Predictive Analytics with SAP Business ByDesign

By Dr. Chris­ti­an Bätz, Head SAP Cloud So­lu­ti­on (IBIS Busi­ness Con­sul­ting AG)

„Will we win this Op­por­tu­ni­ty?“ – Pre­dic­ti­ve Ana­ly­tics wi­th SAP Busi­ness ByDesign

 IBIS Busi­ness Con­sul­ting, SAP part­ner for SAP Busi­ness By­De­sign, sup­ports SAP in the de­ve­lo­p­ment of pre­dic­ti­ve ana­ly­tics. The sub­ject is the im­ple­men­ta­ti­on and use of sce­na­ri­os to fo­re­cast fu­ture de­ve­lo­p­ments for a company.

 Wi­th „Pre­dic­ti­ve Ana­ly­tics“ the view in re­port­ing turns: from re­tro­s­pec­ti­ve to pro­s­pec­ti­ve. What bo­th ana­ly­ti­cal ap­proa­ches have in com­mon is that sta­tus quo da­ta is used as the ba­sis for de­ter­mi­ning state­ments. Ho­we­ver, does the pre­vious re­port­ing stop wi­th the pre­sen­ta­ti­on of the available in­for­ma­ti­on about the com­pa­ny; pre­dic­ti­ve ana­ly­tics is just be­gin­ning at this point. Ba­sed on the available da­ta, state­ments about the pos­si­ble fur­ther busi­ness de­ve­lo­p­ment are de­ri­ved: fo­re­casts. This shift in per­spec­ti­ve will great­ly ch­an­ge the fu­ture way of ma­king decisions!

 But what does this have to do wi­th SAP Busi­ness By­De­sign? A work cen­ter that can be used to crea­te pre­dic­ti­ve ana­ly­tics is curr­ent­ly be­ing de­ve­lo­ped for SAP Busi­ness By­De­sign. It is the­r­e­fo­re the pro­s­pec­ti­ve coun­ter­part to the exis­ting re­tro­s­pec­ti­ve „Busi­ness Ana­ly­tics“ work cen­ter. IBIS Busi­ness Con­sul­ting has now de­fi­ned and im­ple­men­ted a first fo­re­cast mo­del in an ope­ra­tio­nal­ly used cus­to­mer sys­tem. It is about on­go­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties in new busi­ness and the fol­lo­wing questions:

• Will the op­por­tu­ni­ty be won or lost?
• What is the pro­ba­bi­li­ty that the pre­dic­ted out­co­me will occur?

The­se ques­ti­ons are ans­we­red wi­th the help of so-cal­led „Sce­na­ri­os“, „Mo­dels“ and „Pre­dic­tion Runs“. „Sce­na­rio“ and „Mo­dels“ have the task of using sta­tis­ti­cal me­thods to de­ter­mi­ne pat­terns ba­sed on op­por­tu­ni­ties who­se out­co­me is known. This is al­so known as „trai­ning“. Wi­th the „Pre­dic­tion Runs“, the­se pat­terns are then ap­pli­ed to the op­por­tu­ni­ties that have not yet be­en clo­sed in or­der to esti­ma­te their fu­ture development.

 The re­sults are pro­mi­sing! So far, the­re was on­ly this sub­jec­ti­ve as­sess­ment of fur­ther de­ve­lo­p­ment in an opportunity:

It is the chan­ce of suc­cess, the va­lue of which is sta­ti­cal­ly lin­ked to the sa­les pha­se or must be edi­ted manually.

 Af­ter per­forming a pre­dic­tion run, this in­for­ma­ti­on is now al­so available in the opportunity:

This is now the ob­jec­ti­ve fo­re­cast ba­sed on pre­dic­ti­ve ana­ly­tics and the eva­lua­ted fac­tors of the pat­tern de­ter­mi­ned du­ring trai­ning in this company:

How can this af­fect fu­ture de­cis­i­on-ma­king? For ex­am­p­le, you can spe­ci­fi­cal­ly iden­ti­fy op­por­tu­ni­ties whe­re the sub­jec­ti­ve and the ob­jec­ti­ve as­sess­ment di­ver­ge. The screen­shot from the customer’s sys­tem shows op­por­tu­ni­ties whe­re the em­ployee as­su­mes suc­cess (chan­ce of suc­cess > 50%), but the fo­re­cast run as­su­mes fail­ure (no­te: pre­dic­ted pro­ba­bi­li­ty, percentage):

You can now tar­get the­se op­por­tu­ni­ties to pre­vent the fo­re­cast from co­ming true.

IBIS Busi­ness Con­sul­ting is curr­ent­ly working on de­ve­lo­ping use ca­ses in all are­as of the sys­tem and ma­king them available to our cus­to­mers. Mo­re on that in fol­lo­wing posts.

Do you have any ques­ti­ons on the sub­ject or do you see a start­ing point from your use of SAP Busi­ness By­De­sign? I am loo­king for­ward to your contact: