Augmented Analytics: The Next-Big Thing in Data Analytics

Business Intelligence, Big Data Management, Big Data

Article | April 27, 2023

Explore the predictive analytics benefits and challenges in various industries. Discover how businesses harness predictive analytics to drive informed decision making in this comprehensive article. Contents 1. Understanding Predictive Analytics 2. Role of Predictive Analytics in Decision Making 3. Benefits of Predictive Analytics in Decision Making. 4. Overcoming Challenges in Predictive Analytics Implementation 5. Top Companies in Predictive Analytics 5.1 JMP 5.2 Alteryx 5.3 Software AG 5.4 Qlik 5.5 Akkio 5.6 Minitab 5.7 LeanDNA 5.8 Altair 5.9 Black Crow AI 5.10 Explorium 6. Future Trends 1. Understanding Predictive Analytics Predictive analytics is a cutting-edge technology that leverages data, statistical algorithms, and machine learning techniques to identify the likelihood of future outcomes based on historical data. It revolutionizes decision making processes across industries by providing valuable insights and predictions that enable organizations to anticipate trends, mitigate risks, and seize opportunities. 2. Role of Predictive Analytics in Decision Making Predictive analytics is a cornerstone of modern business strategy, providing organizations with a comprehensive understanding of their data structure. By applying refined algorithms and machine learning methodologies, businesses can analyze extensive historical and real-time data repositories, extracting actionable insights to refine their decision making processes. By predicting future trends and events, predictive analytics equips companies with the foresight needed to anticipate market shifts, optimize resource allocation, and mitigate potential risks effectively. This analytical prowess empowers organizations to guide occupied market environments, fostering agility and resilience in the face of uncertainty. Predictive analytics is a strategic compass that guides businesses toward informed choices that drive sustainable growth and competitive advantage. 3. Benefits of Predictive Analytics in Decision Making Integrating predictive analytics into decision making processes offers several key benefits for businesses: • With predictive analytics, gain more accurate insights, significantly reducing the potential for decision making errors. • With predictive analytics, the organization gains the ability to forecast future trends and customer behaviors, empowering them to make proactive decisions that keep ahead of the curve. • Predictive analytics helps efficiently allocate resources such as staffing and budgeting, leading to cost savings. • Businesses can tailor strategies and marketing efforts based on individual customer preferences. • By identifying potential risks, proactive risk management measures can be implemented. • Predictive analytics empowers organizations with strategic insights, enabling them to stay ahead of the competition and align their strategies with market trends. 4. Overcoming Challenges in Predictive Analytics Implementation While the benefits of predictive analytics are substantial, implementing it successfully comes with its own set of challenges, which are as follows: Expertise Deploying predictive analytics often demands specialized skills in statistical modeling and programming languages like R and Python, which can be a hurdle for many teams. To overcome the expertise challenge, businesses can leverage emerging predictive analytics solutions that don't require deep expertise in statistical modeling or programming languages. These user-friendly platforms enable teams to harness the power of predictive analytics without requiring dedicated data scientists. Adoption Predictive analytics tools are often complex and standalone, hindering user adoption. Smoothly integrating them into existing applications can alleviate this challenge. Seamless integration of predictive analytics into existing business applications is critical to enhancing adoption. By embedding predictive capabilities within familiar tools, such as ERP platforms, businesses can minimize disruption to users' workflows and encourage broader acceptance and utilization of predictive analytics. Empowering End Users While predictive analytics provides valuable insights, users may need help to take immediate action due to disjointed workflows. Embedding intelligence workflows within business applications streamlines this process. It is essential to empower end users to take immediate action based on predictive insights. By embedding intelligence workflows within business applications, organizations can enable users to effortlessly transition from data analysis to decision making, saving time and enhancing productivity. Burdensome Project Lists Predictive analytics projects entail lengthy steps, burdening application teams and potentially delaying implementation. Streamlined predictive analytics solutions that automate many project steps can alleviate the burden on application teams. Organizations can expedite project timelines and improve overall efficiency by simplifying processes such as data prep, model selection, and deployment. Incompleteness Predictive models rely on data completeness and accuracy. Deficiencies in data quality may lead to inaccuracies in predictive analytics outputs. Establishing robust data collection and quality assurance protocols is essential to addressing the challenge of data incompleteness. Organizations can enhance the reliability and effectiveness of predictive analytics models by ensuring that data is clean, accurate, and granular. Data Myopia Limitations in demographic variables may result in biased customer classifications, limiting the accuracy of predictive analytics models. Refining the scope of data analysis to encompass a broader range of demographic variables can address the challenge of data myopia. By capturing and analyzing more diverse data points, organizations can improve the accuracy and relevance of predictive analytics insights. 5. Top Companies in Predictive Analytics The predictive analytics is populated by a diverse array of companies, each specializing in different aspects of predictive modeling, data analytics, and machine learning. Some of the top companies in the field include: 5.1. JMP JMP is a renowned data analysis software available for Mac and Windows platforms. It is esteemed for its blend of interactive visualization and robust statistical capabilities. In the 1980s, JMP evolved into a leading solution for efficiently importing, processing, and analyzing data. With its user-friendly interface, dynamically linked graphs, and advanced analytics functionality, JMP empowers users to explore their data and easily extract valuable insights. JMP offers a range of critical features tailored to enhance data analysis and decision-making processes. Its interactive visualization capabilities enable users to explore data visually, facilitating deeper insights and understanding. With powerful statistical methods seamlessly integrated into intuitive interfaces, JMP empowers users to perform advanced analyses precisely and efficiently. The software's drag-and-drop interface and scripting capabilities simplify data import, processing, and analysis, enhancing efficiency. Furthermore, JMP provides predictive modeling capabilities, allowing users to forecast outcomes and make informed decisions based on data trends. 