Predictive Analytics, Big Data, and How to Make Them Work for You
By @Rob Marvin
Help desk providers such as Zendesk$5.00 at Zendesk have also begun adding predictive analytics capabilities to help desk software. The company imbued its platform with predictivepowers to help customer service reps spot problem areas with a data-driven early warning system called Satisfaction Prediction. The feature uses a ML algorithm to process satisfaction survey results, throwing variables including time to resolve a ticket, customer service response latency, and specific ticket wording into a regression algorithm to calculate a customer's projected satisfaction rating.
We're also seeing predictive analytics make a big impact to the bottom line on industrial scale and with the Internet of Things (IoT). Google uses ML algorithms in its data centers to run predictivemaintenance on the server farms powering its GoogleCloud PlatformLearn More at Google (GCP) public cloud infrastructure. The algorithms use data on weather, load, and other variables to adjust data center cooling pumps preemptively and significantly reduce power consumption.
This kind of predictive maintenance is becoming commonplace in factories as well. Enterprise tech companies such as SAP offer predictive maintenance and service platforms using sensor data from connected IoT manufacturing devices to predict when a machine is at risk for mechanical problems or failure. Tech companies such as Microsoft are also exploring predictive maintenance for aerospace apps, putting Cortana to work on analyzing sensor data from aircraft engines and components.
The list of potential business apps goes on and on, from how predictive analytics is changing the retail industry to fintech start-ups using predictive modeling on fraud analysis and financial transaction risk. We've only scratched the surface, both in the ways different industries could integrate this type of data analysis and the depths to which predictive analytics tools and techniques will redefine how we do business in concert with the evolution of AI. As we inch closer to truly mapping an artificialbrain, the possibilities are endless.