It’s really hard to talk about something like SAP predictive analytics, and it’s not because the technology is confusing, or anything of the sort. It’s actually entirely because researching SAP is a nightmare, due to it being both a technology and the company that invented it.
For some reason, the majority of business technology writers out there seem to only want to talk about the company, which baffles me, considering that aspect isn’t even their field of choice. But, as a result, SAP predictive analytics is left with nobody talking about it.
What I Want to Say:
The first thing I want to point out is that I’m not going to be giving tutorial on how to use the software, because that’s actually well documented on their site, if you want to go digging for it. So, that’d be reinventing the wheel anyhow.
What I want to do is talk about the things to consider to get the most out of it, and where it’s going to prove tremendously useful to you in your future endeavors, whatever those may be.
A World of Numbers:
Business has always been about numbers, all things said and done. Profit margins, overhead, running expenses and the like have been the bottom line for any merchant or other type of business person since the advent of currency, trade and specialism outside of agriculture. In other words, this has been the way of things for a really long time.
But, we see it far more now, in this information age of computers and internet. We spend a lot of our time as business people studying analytics gathered over time, and using that to forecast future trends, and to learn from mistakes and obstacles, to be better equitable in the future.
SAP technology is actually fantastic for getting a handle on that kind of thing with improved speed, accuracy and efficiency.
Predictive:
Predictive analytics is basically just that. It’s the use of data from past records, applied to current metrics and trends, to forecast what’s likely to happen in the future, and what numbers would come out of those likely events and trends. It’s invaluable information for formulating fiscal strategies.
What’s Special:
Well, what makes this special over just simple financial tools that plot past trends, is what it does in the process. Most technologies like this one use adaptive algorithms and formulae that are quite advanced, to make the predictions. Don’t ask me how the math in those works, because I couldn’t begin to guess honestly.
Things to Consider:
The biggest caveats are for one, to be sure that the data being fed in from past records isn’t a backlog from longer ago than a couple years, as fiscal trends and business trends tend to become rapidly obsolete beyond making examples out of mistakes, past that.
The other big thing to bear in mind is that predictive systems like this also contain powerful, and very useful automata which can be set up to take actions based on predictions as it comes to them. It’s obvious where this is useful for speed and being reflexive as a business.
However, it’s also quite clear where that can go wrong.
Beyond that, though, there’s not much to say about SAP predictive analytics. This is a powerful tool, just be careful about the data source you’re letting it base its “experience” aspect of prediction on, and be careful what you let it do without asking first.