With the flood of data available, businesses these days are more interested in knowing “what has happened” and “what could happen.” Companies with huge amounts of data in hand can do analytics, but it has been a major hindrance in answering questions such as how and where to start and what type of analytics is appropriate.
We at Benjamin Moore & Co. had similar problems that other companies face. For solving this puzzle, Benjamin Moore used tools such as SAP BusinessObjects 4.2, SAP BW 7.4, and SAP HANA to extract meanings from the huge amount of data in real time, helping to improve decision-making. The analytics in the company did not stop just with that—steps were taken to drive the analytics for predicting the future for instantaneous decision-making. As a first step, a regression model was built with the help of SAP BusinessObjects and Excel 2007. But this model did not provide the results as expected. After a lot of research, the company then used SAP Analytics Cloud for developing a blend of interactive visual dashboards and machine learning models (clustering and regression models). Decision-making that used to take weeks now takes just a few hours.
Key takeaways:
- How to transfer from traditional reporting to predictive analytics gradually
- How machine learning models help in decision-making
- How visual dashboard and machine learning models improved data literacy in the company
