As enterprises strive to become more data-driven, moving beyond descriptive analytics to predictive and prescriptive analytics is essential. SAP HANA, with its powerful in-memory computing capabilities and integrated advanced analytics libraries, offers a robust platform for organizations to perform predictive and prescriptive analytics directly within the database. This article explores how SAP HANA enables these advanced analytics techniques, helping businesses anticipate future trends and make optimized decisions.
Together, these analytics approaches help businesses not just understand what might happen but also decide the best course of action.
SAP HANA processes large volumes of data in RAM, enabling high-speed analytics and iterative model training without moving data between systems.
SAP HANA includes the PAL, a comprehensive suite of machine learning and statistical algorithms, accessible via SQL procedures, which allows users to build predictive models natively.
APL offers automated machine learning capabilities, enabling business analysts to generate models without deep data science expertise.
SAP HANA supports integration with R and Python, enabling data scientists to run custom analytics and machine learning models close to the data.
For prescriptive analytics, SAP HANA includes optimization algorithms that solve linear, integer, and nonlinear programming problems to recommend the best actions.
Retailers and manufacturers can predict future product demand using historical sales data and external factors like seasonality, optimizing inventory levels.
Telecom and subscription-based businesses identify customers likely to churn and prescribe retention strategies.
Manufacturers predict equipment failures based on sensor data and recommend maintenance schedules to minimize downtime.
Dynamic pricing models evaluate market conditions, competition, and customer behavior to recommend optimal prices that maximize revenue.
Use Calculation Views and SQL scripts to clean, transform, and aggregate data for model input.
Invoke PAL or APL procedures to train models such as regression, classification, clustering, or time-series forecasting.
Assess model accuracy using confusion matrices, R-squared, or other relevant metrics provided by PAL/APL.
Deploy the trained model to score new data in real time, enabling up-to-date predictions.
Apply optimization procedures to the predicted outcomes to generate actionable recommendations.
SAP HANA predictive and prescriptive analytics can be embedded within business applications and BI tools such as:
SAP HANA’s native capabilities for predictive and prescriptive analytics empower organizations to move from reactive to proactive decision-making. By harnessing SAP HANA’s speed, scalability, and integrated analytics libraries, businesses can uncover hidden patterns, forecast future trends, and prescribe optimal actions — all within a unified platform. This enables smarter, faster, and more confident business decisions that drive competitive advantage in today’s dynamic marketplace.