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“The Forrester (News - Alert) Wave: Predictive Analytics and Data Mining Solutions, Q1 2010” evaluates products from nine vendors against 53 criteria in three categories.

The study uses vendor surveys, product demonstration and vendor-reference interviews to reach its conclusions. SAS (News - Alert) earned top overall ranking in all three categories – current offering, strategy and market presence – including perfect scores for functionality, professional services, licensing and cost, direction, and company financials criteria.

“Predictive analytics can play a pivotal role in the planning and day-to-day operations of your business,” according to the report by author James Kobielus, Senior Analyst at Forrester Research (News - Alert).

About a year ago TMC's Brendan Read reported that Forrester published a report finding that “organizations seeking to reduce costs and improve customer service can do so by intelligently reaching out to customers through outbound notification: interactive voice messages, e-mail, and SMS, rather than relying on annoying one-way home phone ‘robocalls.’”

The report by Forrester Research, “Proactive Outbound Notification Saves Money,” discusses how the outbound notification market is evolving to address these new channels and consumer preferences.

Alerting customers to special events, “which helps predict customers’ interest and target promotions to generate new revenues” is an advantage, Read writes: “This supports marketing campaigns without the expense of other forms of expensive advertising.”

Organizations are inundated with structured and unstructured textual data from financial reports, factory sensors, call center notes, and customer product reviews online, among other sources, the Forrester Wave report finds, adding that analytics “lets them realize the value within these growing volumes of data.”

Business analytics – which includes predictive analytics and data mining – helps organizations succeed by predicting what will happen: Which series of bank transactions are potentially fraudulent; which customers will respond to mobile marketing efforts; which combination of drug compounds will make the most effective pharmaceutical?

The report is available from Forrester.