Cognitive Analytics Issue 1

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What is all the fuss about Cognitive Analytics?

You might have heard of IBM Watson beating champions at Jeopardy, self-driving cars, and medical advances where computers have helped physicians diagnose patients by having access to a wide range of information and history of cases and treatments.

With the volume of information growing at an enormous rate, we needed better technologies to help us make sense of it and make better decisions.

THE RISE OF COGNITIVE ANALYTICS AND HOW COMPANIES CAN BENEFIT FROM IT

BusinessMinds

Cognitive Analytics Issue 1

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Cognitive Computing systems help us expand the boundaries of human cognition which learn over time and have a natural interaction between the computer and the human.

“Gartner predicts one in three jobs will be converted to software, robots and smart machines by 2025,” said Gartner research director Peter Sondergaard. “New digital businesses require less labour; machines will make sense of data faster than humans can.”

But what does it mean to businesses – Big and Small?

With all this buzz, we now ask: is this the domain of only large companies – or can cognitive now allow small companies to compete on the same level as big companies?

Cognitive analytics does sound extremely complex and expensive, as it was in the past. But now due to work done by major technology companies, they have made it accessible to all.

So where can it help me?

It may be accessible to all but how can Cognitive Analytics actually help companies

Here are some examples:

• Web chat bots that can respond like humans and answer questions.

• Allow technical questions to be asked in speech or by typing into an app e.g. by field engineers out on the job– and the correct answer provided instantly – where normally it would require large amounts of time delving through large numbers of voluminous technical documents.

• Analysing recorded call centre conversations to extract additional information e.g. how happy the customer was in the call, important customer events where additional service can be provided e.g. overseas holiday coming up – so T&Cs of travel insurance can be emailed proactively.

• Deciphering pictures and videos to categorise the contents e.g. car damage features and the likely cause – for fast insurance claim assessment.

Who can use cognitive analytics?

Up until recently, this technology was located on a large super-computer and it required a lot of technical work which could only be performed by a few key-vendor technical employees to set up a single application. At this time, only large companies located in the US could consider using this type of application.

Cognitive Analytics Issue 1

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However, there have now been many changes to reduce the expense of this technology on a low, very accessible per-use basis. Also, the setup is distributed under a Software as a Service offering on the cloud and can be set up by many analytics consultants worldwide.

The Future of Cognitive Analytics

So now that it’s accessible to all sizes of organisations, it could be beneficial to your organisation. You can now leverage the computer’s ability to analyse large amounts of unstructured data with today’s technologies. This allows computer technology to work in the way humans work — establishing a more natural relationship between humans and the computer – and in the end your organisation.

Next up in the Cognitive Analytics series see how Cognitive Analytics actually works.

SEE IT IN ACTION: Get in touch to discuss your possible application of cognitive analytics and see a demo.

Contact us: info@businessminds.com

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