Book Image

Analytics: How to Win with Intelligence

By : John Thompson, Shawn P. Rogers
Book Image

Analytics: How to Win with Intelligence

By: John Thompson, Shawn P. Rogers

Overview of this book

Today, business is moving into an era where information is more valuable than services. Organizations that connect information with their products will have a huge advantage. This book helps people understand the power of data analytics and explains how some of the tools available can be applied to a wide range of applications. It begins with a brief history of analytics and explains how it all began. You'll learn about several common analytical approaches and the tools that data scientists use to analyze data. You'll gain insight into some staffing models, technologies, organizational structures, and analytical approaches used in the previous two eras of analytics. As you progress through the chapters, you'll also get a glimpse into the future of the analytical marketplace. After reading this book, you will be able to help your team deploy analytical elements into your operations and become competitive in your business.
Table of Contents (11 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Foreword by Tom Davenport

Advanced analytics today

Thanks to advanced analytics, we can understand customers, markets, competition, weather, and a wide range of natural and manmade environments, conditions, and situations. We can use historical data to characterize and understand patterns inherent in past behaviors and situations. We can use characterizations, rules, and understanding to build models from algorithms and formulas. We can embed these in systems to recognize the precursors to behaviors or actions that we want to forestall, lessen, or eliminate – or that we want to amplify, encourage, or extend.

Of the many advanced analytics applications available today, the commonly used includes the following:

  • Recommending next actions (such as next purchases for online retailers)
  • Recognizing images (for example, for security and surveillance systems)
  • Real-time scoring of large volumes of streaming data (such as for financial services firms)
  • Optimizing operating parameters (in...