Business Analytics Services

Businesses strive to be smart, but often fail. As the saying goes, businesses "don't know what they know".

Their staff, their processes and especially their data hold an immense amount of useful intellectual property, but it's hard to find when you need it and hard to use when you find it.

And, after more than a decade of work and investment on data warehouses and business intelligence software, the whole field is being disrupted again as boffins and entrepreneurs alike eye a new and exciting frontier: big data.

Auckland-based business incubator the Ice house has helped nurture several big data start ups. Chief executive Andy Hamilton says it takes a while to get your head around what makes big data so different.

"The geeky end of data is historically data mining," he says.

"Big data traverses mobile, analytic, machine learning and takes it from being a static, geeky thing to something real-time, a live learning system."

Among other benefits, it promises better product development, vastly improved and even automated customer service, and increased sales conversions through the ability to create more personalized offers.

"It's a really exciting space. There's going to be a lot of disruption and a lot of opportunity too," Hamilton says.

In New Zealand there are a couple of more mature firms, such as data warehousing specialist Where cape and mobile loyalty application developer Mob, and then a lot of early stage firms looking at market opportunities.

Big data is dead, long live big data! so by now I think its safe to say that the big data consulting services Hype is finally dissipating as after all it was really only BI in Wolfs clothing. I think we all agree that the volume of data being generated is increasing exponentially and the IoT is going to take data proliferation to levels we can’t possibly imagine right now but for all the hype and the noise it all seemed like a bit of a lollies ramble where everyone was just coming up with nuts!. However, what we are now starting to see more and more of is the practical application of advanced data management, processing and visualization software and techniques i.e. Hardtop, Python, Spark, Hive, MapR, Ta blue etc etc, combined with new forms of scaling technology i.e. AWS and Google Cloud Data store, actually delivering meaningful results across social, economic and commercial use cases. This combination of technology and hardware evolution is also enabling new business models to be created that bring the benefits of these tools and technologies out to the masses.

  One of these new business models is being exploited by iPrediq, a New Zealand based start up building an on demand machine learning platform to enable other businesses to personalize their engagement with their customers. The platform can be leveraged to use advanced machine learning to deliver personalized offers and recommendations instore and online or via eDM and DM. Not only does the offering democratize machine learning it also solves another key challenge around accessing the relevant expertise as good Data Scientists aren't that easy to come by. Everyone knows ML has given the likes of Amazon, Facebook, and others an unfair advantage but iPrediq can now bring these same services to the smallest direct marketing boutique in a cost effective way. "Our aim is to level the playing field so businesses can get back to differentiating on the things that matter and the things where they have a competitive advantage whether that's service, UX, product selection or delivery time frames." Say Rob Mark, Head Of Marketing and Co Founder of iPrediq. He goes on to say " we want to demystify and democratize machine learning and rid the world of substandard shopping or service experiences and allow any business, from eCommerce to inshore to mobile to direct marketing, to talk to their customers in a way that's personal about things that are relevant. Unlike our competitors we'll do this in a way that's easy and cost effective so there will be no excuse for spamming or ignoring your customers."

Google, LinkedIn and Amazon have thousands of engineers who point their work inward to build better recommendations, search and other Internet-scale features. iprediq has launched  a similar form of machine learning that does the inverse by pointing its technology outward for people to use.

  That’s not to say that iprediq will necessarily compete against these companies. It’s just to point out the company’s machine learning as a service is something that can be used by anyone to solve problems that now take hundreds or thousands of people to do.

  iprediq works with machine-learning algorithms to make them fast and scalable. To do that Say and his team used their years of knowledge into its technology. Now all that knowledge is getting packaged to offer as a service. It is still pretty complex. It is built for data scientists and ready for the enterprise.

  Iprediq  acts as a framework for ingesting data from Hardtop, and various file sources. The engine creates multi-dimensional views of the data it ingests. The iprediq engine can, process the billions of signals that any data point relates to. Iprediq’s framework serves as a central brain that takes a holistic look at the data.

  He said the problem today stems from the man hours it takes to benefit from machine learning. Rob the chief marketing officer said that Netflix considered a machine-learning option a few years ago, but it would take 100 years man years to implement. By combining their own knowledge, iprediq has developed a service that takes a holistic view of the data, doing with machines what he says people can do only with very large teams.

    The company is targeting markets such an industrial safety, which has historically required analyzing data at scale. It can often take six months to produce a report for a customer about all its safety hazards that it might have in a customer’s factory.  Think of oil refineries or nuclear power plants and all the data that can be analyzed. Historically people have done the analysis. Machine learning can take that data and analyze it in a fraction of the time. “It takes hundreds of man hours,” Rob said. “We can do it in 20 minutes.”

  That kind of time savings means fewer people are required to do the job, which makes iprediq both fascinating and reflective on who we are and the age that is rapidly emerging before us. As Rob said to me, the Industrial Age saw machines doing the physical lifting. Today data does the intellectual lifting. And that’s something to chew on.

With the big data consulting services and the business analytics services you are able to discover the areas that can increase profitability to your company while allocating more sources and allowing growth.

The major role of predictive business analytics is to let a business offer data consulting services and convert data into information that can be used to make correct decisions. Business like yours, have a variety of raw data that needs to be analyzed so that they know how to solve any possible issues and meet the needs of the business, thus staying competitive all the time. They do this by using an effective and reliable predictive analytics platform and the most advanced technological tools.

So, for any business to become successful or stay in the competition one has to recognize the obstacles and the opportunities that can help expand the business and enhance performance. The predictive business analytic involves big data consulting services to understand the operations in the business and predict the business trends. Factors that are taken into consideration during analytic include production, packaging, storage, delivery, marketing, customer support and pricing among others. By taking advantage of the services in the correct way, you can improve and expand your business.

  By applying a predictive analytics platform you will also have the chance to understand your customers and their needs. You will be able to know how to cover their needs with your products and services. Knowing how to satisfy your customers is very important in the market. Analytic services are also important because they help you create demand. Even if you have a lot of products, you will not make the sales if you don’t cause demand for your products or services in the market. Analysis of the market and sales trends will help you create this demand.

Business analytics services are important because it makes any process for reaching any professional goal easier and precise. Once you understand your business’s performance you can set realistic goals so that you can each in the future. Identifying what opportunities you have in the market in the future is a must. Setting your goals before you recognize your strength or weakness in the market is not advised because you might end up damaging your business because these goals may exceed your abilities. That is why business analytics are important.

Other than helping identifying weaknesses and strengths and setting goals, business analytics are important because they help in detecting fraud. Fraud is a big problem and an obstacle when trying to survive or expand in the market.