The Million Dollar Opportunity!!!

Taken from:

http://www.information-management.com/news/the-million-dollar-opportunity-reaping-returns-from-analytics-10024977-1.html?ET=informationmgmt:e9461:1985081a:&st=email&utm_source=editorial&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=IM_Daily_101813

The article starts with this paragraph:

As long ago as 2008, the Royal Shakespeare Company in the U.K. saw a 50 percent increase in ticket sales at one of its theaters – following an investment in an analytics program that helped it identify specific audience segments for targeted marketing campaigns.

The article (of course) is on Business Intelligence - and it is a growing business.  Many universities (including the University of Texas-Austin and Quinnipiac University) have recently added business intelligence / business analytics master's programs. 

With abundant data, and the right software, one can start to analyze relationships - is there a relationship between (say) age of the mother and autism?  Or with diet of the mother and autism?  Or with genetics and autism? Or with the mother having flu while she was pregnant and autism? Or the amount of carbonated beverages that mother drinks and autism? - OR ... so many other factors that could be investigated.  

As a parallel, the Irish potato famine was caused by an airborne pathogen - that could have been solved with small doses of trace minerals - but ... the data and relationship between the disease and certain minerals was not able to be studied.  With business intelligence, the data could be analyzed and the problem solved early on!!!

So, business intelligence / data analytics is here to stay and WILL be a game-changer for many problems!!!