What is Prescriptive Analytics? A Complete Guide

Data Analytics is an essential arsenal for organizations looking to profit from granular customer insights as it helps them achieve the coveted status of being data-driven.

Subsets of Data Analytics like Descriptive Analytics, Predictive Analytics, Prescriptive Analytics, etc., are now a part of the mainstream use-cases and aid in streamlining process efficiencies.

While Descriptive and Predictive Analytics focus on historical data, Prescriptive focuses on the agile and proactive side. Further, it can help optimize organizational functions to a higher degree. 

Introduction to Prescriptive Analytics

In the Data Analytics hierarchy, Prescriptive Analytics emphasizes on uncovering the best course of action through optimization. It employs Artificial Intelligence algorithms on existing trends and events to predict future results.

It allows businesses to contextually be aware of what is likely to happen, when, and why, helping them determine which business solutions are best in terms of predetermined criteria. Additionally, it provides a higher level of understanding of specific data trends and findings.

Prescriptive Analysis bridges the gap between the data possessed by an organization and the associated implications of exploiting it for various purposes.

The Prescriptive approach is composed of Graph Analysis, Complex Event Processing, Simulation, Recommendation Engines, Heuristics, etc. These are all driven by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning algorithms.

Understanding the Benefits of Prescriptive Analytics

Today, businesses are using data as a driving force. Therefore, the importance of Prescriptive Analytics is well-known. It will not only give you valuable insights from your data but will also optimize your data-driven decisions. Some of the key benefits are as follows:

• More Proactive: The fundamental idea behind transitioning from a predictive model to a prescriptive model is to empower organizations to become more proactive and less reactive. Prescriptive Analytics can address issues found during the Predictive Analysis and make weighted decisions for better business outcomes. 
• Capturing Multiple Data Touchpoints and Formats: Prescriptive Data Analysis models are built on input data, business rules, and mathematical models, sourced within the organization (internal data) or collected from external touchpoints. The gathered data can either be Structured or Unstructured (like sensory or audio-visual data). Businesses can use Prescriptive Analytics to connect the dots between different data sets to garner insights into future events. Hence, it is often used in industries like healthcare and automobiles for business growth. 
• Real-Time Insights: Enterprise leaders can examine real-time insights to boost sustained growth and stay ahead of their competitors. Simultaneously, near-real-time visibility can assist companies in anticipating and mitigating crises with quick responses. As new data is generated, Prescriptive Analytics models can automatically adjust to extract value from it faster, leaving less room for error.
• Finding the Right Trade-off: It is possible that there are multiple solutions available to a given problem. Balancing the trade-off between attributes can be a tricky and overwhelming process. Prescriptive Analytics aims to nullify this by running complex models, analyzing, and evaluating scenarios by factoring in business rules and constraints to present the best among those solutions.
• Maximum Use of Resources: Prescriptive Analytics helps organizations make cost-effective decisions by effectively managing resources, thereby minimizing the need to outsource. This is achieved by enabling employees with minimal knowledge to learn about data and the impact of data-driven decisions. It also allows them to participate or collaborate more on data-specific processes.
• Gross Margin Management: Since Prescriptive is more actionable than its Predictive counterpart, it empowers developers to build solutions based on the current situation while anticipating market conditions and customer behaviour patterns. As a result, business teams can spend more time designing the perfect solutions rather than identifying problems. 
• Enhanced Market Competition Analysis: Brands can run different test strategies with Prescriptive Analytics to discover and offer a superior personalized experience than their competitors. Using these analysis-powered personalized recommendations, marketers can view plans that help them significantly impact the market while resonating with customer demands.
• Removing Bottlenecks: By identifying pain points, Prescriptive Analytics can also help solve issues in the organizational pipeline that were preventing corporate growth. Along with that, these analytics models work in conjunction with a decision support system that simulates “what if” scenarios and makes real-time adjustments.

7 Real-World Applications of Prescriptive Analytics with examples

Perspective Analytics is a process that can provide valuable contributions to various business ecosystems. Due to this property, it can be applied to a number of different business markets.

1) Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI)

Financial institutions can design Prescriptive Analytics algorithms for managing risk and profitability by sifting through historical trading data.

Some insurance companies also employ risk assessment models to provide better premium information about insurance policies for clients. 

2) Healthcare

Prescriptive Analytics allows doctors to make data-backed decisions and treatment recommendations based on the medical history of patients. Apart from assessing risk magnitude, these analyses also enable them to determine the best action plan and even measure the efficacy of interventions.

And for hospital admins, this analysis can assist in improving clinical care, scheduling treatments, and follow-up appointments.

3) Online Learning

Numerous Learning Management Systems (LMS) and websites leverage Prescriptive Analysis to promote adaptive learning.

