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.

We’re now well into the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The First Industrial Revolution was about steam and railroads, the Second about electricity, and the Third brought about by the Internet. AI, the basis of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, will completely change the way business is done and companies are run in the next five to ten years, just as the Internet has done in the last ten. The transformation will be bigger than that any previous revolution has brought about.

In the age of digital technology, the biggest asset any company has is its data. But despite hearing that fact repeated over and over, organizations often haven’t a clue what their data is worth. That’s no surprise, considering how difficult it is to measure the value of enterprise data without generally accepted accounting principles.