5.2. Alteryx Alteryx is a prominent platform in data analytics, offering a comprehensive suite of tools designed to empower organizations in their decision making processes. With its user-friendly approach and powerful capabilities, Alteryx enables users across various skill levels to efficiently transform extensive datasets into actionable insights, driving impactful outcomes for businesses worldwide. Alteryx offers a unified platform for analytics, data science, and process automation, streamlining workflows and maximizing efficiency. Users can easily blend and prepare data from diverse sources for comprehensive analysis. The platform's advanced predictive analytics capabilities enable users to forecast trends, identify patterns, and make data-driven predictions. Additionally, Alteryx allows users to analyze spatial data, uncover geographical insights, and optimize decision making processes. With self-service analytics capabilities, users across the organization can perform analytics tasks independently, reducing reliance on IT and accelerating insights generation. 5.3. Software AG Software AG TrendMiner is a leading self-service industrial analytics solution explicitly tailored for process manufacturing industries. By harnessing a high-performance analytics engine for time-series data, TrendMiner empowers users to analyze and optimize process performance easily, eliminating the need for extensive data science expertise. With its plug-and-play software, TrendMiner adds immediate value upon deployment, enabling quick insights and streamlining decision making processes for organizations in the manufacturing sector. TrendMiner offers a range of key features designed to enhance process optimization and decision-making within manufacturing environments. Its self-service analytics capability allows users to query data directly, accelerating insights generation without relying on data scientists. The plug-and-play deployment model ensures immediate value with minimal infrastructure investments and implementation timelines. TrendMiner's search and diagnostic capabilities enable users to quickly identify patterns and anomalies in-process data, facilitating root cause analysis and optimization. With predictive analytics capabilities, users can forecast process behavior and configure early warnings for proactive monitoring. 5.4. Qlik Qlik offers a comprehensive data integration and analytics platform to empower organizations to leverage their data to drive business outcomes. With a range of tools and capabilities supporting data integration, real-time analytics, and AI, Qlik provides a robust solution for businesses across various industries. Qlik Cloud Data Integration helps create data pipelines to automate data movement and transformation and modern analytics capabilities like self-service analytics and interactive dashboards. Qlik Sense, powered by its associative engine, allows users to freely explore data and efficiently generate insights through innovative visualizations and continuous learning resources such as Qlik Continuous Classroom. The platform also prioritizes data quality and governance to ensure data accuracy, completeness, and reliability while promoting a unified approach to management. Additionally, Qlik Application Automation provides a no-code automation interface to build automated analytics and data workflows seamlessly. 5.5. Akkio Akkio is a pioneering generative business intelligence (BI) tool provider that harnesses the power of AI and machine learning to reshape data utilization. It offers a transformative platform for analytics and predictive modeling, empowering businesses of all sizes to gain rapid insights and make visionary predictions for everyday operations. Akkio offers generative BI capabilities, enabling users to interact with data intuitively, generate live charts and graphs, and predict future trends effortlessly. Leveraging advanced AI and machine learning algorithms, Akkio provides accurate forecasts and actionable insights, empowering businesses to make informed decisions. Akkio enables predictive analytics for various business scenarios, allowing users to anticipate outcomes and plan for future success. 5.6. Minitab Minitab Statistical Software is a prominent solution for visualizations, statistical analysis, and predictive analytics, facilitating data-driven decision making within organizations. Minitab is a leader in aiding companies and institutions in identifying trends, solving problems, and deriving insights from data. Its user-friendly interface and comprehensive data analysis tools empower users to effortlessly gain deep insights from their data, enhancing decision making processes. Minitab offers a range of critical features tailored to facilitate data analysis and predictive analytics. Its visualization tools enable users to explore data and locate insights quickly and easily. With advanced statistical analysis capabilities, Minitab empowers users to perform various analyses, from basic descriptive statistics to complex predictive modeling. The software facilitates predictive analytics, enabling users to forecast future trends and outcomes based on historical data. 5.7. LeanDNA LeanDNA is a cloud-based SaaS platform that empowers global manufacturers by optimizing inventory management and supply chain efficiency. It offers an intuitive solution to streamline reporting, analytics, and inventory decision making, bridging the gap between complex supply chains and operational execution. LeanDNA stands out with its integration capabilities, easily connecting with any ERP system to consolidate data and provide comprehensive insights into inventory and supply chain operations. Leveraging artificial intelligence, LeanDNA delivers prescriptive insights for optimized inventory management, shortage reduction, and improved on-time delivery performance. The platform provides cross-company visibility by normalizing data across disparate systems, facilitating collaboration and decision making across the supply chain. 5.8. Altair Altair is a globally recognized leader in computational science and intelligence. It offers cutting-edge software and cloud solutions across simulation, high-performance computing (HPC), and artificial intelligence (AI) domains. Among its suite of offerings, Altair provides predictive analytics tools that empower businesses to make informed decisions, optimize operations, and drive sustainable growth. Altair stands out with its comprehensive suite of solutions encompassing simulation, HPC, and AI, including predictive analytics tools tailored to meet varied business needs. The company offers cloud-based solutions, ensuring accessibility and scalability for users worldwide. Leveraging AI-driven insights, Altair empowers organizations to make informed decisions and achieve business growth across the automotive, aerospace, healthcare, and manufacturing sectors. 