Businesses today certainly do not suffer from a lack of data. Every day, they capture and consume massive amounts of information that they use to make strategic and tactical decisions. Yet organizations often lack two critical capabilities when it comes to making the right decisions for the business: the ability to make accurate predictions about the future, and to then use those predicted insights in conjunction with organizational goals to identify the best possible actions they should take.

The combination of predictive analytics and decision optimization provides organizations with the ability to turn insight into action. Predictive analytics offers insights into likely scenarios by analyzing trends, patterns and relationships in data. Decision optimization prescribes best-action recommendations given an organization’s business goals and business dynamics, taking into account any tradeoffs or consequences associated with those actions.

IBM® recognizes the value created by the synergy between predictive analytics and decision optimization, and is uniquely positioned to help organizations integrate predictive and
prescriptive capabilities into their process for achieving optimized business decisions.

This white paper will help organizations understand how predictive and prescriptive actions complement one another and present IBM’s approach to helping businesses create a powerful end-to-end decision management system.