Developing a predictive analytics program doable on a limited budget
From the post:
Predictive analytics is experiencing what David Menninger, a research director and vice president at Ventana Research Inc., calls “a renewed interest.” And he’s not the only one who is seeing a surge in the number of organizations looking to set up a predictive analytics program.
In September, Hurwitz & Associates, a consulting and market research firm in Needham, Mass., released a report ranking 12 predictive analytics vendors that it views as “strong contenders” in the market. Fern Halper, a Hurwitz partner and the principal researcher for the report, thinks predictive analytics is moving into the user mainstream. She said its growing popularity is being driven by better tools, increased access to high-performance computing resources, reduced storage costs and an economic climate that has businesses hungry for better forecasting.
“Especially in today’s economy, they’re realizing they can’t just look in the rearview mirror and look at what has happened,” said Halper. “They need to look at what can happen and what will happen and become as smart as they can possibly be if they’re going to compete.”
While predictive analytics basks in the limelight, the nuances of developing an effective program are tricky and sometimes can be overwhelming for organizations. But the good news, according to a variety of analysts and consultants, is that finding the right strategy is possible — even on a shoestring budget.
Here are some of their best-practices tips for succeeding on predictive analytics without breaking the bank:
What caught my eye was doable on a limited budget.
Limited budgets aren’t uncommon most of the time and in today’s economy they are down right plentiful. In private and public sectors.
The lessons in this post apply to topic maps. Don’t try to sell converting an entire enterprise or operation to topic maps. Pick some small area of pain or obvious improvement and sell a solution for that part. ROI that they can see this quarter or maybe next. Then build on that experience to propose larger or longer range projects.