5.9. Black Crow AI Black Crow AI is a Shopify company designed to empower e-commerce brands with predictive analytics capabilities tailored to enhance digital marketing strategies. By harnessing machine learning predictions, Black Crow AI enables businesses to efficiently predict shopping behavior patterns and unlock hidden value within businesses' customer data, ultimately fostering profitability and sustainable growth. Black Crow AI offers advanced predictive analytics tool specifically designed for e-commerce businesses. These tools enable them to analyze shopping behavior patterns and forecast customer actions across digital marketing channels. With Black Crow AI, companies can optimize their customer acquisition strategies by accurately predicting customer behavior, ensuring efficient resource allocation and maximizing return on investment. The platform provides customizable insights tailored to each e-commerce brand's unique needs and objectives, facilitating personalized and targeted marketing campaigns. 5.10. Explorium Explorium is a leading data science platform offering automatic data discovery and feature engineering capabilities to empower data scientists and business leaders to make informed decisions. By smoothly connecting to thousands of external data sources and leveraging machine learning algorithms, Explorium provides superior predictive analytics, enabling businesses to gain a competitive edge in the market. Explorium automatically connects to thousands of external data sources, including premium, partner, and public data sets, streamlining the data acquisition process for predictive analytics. The platform utilizes advanced feature engineering techniques to distill impactful signals from the data, enhancing predictive analytics and accuracy. With seamless integration with machine learning algorithms, Explorium enables users to leverage predictive analytics for informed decision making. 6. Future Trends in Predictive Analytics The future of predictive analytics promises exciting advancements and innovations. Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, deep learning, and predictive modeling are poised to revolutionize the field, enabling more accurate predictions and deeper insights. Furthermore, democratizing data and analytics tools make predictive analytics more accessible to organizations of all sizes and industries. As predictive analytics continues to evolve, Greater integration with other emerging technologies, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, and augmented reality, is expected, unlocking new predictive modeling and decision-making possibilities. Participating in predictive analytics events offers invaluable foresight into forthcoming advancements and underscores these tools' pivotal role in addressing corporate challenges. Ultimately, the future of predictive analytics is bright, with endless opportunities to harness data-driven insights for future-proof and strategic decision making.

Business Intelligence, Big Data Management, Big Data

Article | July 18, 2023

With precise sentiment and text analysis, businesses amplify their initiatives to drive high ROI. Learn how leading text analytics companies help businesses ensure customer-centric strategies. Contents 1. Text Analytics as a Core Component of Strategic Decision-making 2. Understanding the Approaches and Techniques of Text Analytics 3. Key Advantages of Text Analytics for B2B Businesses 4. Top Text Analytics Software Providers Enabling Business Success 4.1 Displayr 4.2 Chattermill 4.3 Forsta 4.4 DataWalk 4.5 Canvs AI 4.6 Kapiche 4.7 Acodis 4.8 Lumoa 4.9 Wonderflow 4.10 Thematic 5. Wrap Up 1. Text Analytics as a Core Component of Strategic Decision-making Recent strides in machine learning,natural language processing (NLP), and big data technologies have tremendously strengthened the applications and capabilities of text analytics, turning it into a powerful decision-making tool for businesses. Text analytics software utilizes machine learning to extract crucial information from vast amounts of unstructured text data, enabling companies to leverage actionable insights, fine-tune business strategies, and boost profitability. Correspondingly, with text analytics, businesses can retrieve critical details like keywords or company information from free-form texts like emails. It can further be used to classify unstructured texts, such as customer feedback or reviews, based on themes, sentiments, and patterns. For instance, by analyzing customer sentiment on social media, businesses can easily optimize their services and fine-tune their strategic initiatives for higher ROIs. Text analytics, therefore, facilitates informed decision-making by offering crucial insights to companies, empowering them to identify upcoming trends, areas of improvement, market dynamics, buyer preferences, and so on. 2. Understanding the Approaches and Techniques of Text Analytics The core strategies in text analytics aim to highlight deeper information, like patterns and trends, made visible through data visualization techniques. The quantitative insights gained by companies significantly help them make sound decisions and fine-tune their operations. Here’s a list of the prominent text analytics methods that enable prompt decision-making: Topic Modeling Technique The method involves recognizing key themes or subjects in vast text volumes or documents to retrieve relevant keywords. Such identification helps companies classify texts according to prevalent themes and additionally enables exploratory analysis. Sentiment Evaluation Reflecting the emotional tone of various non-formatted texts, including customer interactions, social media posts, and product reviews, this text analytics method focuses on sorting emotions under negative or positive categories. It further emphasizes a detailed categorization for identification, such as disappointment, anger, or confusion. Document Grouping Document grouping or clustering is another valuable text analytics technique that groups congruent documents together. This method helps companies classify large datasets and extract associated information. It is particularly beneficial for improving search results, as it augments relevance for users by grouping similar documents. Text Summarization The advantageous text summarization approach aims to simplify large texts, transforming them into shorter summaries while retaining key points or themes. Accordingly, this technique helps people and machines understand large chunks of text data with greater ease and agility. Entity Chunking Approach Also called Named Entity Recognition (NER), this natural language processing approach automatically derives structured entities from free-form texts. In other words, it classifies vital information within an unstructured text into pre-set categories such as events, organizations, places, and people. TF-IDF Technique With the Term Frequency—Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) text analytics technique, companies can establish the importance of a term in the context of a document and an entire corpus. While term frequency showcases the number of times a term appears in a single document, inverse document frequency assesses the whole document collection to highlight terms with higher relevance. 