Predictive analytics defines outcomes through models to answer the question “What will likely happen?” By doing so, businesses can move beyond reactive strategies toward positive outcomes, meeting business goals and ameliorating risks. Predictive analytics probability models trigger from historical data, sensor data, and data-in-event streams both specific customer behaviors and global news (such as a […]
What Is Prescriptive Analytics?
Prescriptive analytics uses outcomes and scenarios to answer the question “What should we do to make things happen?” It takes predictive analytics a step further to define actions that will affect outcomes, rather than just predicting the outcomes from actions that have occurred. Prescriptive analytics shows the implication of various decisions to anticipate what, when, […]
What Is Smart Data?
Smart Data is digital information that is formatted so it can be acted upon the collection point before being sent to a downstream analytics platform for further data consolidation and analysis. James Kobielus, IBM’s Big Data evangelist and keynote speaker at the 2016 DATAVERSITY® Smart Data Online Conference stated: “It is a strategy that sets the […]
What Is Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)?
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) describes a model where customers license a software application provided by and outsides vendor. In return, as Gartner states, “a customer gets a software based on one set of common code and data definitions.” Depending on the vendor’s payment program, users can access the software at any time. Think of SaaS like an […]
What Is Structured Query Language (SQL)?
Structured Query Language, or SQL, is a programming nomenclature used to do set operations (like union, intersect, and minus) to organize and retrieve information in relational databases, based on “set theory and relational algebra.” According to DAMA International’s Data Management Body of Knowledge, in any system that uses SQL, “data elements or attributes, categorized into […]
What Is Taxonomy?
Taxonomy represents the formal structure of classes or types of objects within a domain. It organizes knowledge by using a controlled vocabulary to make it easier to find related information. A taxonomy must: Follow a hierarchic format and provides names for each object in relation to other objects. May also capture the membership properties of […]
Data Governance vs Data Quality: Managing Data-Driven Solutions
To succeed as a data-driven business means understanding data problems quickly, before spending time and money on a ready-made solution. As Albert Einstein stated, “If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.” Organizations need to use their time wisely by […]
Natural Language Processing: The What, Why, and How
To the outside observer, Natural Language Processing (NLP) may seem futuristic. Only around a third of smartphone owners use their personal assistants regularly (a hallmark of NLP technologies), even though 95 percent have tried them at some point, according to Creative Strategies, a consultancy. However, Natural Language Processing advances continue in leaps and bounds, as […]
BackOffice Associates: Guiding the Data Stewardship Journey for Large Companies
When a large Fortune 1000 company merges and acquires many smaller companies, and undergoes a Digital Transformation, Data Governance and Data Stewardship become more complex. The well-known and established business may need to integrate up to 200 different ERP applications from a variety of systems across different divisions that span the globe. Take this context […]
ASG Technologies: Bridging Enterprise Data Intelligence from the Mainframe to Big Data
Finding Shambhala, a paradise once sought by explorers, probably seems easier than mapping data buried under multiple application stacks, systems, and platforms for many modern enterprises. Data created and used over the course decades transforms and changes as the organization does. Ian Rowlands, VP of Product Marketing for ASG Technologies knows the unease of not […]