First, the LMS identifies the familiarity and proficiency of the users via assessment tests. Then based on the findings from those tests, LMS presents them with a personalized course plan.

4) Transportation and Travel

In airline companies, Prescriptive algorithms adjust the availability of tickets and their prices on the basis of factors like traveller demand, fuel prices, etc.

Even hotel booking websites use the same algorithms to determine pricing and sales pitches as per customer preferences.

5) Supply Chain and Logistics

Prescriptive Analytics is crucial for route optimization in the Supply Chain industry. Logistics companies leverage it to prevent logistical issues like incorrect shipping locations.

They also rely on these analyses for better route planning at lesser energy consumption while saving time and money.

6) Manufacturing

Factories can analyze real-time data with Prescriptive Analytics for enhanced inventory and production management. This includes predicting market demand, supply, and material requirements to sustain in a volatile market.

Prescriptive Analysis can also assist in optimizing productive capacity, complying with the delivery schedule, and organizing final assembly lines. Such applications highlight how resourceful these analyses can be in Industry 4.0 for business growth.

Lastly, manufacturers can model prices on various factors like production, storage, and discoveries. It even helps identify optimum settings to increase yield while being efficient. 

7) Marketing and Sales

Since the Prescriptive modeling is a mathematical process rather than experimentation, it is a perfect asset for brands looking to strengthen their Marketing techniques. It also helps run promotional campaigns and forecast demands with respect to segments’ consumption and customer interests.

Modern Prescriptive Analytics Software and Tools 

Here are some of the most popular prescriptive analytics tools to consider

1. Improvado

Improvado is a revenue team-focused prescriptive analytics tool. It allows marketing and sales professionals to get all of their data in one place, in real-time, via automated dashboards and reports.

Improvado is a marketing and sales data ETL platform at its core. The ETL process is an important part of any organization’s analytics maturity. This platform gives you complete visibility into your data and saves you hundreds of hours in data entry.

2. Alteryx

Alteryx is a prescriptive analytics tool that combines data blending and analysis into a single tool. In just hours, the platform provides deployable analytics, uses a repeatable workflow, and then shares the derived analytics to provide deeper data insights. ‍

Alteryx is ideal for both data analysts and data scientists because it allows them to connect and cleanse data from cloud applications, spreadsheets, data warehouses, and other sources quickly and easily.

Without having to write any additional code, the platform integrates the data and then performs a prescriptive, statistical analysis. Alteryx also provides scalable analytics, which can contribute to your company’s success.

3. RapidMiner

RapidMiner provides companies with artificial intelligence and prescriptive analytics via an open and comprehensive data analytics platform. Users can create, maintain, and deliver predictive analytics using this centralised platform, which has a powerful and robust graphical interface. The tool also supports scripting in a variety of programming languages.

RapidMiner is a data science platform for analytics teams that unifies the entire data science lifecycle, from data preparation to machine learning and prescriptive analytic models. Pre-built data connectivity, workflow components, and machine learning are all included in the platform’s visual interface.

4. Sisense

Sisense makes it simple for users to turn their data into visually stunning interactive reports. The tool’s visualization features include a drag-and-drop, simple user interface that makes it simple to create charts and more complex graphics, as well as interactive visualizations.

Sisense is a good fit for analytics teams looking for a comprehensive view of their data with minimal IT support.

The prescriptive analytics tool provides useful information that leads to data-driven decisions. Users can also connect to relevant apps or databases directly, mash up multiple data sources, and visualize data.

5. Birst

Birst is a web-based business intelligence and predictive analytics tool that connects insights from multiple teams, allowing businesses to make better-informed decisions and automating the entire BI process. Every user is connected to a shared analytical network that can be easily accessed and extended thanks to the platform’s unique approach.
The tool’s shared network of analytics allows business users to be more agile while still maintaining IT control. Birst focuses on one of the most difficult problems in data analytics: establishing trust in data from multiple sources within an organization.

Limitations of Prescriptive Analytics

Prescriptive Analytics is not a silver bullet. The insights gained from it depend on the quality of input variables and data.

For instance, while missing or incorrect information can lead to false predictions, overfitting in prescriptive models can result in inaccurate predictions that are impervious to changes in data over time. The key is to identify what kind of solutions you are looking for in a given problem.

Besides, every Prescriptive Analytical Model has a unique, well-defined fitness function that helps get the ideal set of solutions. 

Conclusion

Prescriptive Analytics is beginning to be valued in several industrial niches. While it is not a one tool fits all assets, it guides organizations in optimizing the workflows to achieve desired outcomes.

This analysis is a critical advancement in Data Analytics that promises enormous scope and depth in a future fueled by deeper and actionable data insights.