3. Key Advantages of Text Analytics for B2B Businesses From ensuring the most effective marketing strategies to higher lead conversions, employing text analytics tools ushers in many benefits for B2B businesses. Some of its key advantages include: Targeted Improvements and Better User Experience By understanding open-ended comments across varied platforms, like social media, surveys, and customer service interactions, text analytics software offers vital insights into customer preferences and enables companies to optimize their strategies. It further empowers businesses to refine their existing products, make new offerings, ensure targeted enhancements, and elevate user delight. Reduced Time and Efforts Text analytics automates the retrieval of meaningful data from vast amounts of unstructured texts, significantly lessening the time and resources needed for data processing and empowering businesses to focus on innovation and critical endeavors. Customer Acquisition ​With text analytics platforms, businesses can explore raw data from points of origin like social media and emails to effectively recognize potential leads. Companies can, therefore, focus on rewarding opportunities by adequately assessing leads’ requirements and interests. Risk Handling ​B2B businesses can further leverage advanced text analytics tools to recognize and diminish risks. These tools promptly analyze and address user complaints, read market fluctuations, and cater to supplier sentiments. Expense Management ​Companies notably employ text analytics to assess textual data related to expenses, resource allotment, and procurement. Such evaluation gives them crucial insights into existing shortcomings and cost-saving opportunities, empowering decision-makers to implement cost-cutting strategies and amplify expense management. Market Intelligence ​With text analytics, businesses can understand different patterns, trends, and dynamics of the market, gaining excellent market intelligence from varied sources like news articles, social media and industry reports. Businesses can evaluate their competitors’ behavior and stay ahead of the curve by employing leading-edge technologies and optimizing their processes. Strategic Decision-Making and Increased ROIs ​Last but not least, text analytics helps businesses assimilate the latest trends and developments, rendering actionable insights to optimize their pricing and promotion strategies. Additionally, companies harness text and data analysis to boost marketing, benefitting from effective personalization and augmenting customer satisfaction to drive higher ROIs. 4. Top Text Analytics Software Providers Enabling Business Success Leading text analytics software providers efficiently empower companies to design strategic initiatives. With their advanced features and technologies, they induce enviable business success. The following list showcases some of the top text analytics companies that offer powerful platforms for reliable text data analysis: 4.1 Displayr Displayr is a transformative data analytics and reporting software provider that helps market researchers and businesses gain meaningful insights. The company’s forward-thinking platform makes intricate tasks like text analytics easy, enabling stakeholders to harness the power of information. It combines visualization, reporting, and data science to assist users in making informed decisions. With an impressive array of features, such as ML and text coding tools, responsive dashboards, and auto-updating abilities, the company strengthens varied research requirements, increasing data preciseness and reliability. It further boasts tools for user opinion analysis, brand analytics, text analytics, pricing research, and survey analysis, ensuring dependable conclusions across diverse data collections and corpora. 4.2 Chattermill A leader in customer experience (CX) intelligence, Chattermill provides actionable insights to customer support and product teams, enabling them to augment customer experiences, meet their expectations, and ensure retention. It employs leading-edge deep learning technology to automate information retrieval from extensive non-formatted customer data, such as user reviews, customer service interactions, surveys, and social media. With Chattermill, businesses can effortlessly track retention rates and leverage the sentiment analysis tool to assess opinion trends at scale. The company’s platform further helps businesses understand positivity drivers, strengthening product and pricing strategies along with brand standing. Its distinct features include its proprietary model, Lyra AI, which eliminates the gap between tactical customer feedback analysis and strategic business objectives along with an Experience-Led Growth roadmap that checks CX maturity and suggests meaningful applications. The company also offers training and promotes community engagement initiatives, enhancing members’ expertise. 4.3 Forsta At the forefront of experience and research technology, Forsta promotes a human experience (HX) approach and drives informed decision-making. The company’s platform effortlessly combines market research, customer experience, and employee experience, rendering an all-inclusive understanding of audience interactions and enabling companies to fine-tune their strategies. Notably, Forsta boasts an incredible suite of features, which includes personalization solutions, expert consultation, and advanced analytics. The company strives to augment retail businesses’ revenue by encouraging repeat purchases and maximizing conversions. With state-of-the-art tools, it further allows companies to conduct in-depth interviews and community studies, empowering them to grasp customer sentiment, transform qualitative data into actionable insights, and earn increased revenues with sound decisions. 4.4 DataWalk Employing innovative software technology, DataWalk helps users eliminate data silos and convert raw data into intelligible components, such as transactions, individuals, or events. The company caters to government agencies and commercial enterprises, facilitating data visualization, analysis, and sharing endeavors. Significantly, its leading-edge tools, like text analytics, enable users to make rational decisions by deriving actionable insights from consolidated data. Through its holistic platform, the company empowers users to analyze extensive data across different applications. Businesses can employ team-based graph analytics to identify hidden patterns and connections within varied data sources, gaining insights for strategy refinement. DataWalk further effectively ensures fraud mitigation and enhances efficiency in anti-money laundering. Its many use cases entail customer intelligence, social network analysis, analytics modernization, root cause analysis, etc. Combining machine learning with end-to-end processes, the company strongly supports entities to boost their operational efficiency and earnings. 