Interest is high in organizations that are still focused on historical, "descriptive analytics," and in businesses with established predictive analytics practices that are now moving outside of traditional niches such as marketing and risk management. They're predicting website click-through rates and overall behavior, and helping HR anticipate which employees are likely to churn. Another area is help desk call routing, where models can be used to determine which agent is likely to do the best job of answering a given customer question.
"There's more interest because there's more data," says Dean Abbott, president of consultancy Abbott Analytics. "The buzz is about momentum. People are saying this is something I need to do."
