Can predictive analytics be used to forecast which movie will walk away with the top honor at the Academy Awards? Apparently not. While predictive analytics is useful to forecast future trends, behaviors and patterns- Oscar winners are not one of them. Often times it is used to lower risks, improve software or anticipate customer behavior. Combined with machine learning and algorithms, predictive analytics incorporate past and current data to provide the most logical conclusion.

Is your company a data company? Whether you actually sell software that monitors data or run a brick and mortar store, the answer is yes. Monetizing data a business already collects can significantly increase a company’s revenue.  Gartner defines Data Monetization as “using data for quantifiable economic benefit.”  Whether that entails selling your findings to third party sources or using this intelligence to create a more efficient product is up to the organization itself.

Does your company have a low business intelligence (BI) and analytics maturity? According to an article published by Gartner earlier this month, there is an 87% chance that it does. The article entitled, “Organizations Have Low BI and Analytics Maturity”; Gartner investigates why so many companies have a limited BI maturity while including four different approaches to improve it.

Tableau’s 11^th Annual Conference concluded another successful conference at the end of October in New Orleans. Attendees got to attend data inspired break-out sessions, Tableau training, as well as networking events. One of the main events was the Iron Viz Championship – a competition between three finalists armed with a dataset and tasked with making the best visualization. Did I mention it was all in front of a live audience? I got to talk to 2018’s Iron Viz Champion, Timothy Vermeiren and asked him more about the championship and why he thinks data visualization is so important.