4.5 Canvs AI Canvs AI is a premier insights platform provider specializing in analyzing open-ended texts, like audience feedback, ad tests, and customer surveys, and turning them into actionable business intelligence. The company leverages state-of-the-art artificial intelligence (AI) and NLP technologies, like text analytics, to expedite insights retrieval for leading global brands and agencies. Known for its unmatched efficiency and preciseness in gauging user sentiments, Canvs AI focuses on emotion measurement to promote sound decision-making and stronger customer relationships. Significantly, the company’s platform has an easy-to-use insights dashboard for quick data filtering and in-depth text analysis, strengthened by Boolean search capabilities. With its striking features, it helps organizations identify chief themes and sentiments within social comments, interpret colloquialisms, and leverage reliable insights. Its high-tech customization options further allow businesses to tailor emotions, codes, and topics, enabling them to customize what they want to focus on. Also facilitating multi-source data integration, Canvs AI ensures workflow integration, optimized action planning, and augmented decision-making. 4.6 Kapiche Top global companies rely on Kapiche, a pioneering feedback analytics platform provider, to analyze vast volumes of user feedback from varied sources, like support interactions and CRM systems. With its powerful text analytics solutions, the company facilitates the streamlining of data integrations, offers analysts quick and accurate insights for influential decision-making, and elevates the efficiency of CX metrics analysis. From centralizing data from multiple sources to allowing accurate evaluation of CX impacts, Kapiche helps businesses make impactful decisions. It further speeds insights extraction compared to the established practices, eliminating the need for manual tagging and intricate setups. It also promotes collaboration through tailorable dashboards and automated reporting and renders live status monitoring into user opinion dynamics, boosting operational efficiency and customer experiences. 4.7 Acodis A renowned name in the intelligent document processing (IDP) field, Acodis is transforming data management by enabling businesses to convert non-formatted documents into structured data. The company employs AI-powered data extraction to manipulate documents at scale speedily. Catering to top manufacturing, chemical, and pharmaceutical companies, Acodis augments operational efficiency by eliminating data entry tasks and offering personalized workflows. The company’s leading-edge platform combines with existing systems, such as CRM, ERP, and RPA, via API for tailored process automation and analytics. It employs predictive analytics technology, elevates resource efficiency, and eliminates GxP compliance concerns through document digitization. Powered by AI, it further secures data precision and security with traceability elements and tailorable parameters. Notably, the company promises excellent data extraction from both formatted and unstructured data in addition to any format of batch records, augmenting businesses’ analysis endeavors and empowering them to implement advanced text analytics for in-depth insights. 4.8 Lumoa As a business empowerer, Lumoa allows extraordinary CX management through its revolutionary Generative AI platform. It combines feedback data from telephonic conversations, surveys, customer reviews, etc., into an integrated platform, effectively allowing businesses to understand customer sentiments at various touchpoints. By providing real-time actionable insights tailored to business metrics, Lumoa enables companies to undertake customer-oriented approaches, ensuring growth and high customer retention. Among the key features of the company’s platform remain its incredible analysis capabilities, multi-language support, collaborative tools for feedback management, phrase detection for enhancement scope, and GPT integration. Its executive dashboard lets users get detailed insights into users’ journeys, while automated event creation and feedback analysis help businesses monitor live KPIs. Furthermore, through GDPR compliance and ISO certifications, the company demonstrates a stellar commitment to data security, strengthening customer satisfaction and brand performance. 4.9 Wonderflow Wonderflow is a leading AI-powered platform provider committed to evaluating the voice of customers (VoC) across diverse touchpoints, such as reviews and customer service records. The company empowers businesses to make data-backed strategies and amplify operational efficiency by converting vast customer feedback data into implementable insights with advanced NLP and text analytics technologies. The company’s mission and endeavors reverberate the ‘think global, act local’ maxim, helping businesses drive enhanced audience experiences. Correspondingly, the company offers comprehensive VoC analytics solutions, including sentiment analysis, predictive analytics, and competitor assessment capabilities. Wonderflow’s innovative platform facilitates text analysis automation to quickly recognize trends, topics, and sentiments, along with their impact on critical metrics. Furthermore, it boasts a simple setup, which makes adopting VoC practices and interpreting feedback data easier. Businesses can effortlessly visualize data, replicate practical approaches, and tailor customer engagement tactics with the forward-thinking platform. 4.10 Thematic A next-generation AI-powered CX solutions provider, Thematic specializes in text analytics and supports businesses’ data analysis efforts. It converts unstructured text feedback from multiple channels into usable insights, like product refinement opportunities, payment pain points, or order cancellation causes. Trusted by premier organizations, it empowers companies to amplify their products, services, and customer interaction through in-depth thematic analysis of feedback data and subsequent strategic decision-making. By integrating customers’ feedback from various channels, like chats and surveys, the company renders an advantageous unified approach to data analytics and allows quick access to excellent insights. Thematic’s innovative platform implements robust visualizations for user-friendly data review and boasts features like real-time analytics and intuitive theme editing. Its Thematic Answers feature combines generative AI with a trust layer, ensuring the feasibility and reliability of its insights. Also, its Conversation AI feature enables effortless assessment and monitoring of solution details, ensuring high user delight and profitability. 5. Wrap Up Text analytics technology has emerged as a vital aspect of modern business intelligence, which harnesses machine learning and natural language processing to convert non-formatted data into pragmatic suggestions. Today, distinguished text analytics software providers empower companies to identify user sentiments and drive higher customer fulfillment and business productivity with advanced analysis technologies. Yet, as analytics technology advances, the future of text analytics remains full of possibilities for further refinement. For instance, with the progression of machine learning, the capability of data analytics software to provide more sophisticated assessments and predictive insights would increase manifold. One would especially witness an increased emphasis on multilingual text analytics for global e-commerce, IoT and blockchain integration, ethical considerations, and data security. These developments reflect that text analytics would not only offer accurate observations but also promote meaningful ventures and growth.

