{"id":14056,"date":"2018-02-09T01:28:34","date_gmt":"2018-02-09T00:28:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/?p=14056"},"modified":"2018-02-09T13:36:34","modified_gmt":"2018-02-09T12:36:34","slug":"the-future-of-machine-learning-enabled-analytics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/2018\/02\/the-future-of-machine-learning-enabled-analytics.html","title":{"rendered":"The Future of Machine Learning-Enabled Analytics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/SAPanalytics\/videos\/1764379863623163\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-14389\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/sap-live-chat-timo-elliott-andy-bitterer.jpg?resize=525%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"525\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/sap-live-chat-timo-elliott-andy-bitterer.jpg?resize=1024%2C586&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/sap-live-chat-timo-elliott-andy-bitterer.jpg?resize=608%2C348&amp;ssl=1 608w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/sap-live-chat-timo-elliott-andy-bitterer.jpg?resize=768%2C440&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/sap-live-chat-timo-elliott-andy-bitterer.jpg?w=1946&amp;ssl=1 1946w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 525px) 100vw, 525px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Predictive technology isn&#8217;t new. But algorithms are really starting to take over! It&#8217;s clear that predictive analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning are going to completely transform the way companies do business.<\/p>\n<p>SAP Analytics Evangelist <a href=\"https:\/\/de.linkedin.com\/in\/bitterer\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Andy Bitterer<\/a> and recently discussed the trends, the biggest challenges, and potential use cases of these technologies as part of an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/events\/142728126429000\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#askSAP Live Chat on Facebook<\/a>\u00a0hosted by\u00a0<a class=\"ProfileHeaderCard-nameLink u-textInheritColor js-nav\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/averyh\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Avery Horzewski<\/a> &#8211;and\u00a0 that video is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/SAPanalytics\/videos\/1764379863623163\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">now available online.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>These are just some of the areas we explored:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Why, after being the \u201cnext big thing\u201d in analytics for at least two decades, Predictive Analytics and Machine Learning\u00a0are now such hot industry trends.<\/li>\n<li>How machine learning is enabling \u201cself-driving\u201d processes that automate the kinds of complex repetitive decision-making that up until now only humans could do.<\/li>\n<li>The biggest new opportunities for these technologies in today\u2019s organizations.<\/li>\n<li>The easiest ways to can get started with machine learning.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In particular, we talked about what machine learning can bring to traditional analytics, including:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>More intelligent data preparation.<\/b> Over 90% of average business intelligence projects involve gathering, cleaning, and joining data from different sources. Algorithms can help automate some of this work, especially for more casual business users.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Natural-language interfaces.<\/b>\u00a0BI interfaces that correctly interpret user questions in everyday language via voice or chat, such as \u201cwhat\u2019s the revenue per customer this month compared to last month?\u201d and\u00a0are able to provide data in sentence form, such as \u201cdeal value is 20% lower than average for the enterprise segment\u201d.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Automatic outlier detection. <\/b>Algorithms can spot exceptions and unusual events automatically, such as:<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>\u201cdays sales outstanding is the western region is currently 90% higher than the average over the last six months\u201d. This helps enable the long-term dream of true exception-driven management.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Intelligent segmentation. <\/b>Statistical techniques can automatically create groups and segments that make sense based on the data, rather than arbitrarily-defined thresholds. For example, by automatically segmenting crime data into age-ranges that match real-world trends, such as 0-14, 14-23, 23-35 etc. rather than 0-10, 20-30, etc.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Causality and significance detection<\/b>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>We can use algorithms to determine the key influencers on profitability, or to check whether an uptick in sales is a real inflection point rather than just random variation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Advanced data sharing. <\/b>Just as Amazon recommends book purchases based on what we\u2019ve read in the past, algorithms can help identify reports and data that we might be interested in \u2014 \u201cpeople like you also\u00a0liked this dashboard\u201d.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Automated improvements. <\/b>Ultimately, we have an opportunity to\u00a0have BI systems that automatically adapt to users, prompting them to take analysis to the next level &#8212; &#8220;would you like to create an alert when you see something interesting&#8221;.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What do you think? What big AI\/ML + BI trends did Andy and I miss?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What can machine learning bring to analytics? Listen to Andy Bitterer and I discuss this hot topic in an #askSAP live Facebook Chat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14389,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[1177,1176,1323,160,204,481,1175,1238,835,1181],"class_list":["post-14056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-asksap","tag-bi","tag-business-intelligence","tag-facebook","tag-machine-learning","tag-ml","tag-predictive","tag-self-driving"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/sap-live-chat-timo-elliott-andy-bitterer.jpg?fit=1946%2C1114&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3X9RF-3EI","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}