that progressively learns from its experiences and fine-tunes in an ongoing manner.
You got it ... the logic applied should simply not be hard-coded ... it's smart enough to learn from itself... and does not require any manual logic upgrades. How do we manage that? Bingo!

Usher in - Innovative Cognitive Computing!
(… so la ti do …)

Of Groups & Sorts

Amazon .. Google .. Yahoo ... are you listening?

All these years, I resisted what I called was the trap of “online shopping”.

But 2013 saw me progressively become an online shopper.

The first time it was out of necessity - or so I thought.

I wear wide width shoes. These aren’t as readily available in stores. In the past, only Nordstrom could come to my rescue.

Next time round, it was because of the t-shirt style that I prefer. I like scoop necks; alas, stores tend to carry more of round necks and v-necks.

The other day, I went online shopping because I like pure cotton pants; & of course I don’t like it mixed with lycra!

My online shopping sprees increased; so did the rigidity of my choices.

I had reasons to not adapt; I had discovered a way out.

With time, my search prowess increased. I happily went pounding the searches on my keyboard:

Women t-shirt cotton black …

Women t-shirt cotton black scoop neck …

Heck, men don’t wear scoop necks & I certainly don’t like redundancies.

I am willing to sacrifice performance over elegance. So I drop “Women” from the search string

Black cotton scoop neck t-shirt …

If only I could sort the result by fitting style; wouldn’t I love to first see slim fits followed by relaxed fit.

Can't believe it; they have not given me a mechanism to optimize my query. How limiting!

It dawns on me – I am almost playing mind games; and having too much fun at that.

Wonder what would happen when keyword searches are widely replaced with natural language searches?

Black scoop neck t-shirts… exclude … include … 

rule based ... not cost based please!

Evidently, I love elegance in my attire & in my queries – no semantics here.

Amazon..Google ... Yahoo .. are you up for it?