Business Intelligence, Big Data Management, Data Science

Article | April 13, 2023

Discover the essentials of location intelligence across various industries, foundational concepts, industry-specific implementations, and location intelligence software in this insightful article. Contents 1. Introduction 2. Foundational Elements of Location Intelligence 3. Location Intelligence in Industry Verticals 4. Top Providers in Location Intelligence 4.1 Tango Analytics 4.2 Precisely 4.3 Local Logic 4.4 GBG 4.5 Nextbillion.ai 4.6 GeoComply 4.7 Mapbox 4.8 GapMaps 4.9 Qlik 4.10 Connectbase 5. Wrap Up 1. Introduction In the modern digital age, businesses continually pursue innovative strategies to gain a competitive edge and succeed. Among these strategies, location intelligence has emerged as a potent tool for driving informed decision-making. By leveraging geospatial data and advanced analytics, companies can extract actionable insights into customer behavior, market dynamics, and operational efficiencies. This article provides an overview of location intelligence, highlighting its role in enabling businesses across diverse industry verticals to navigate complex arenas and make data-driven decisions effectively. 2. Foundational Elements of Location Intelligence Geospatial Data: Geospatial data encompasses information tied to specific geographic locations on Earth's surface. It includes various types, such as vector data (points, lines, polygons), raster data (imagery), and attribute data (descriptive information about spatial features). Sources of geospatial data range from satellite imagery, aerial photography, GPS data, and LiDAR scans to census data, social media check-ins, and IoT devices. Mapping and Visualization Techniques: Mapping and visualization techniques are essential for conveying spatial information effectively. Cartography principles help design clear, informative, and aesthetically pleasing maps. Visualization techniques range from simple thematic maps to complex interactive web maps and 3D visualizations. GIS (Geographic Information Systems): GIS software allows users to capture, store, analyze, and visualize geospatial data. It enables the integration of various data types and provides tools for spatial analysis, such as overlay, proximity analysis, and spatial querying. In addition, Geographic Information Systems software is crucial in creating and analyzing spatial data. GPS (Global Positioning System): GPS technology provides precise location information by utilizing a network of satellites. It is widely used in navigation, asset tracking, surveying, and location-based services. Remote Sensing: Remote sensing involves capturing information about Earth's surface from a distance, typically using satellites or aircraft. It provides valuable data for monitoring environmental changes, agriculture, disaster management, and natural resource management. 3. Location Intelligence in Industry Verticals Location intelligence finds applications across various industry verticals, each with its unique challenges and opportunities. Transport and logistics organizations leverage location intelligence software to optimize supply chains and streamline delivery operations. With location analytics, fleet managers can minimize delivery time and control warehouse loading and unloading processes. Real-time monitoring helps in route accuracy, identifying delivery delays, and accurately calculating expenses, including fuel reimbursement and fleet operating costs. Location analytics is a game-changer in the pharmaceutical industry, revolutionizing on-field activities such as dispatching medicines, inventory management, and managing client visits. Companies harness location data to fine-tune sales operations and align sales territories effectively. By analyzing sales patterns geographically, pharma companies can optimize sales efforts, minimize travel time for medical reps, and ensure equitable distribution of tasks. In banking and insurance industries, location intelligence data is integral to channel optimization and sales operations. Banks and insurance companies leverage location data to expand their branch networks strategically and make informed decisions about acquisitions or investments. By engaging customers with relevant information based on their location, they can maintain positive relationships, develop better policies, and boost marketing strategies. The retail industry utilizes location intelligence to deliver personalized experiences and optimize supply chain management. By integrating location data with consumer and operational data, retailers gain insights into consumer behavior and preferences at the store level. This enables them to deliver consistent purchasing experiences, drive customized marketing outreach, and optimize supply chain processes for enhanced efficiency and customer satisfaction. 4. Top Providers in Location Intelligence When exploring the world of location intelligence, it becomes apparent that the source of the data driving these insights is a crucial yet often neglected aspect. Every business industry requires distinct datasets; not all providers offer the same breadth or depth. Therefore, understanding where to obtain these essential resources is paramount. Look at a list of top providers in location intelligence to ensure access to the precise data types required to propel your business forward. 4.1 Tango Analytics Tango Analytics solutions offer businesses the intelligence to develop more brilliant location strategies and make informed capital investment decisions. By integrating advanced modeling with robust data within a scalable geospatial analytics platform, Tango provides unparalleled insights that optimize location decisions, maximizing the potential for brand success. Tango's Integrated Workplace Management System (IWMS) software suite equips organizations with comprehensive tools to analyze and optimize their corporate offices or physical locations. With purpose-built GIS, predictive analytics, and management tools, Tango enables businesses to better predict and respond to market opportunities while enhancing the execution of location strategies. From space management and facilities maintenance to lease administration and capital project management, Tango's IWMS solutions streamline processes and improve resource utilization. 