Predixion Software announced a relatively low-cost, self-service in the cloud predictive analytics solution that integrates with Microsoft's business intelligence platform. The new release, Predixion Insight, is intended to enable organizations to use and analyze large amounts of data to make actionable decisions, all within the familiar environment of Microsoft Excel, PowerPivot and SharePoint.
"The predictive analytics market is disruptable because it is dominated by a couple of incumbent vendors that are very established, and they offer very comprehensive solutions, but with older technology that is difficult for the information worker to operate," Simon Arkell, CEO and co-founder of Predixion Software, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "You need to have extensive training, or be a PhD or statistician to use these tools for predictive analytics. That's been something that's been rarefied air and very technical to set up as well."
In addition, he adds, "typical predictive analytics software has been extremely expensive to set up and install. Then the ongoing costs are very high because you have the PhDs that are required to run the solution."
Predixion Insight, which is delivered via the cloud, offers native integration to PowerPivot, Microsoft's in memory data analysis tool. Users can run predictive models against PowerPivot data and publish the interactive results back into PowerPivot and SharePoint. Predixion's self-service predictive analytics solutions also integrate with Excel 2007/2010 (32 and 64 bit).
The solution offers the ability to analyze and predict trends with key influencers, forecasting, and shopping basket analysis. "The applications that we're seeing right now with our customers include marketing campaign analysis, and tiered burden rates, which uses predictive analytics to minimize the expenses related to specific products," Arkell says.
Features of Predixion Insight include data preparation tools, including wizards that guide users through uploading data from Excel or PowerPivot, data exploration and preparation, data cleansing and data sampling. The solution also includes model-building wizards that enable users to build, run, script and share a wide variety of models. Management tools also enable users to manage, store, change and run predictive models in the cloud with their own data from a spreadsheet interface. "With that Excel client, you can very easily build and manage and tune your predictive models, without really needing to know what a predictive model is," Arkell says.
Pricing for Predixion Insight starts at $99 per user per month. "You now, for the first time, have the ability to use predictive analytics for the masses," Arkell says. "As a result, it's very self services."
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