Don't Run from Prescriptive Analytics. Decide for Yourself if You're Ready
We come across a lot of companies — of all sizes, across all different industries — that hear the word "prescriptive analytics" and run for the hills. I honestly can't blame them, given the misinformation that exists in the market space today around this topic. Even top-ranked analyst firms speak about the category as if it's something that only the most advanced companies can take advantage of and see value from. They see it as a crawl > walk > run approach, in which you first need to implement your BI, then your predictive, and only then can you think about implementing prescriptive.
WRONG WRONG WRONG. We've implemented plenty of solutions over the last 17 years for companies that would be considered immature in their planning processes, their analytics capabilities, their data management, or all the above. You'd be surprised, but some of our biggest customers were still wrangling dozens of spreadsheets in an attempt to analyze/run scenarios and create sometimes feasible (and never optimal) plans! [P.S. You can read a great article about why using spreadsheets for this is a poor, outdated method here.]
For those customers, it only took us three short months to show them that:
- They were ready for prescriptive analytics
- Their data was sufficient and substantially clean to see a high ROI from implementing prescriptive (15X ROI, in some cases)
- They did not need any kind of predictive analytics, machine learning, IoT, or any other trendy, innovative capabilities
- It wouldn't take a year or more to see high ROI from this technology...and it wouldn't become an IT nightmare to implement (ehem, SAP, Oracle, etc.)
My goal here is not to sell you on River Logic — my goal is to inform the masses. In fact, that's our mission as a company: Inform business executives across every industry and business function that there is a better way to make decisions. Stop settling for what you're comfortable with, what seems easy or what IT tells you do. Don't be afraid to take some risks.
In our attempt to help business leaders decide for themselves if they're ready for prescriptive analytics, we created a short video to walk you through some key considerations. I encourage you to watch it, re-watch it, ask questions, post comments, share it with your colleagues, etc. Make your own decision on whether or not you're ready — don't just assume you aren't.
"Yesterday, we wanted to see what happened, so we created reports. Then, we wanted to make comparisons so we created analytics. Then, we decided we could use analytics to predict behaviors with a high degree of confidence. Now, we can kiss guessing goodbye and simply KNOW...with prescriptive analytics."
-Quote by Gene Carlino, Director of Supply Chain Sales for River Logic | Musician | Creative Genius