4.2 Precisely Precisely, a renowned leader in data integrity has expanded its portfolio with the acquisition of PlaceIQ in 2022. This strategic move has enriched Precisely’s offerings with advanced location intelligence solutions, notably PlaceIQ Audiences and PlaceIQ Movement. These solutions empower businesses to leverage real-world behaviors and foot traffic insights, enabling targeted consumer engagement and informed decision-making. PlaceIQ's platform equips businesses with powerful location-based insights, attribution, and measurement capabilities. Its sophisticated approach allows companies to understand and connect with location-based audiences, measure real-time ROI, and apply insights to drive intelligent marketing and business outcomes. Key features include implementing audience strategies with proven results, measuring foot traffic patterns for actionable insights, analyzing movement patterns for market insights, and accessing high-quality location data through subscription models. 4.3 Local Logic Local Logic specializes in providing comprehensive location intelligence solutions tailored for the real estate sector. Founded in 2015, the company emerged from a commitment to enhancing urban livability through objective data and metrics. Headquartered in Montreal, Canada, Local Logic offers tools designed to quantify and analyze location-related data, aiding residential and commercial real estate professionals in making informed decisions across the United States and Canada. Local Logic's provides comprehensive location intelligence solutions which offers granular demographic insights, proprietary location scores, detailed neighborhood profiles, real-time points of interest (POI) data, school-focused information, and climate risk assessments. These features enable users to access information crucial for evaluating property investments and matching properties with ideal lifestyles. By integrating diverse data points into intuitive tools and maps, Local Logic empowers clients to leverage data-driven decision-making in the competitive real estate market. 4.4 GBG Loqate, a GBG solution, provides comprehensive services focused on address verification, data validation, and geocoding. With a global reach, Loqate's solutions are designed to enhance data quality, improve customer experiences, and support efficient business operations across various industries. Loqate offers various critical services, including real-time address capture, address verification for 249 countries and territories, data maintenance services, geocoding capabilities, and email, phone, and bank details validation. Additionally, their points of interest and store finder feature provides comprehensive POI data to enhance location-based services. These features help businesses maintain high-quality datasets, improve operational efficiency, reduce costs, ensure compliance, and scale with business needs, ultimately enhancing customer experience and satisfaction. 4.5 Nextbillion.ai NextBillion.ai offers advanced routing and navigation solutions tailored to tackle complex logistical challenges across various industries. With an integrated platform leveraging AI-powered technology, NextBillion.ai provides a range of APIs and SDKs to optimize routing, enhance navigation, and ensure real-time tracking, ultimately improving operational efficiency and customer satisfaction. NextBillion.ai's essential products and features include the Route Optimization API, which handles over 50 constraints and customizable parameters to generate optimized routes tailored to specific business needs. The Directions and Distance Matrix API processes large matrices for accurate ETAs and distances, with scalable pricing based on fleet size or order volume. Their Navigation API & SDKs offer turn-by-turn navigation across multiple platforms. At the same time, the Live Tracking API & SDKs provide real-time monitoring and comprehensive integration with telematics and CRM systems, enhancing fleet management and operational efficiency. These features cater to various industries, including supply chain and logistics, mobility and field services, offering scalability, cost efficiency, and developer-friendly integration processes. 4.6 GeoComply GeoComply is a renowned provider of geolocation compliance and anti-fraud solutions. Established in 2011, it aims to foster a safer internet environment by combating fraud and ensuring regulatory adherence across diverse sectors such as gaming, finance, and media. GeoComply offers a suite of critical products addressing various aspects of fraud prevention and compliance. GeoComply Core provides precise geolocation data and anti-fraud solutions, which are crucial for industries like online gaming and financial services. GeoGuard, its award-winning solution, identifies and blocks fraudulent access through VPNs and proxies, safeguarding geolocation data integrity. IDComply offers comprehensive KYC & AML solutions, ensuring regulatory compliance with identity verification requirements. PinPoint provides custom geofencing solutions for on-property location compliance, while GeoComply Chargeback Integrator (GCI) automates chargeback management to combat fraud effectively. These solutions deliver enhanced security, regulatory compliance, operational efficiency, and revenue optimization benefits trusted by leading businesses worldwide. 4.7 Mapbox Mapbox is a premier provider of mapping and location data platforms, offering developers a suite of tools and services to craft bespoke maps, navigation systems, and geospatial data solutions. With a founding mission to democratize mapping and deliver highly customizable, performance-driven mapping solutions, Mapbox serves a diverse array of industries, including automotive, logistics, and mobile applications. Mapbox's key features and services encompass various offerings tailored to diverse developer needs. Mapbox Studio enables users to create and customize map styles, incorporating features like 3D buildings and terrain contours for enhanced functionality and aesthetics. Navigation solutions include SDKs for mobile and automotive applications, featuring embedded routing, turn-by-turn navigation, and specialized solutions such as Mapbox for EVs, catering to electric vehicles with route planning and battery range predictions. Location data and analytics offerings include Directions and Matrix APIs for optimal route calculation along with real-time data integration for accurate, up-to-date maps and traffic information. Cross-platform development support extends to polished SDKs for web and mobile applications, facilitating seamless integration, high performance across devices, and offline map functionality crucial for areas with limited connectivity. 