Decision-making driven by data

NOT too long ago, corporate executives relied heavily on their judgment and experience to make key business decisions. But in an increasingly competitive and complex business landscape, such highly educated guesswork - albeit backed up by research and market intelligence - is no longer sufficient.

Management decision-making today is being enhanced by a sophisticated form of crystal-ball gazing that utilises large sets of data to gather insights into customer or employee behaviour.

Simply put, predictive analytics builds on a company's existing historical-looking techniques, such as internal databases and business intelligence systems, to predict the future. It combines information captured on channels such as a company's Enterprise Resource Planning system (ERP) with macro and unstructured sources such as social media to predict forthcoming trends, opportunities and threats.