An investment in business intelligence (BI) technology to harness and view your data is often a first step towards a better understanding of your business. Combining data mining, data visualization and business analytics, a BI investment enables a more descriptive vision of business activity resulting in better data-driven decisions. Taking it one step further, organizations that marry their BI with machine learning (ML) tools are able to realize substantial gains in revenue, efficiency and productivity even greater and faster.
Machine learning technology sits between the data source and the BI tools and acts as a supercharger yielding exponential value to your BI investment in the form of both predictive and prescriptive analytics. Whereas BI requires a bit of a “hunt-and-peck” approach of looking around for interesting insights or having an idea of what to look at, ML will examine all your data at once and tell you immediately what the most important drivers of your outcome of interest are. Then you can go back into BI and examine these more closely.
ML applications enhance visualization dashboards with predictive insights that learn from data through the resulting models. Instead of merely slicing and dicing aggregated data, machine learning analyzes thousands of individual level records and variables at the same time to detect patterns and identify relationships that may not be immediately apparent or intuitive to humans. Further, ML can continuously update models with new data.
For example, Bill Sandblom of IGI International leveraged an automated machine learning platform integration with his company’s BI suite to better analyze production processes. This modest investment in ML allowed for the discovery of greater production efficiencies that led to millions in new revenue.
Dashboards can often be cumbersome and one dimensional, which limits their use for identifying real opportunities for improving business outcomes. Adding ML between your data and the visualization layer allows for more relevant and valuable views that can help to transform how a company produces and markets its products or services. If you are interested in learning more about integrating machine learning to achieve better outcomes, then let’s talk. Our team is available for an initial consult and can help you conduct a rapid proof of concept using your data to tackle your most pressing business needs.