4.8 GapMaps GapMaps is a leading provider of cloud-based GIS mapping and location intelligence solutions. It empowers businesses to make informed decisions based on spatial data analysis. Its platform, GapMaps Live, offers a comprehensive suite of features tailored to various industries, including retail, healthcare, and real estate.GapMaps Live provides a user-friendly cloud-based platform for real-time data visualization and insights, facilitating customizable catchments for understanding customer behavior and optimizing store locations. Competitive analysis tools allow businesses to assess competitor locations and gain strategic insights. GapMaps also offers GapAdvisory services, providing expert market planning, network, and growth strategies. GapInsite furnishes the latest industry intel, aiding businesses in understanding market conditions and customer behaviors. The GapMaps Connect Mobile App enables real-time field data collection and synchronization with GapMaps Live. Additionally, GapMaps offers comprehensive Point of Interest and demographics data globally, aiding businesses in market assessment and site selection. 4.9 Qlik Qlik offers a comprehensive data integration and analytics platform designed to empower organizations to leverage their data to drive business outcomes. With a range of tools and capabilities supporting data integration, real-time analytics, and artificial intelligence, Qlik provides a robust solution for businesses across various industries. Qlik Cloud Data Integration facilitates the creation of data pipelines to automate data movement and transformation alongside modern analytics capabilities such as self-service analytics and interactive dashboards. Qlik Sense, powered by its associative engine, enables users to explore data freely and generate insights efficiently through innovative visualizations and continuous learning resources like Qlik Continuous Classroom. The platform also emphasizes data quality and governance, ensuring data accuracy, completeness, and reliability while promoting a unified approach to management. Qlik Application Automation offers a no-code automation interface to seamlessly build automated analytics and data workflows. 4.10 Connectbase Connectbase offers a comprehensive platform called ‘The Connected World,’ designed to revolutionize the buying and selling of network connectivity through advanced location intelligence and automation. Tailored to improve efficiency and accuracy for network providers, this platform enables better decision-making and streamlined processes. Connectbase provides highly accurate, location-specific data for over 1.4 billion buildings worldwide, including insights into building structures, tenant information, and competitive geography. Continuous updates ensure users have the most current information, reducing the risk of decision-making based on outdated data. The platform automates the quoting process, enabling quick and accurate responses to deals and eliminating delays caused by manual methods. Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) functionality facilitates scalable, real-time quoting from configurable supplier product catalogs. Users can leverage real-time market and revenue data to make informed decisions about where to build new routes and expand their network, optimizing ROI. Tools for prospecting and pricing based on detailed market insights help businesses target sales efforts and maximize profitability. Centralized management of partner-building lists and product catalogs streamlines buying and selling processes. 5. Wrap Up Location intelligence offers numerous benefits for businesses, including risk management, predictive analytics, and real-time trend tracking. It facilitates streamlined operations and services, enhancing efficiency across various functions. With the increasing digitization of business processes, organizations can gather more user information, driving further industry growth. Particularly for customer-facing businesses, leveraging real-time location data improves the in-store experience significantly. From sales and marketing to customer and facility management, location intelligence presents plenty of opportunities for businesses to optimize their operations and enhance their competitive edge. Looking ahead, the future of location intelligence promises even more incredible advancements and opportunities for businesses. As technology evolves, we can expect enhanced precision and granularity in location data, enabling more accurate predictive analytics and risk management strategies. Integrating location intelligence with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and augmented reality will unlock new dimensions of customer engagement and personalized experiences. Moreover, with the increase of Internet of Things devices, businesses will have access to vast streams of real-time location data, empowering them to make proactive decisions and stay ahead in a dynamic market. Embracing these developments, businesses can remain agile, responsive, and poised for success in the ever-evolving digital ecosystem.

Article | February 11, 2020

Whilst there are many people that associate AI with sci-fi novels and films, its reputation as an antagonist to fictional dystopic worlds is now becoming a thing of the past, as the technology becomes more and more integrated into our everyday lives.AI technologies have become increasingly more present in our daily lives, not just with Alexa’s in the home, but also throughout businesses everywhere, disrupting a variety of different industries with often tremendous results. The technology has helped to streamline even the most mundane of tasks whilst having a breath-taking impact on a company’s efficiency and productivity.However, AI has not only transformed administrative processes and freed up more time for companies, it has also contributed to some ground-breaking moments in business, being a must-have for many in order to keep up with the competition.