The Age of Predictive Data

Quick data facts:

  • 100 terabytes of data are uploaded to Facebook daily!

  • Data production will be 44 times greater in 2020 than in 2009.

  • Walmart handles more than 1 million customer transactions every hour, which are imported into databases.

Big data is a top business priority and drives enormous opportunities for business improvement. By using this mass of data in conjunction with software that relies heavily on algorithms, logistic regression analysis and decision trees, big data will be a $50 billion business in 2017.

As data analysis increases, the analysis accuracy improves rapidly to a point of high certainty. Data mining and modeling are becoming the most important leading indicators of future events, practices and consumer decisions.

Why are predictive data analytics the most important business tools for savvy executives?

Optimize marketing campaigns. Imagine if you could know with a high level of accuracy how your customers will respond to your products and marketing campaigns before you create them. Predictive models are already helping businesses to attract, retain and grow their most profitable customers. By predicting what customers are looking for in a product mix and understanding their expectations, marketing campaigns can be more accurate in reaching the target audience.

Reducing risk. A credit score, for example, is a predictive indicator financial institutions use to minimize lending risk. This helps them make better loans without fear of default issues. The insurance industry pricing is also based on predictive data. Imagine if all businesses were able to stop creating unwanted products, stop hiring the wrong employees, and stop investing in failed ideas?  Predictive data will be a significant input of information to these business decisions.

Detecting fraud. As cybersecurity becomes a growing concern for all businesses, predictive data will be able to detect real-time criminal activity. Ever wonder how banks know your credit card is being used questionably? Your predictive data tells them this transaction is outside of your normal behaviors.

As the speed of business continues to increase, we are in more need of knowing what is ahead of us so we can make adjustments before we get there. Predictive data is the answer to increasing the speed of business without creating greater business crashes. What lead indicating information would you like to know to improve your business? I’m sure the data is available right now.