Prescriptive Analytics: The Ultimate Self Help Tool

In this special guest feature, Guy Yehiav, CEO at Profitect, discusses how prescriptive anaytics holds the keys to efficiency with the least amount of risk and the fastest time to value. Prior to Profitect, Guy Yehiav served as Vice President Sales & Strategy for Oracle's Value Chain Planning Solutions where he was responsible for sales, strategy and customer success. Guy was also founder of Demantra US, a leading global provider of demand-driven planning solutions, which was acquired by Oracle in 2006. Previously, he directed the Global Professional Service Group where he was in charge of creating methodologies and infrastructure through value chain transformations that enabled demand driven and seamless operations for fortune 1000 companies.

Stagnation is a familiar yet unfortunate trap for businesses. The early business model proves successful, profits soar, and a "don't fix what isn't broken" mentality sets in. But trends come and go, the market evolves. In order to survive, and even thrive, companies need to consistently seek out new and innovative ways to improve themselves. In that never-ending search, many have turned to the opportunities found in leveraging big data.

Across a number of industries, the C-suite often asks itself, "how can we best use the wealth of information we're already gathering?" Here enters prescriptive analytics. Once implemented, collected data is run through an engine to identify hidden gems of value and is then translated into insight and actions outlining how to maximize efficiency of current business practices. This crowd sourcing method helps professionals understand what exactly is working in the field. Simply put, it helps reduce waste and raise the top & bottom line. What is making prescriptive so attractive is that it does not discriminate between internal and external behaviors. For example, a retailer might leverage prescriptive to determine which sections of a store are receiving the most attention from customers and how to capitalize upon that (i.e. external behaviors). Versus a supply chain manager who uses prescriptive to identify average shipping times which can increase the efficiency of deliveries (i.e. internal behaviors). Furthermore, it democratizes analytics by delivering the information in plain English, right to the person who should see it, rather than requiring a trained professional for interpretation.

But prescriptive also has the potential to go beyond simple practice improvement. As solution providers create more intelligent engines, they are able to actively identify problem areas that are costing the organization in revenue. To use the retailer as an example once again: prescriptive is able to flag excessive lead times when hot items aren't being replaced on the shelves fast enough to meet consumer demand. Over time, if retailers don't act upon these insights, it can cost a small fortune.

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