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Cut Complexity with the Inductive Approach

2–3 minutes

Traditional analytics can be slow and costly due to an overemphasis on data and a lack of attention to expert knowledge that could simplify problems, accelerate results, and lead to better solutions.

How Does a Tourist Find Their Way to the Beach?

The conventional approach tries to solve the problem without prior assumptions (i.e. domain knowledge), leading to excessive work in pursuit of a perfectly objective answer. In reality, problems never exist in isolation. Domain knowledge is not only essential but also helps narrow problem scope and deliver higher value solutions. In contrast, the second approach uses domain knowledge to focus efforts and achieve a better practical solution for the customer.

A tourist would like to get to the beach. Approach 1 (conventional deductive) identifies the current state, desired state and finds all options to move between them. No domain knowledge is used, status must be determined and find all possible options. Second approach (Advanata inductive) relies on making use of the given status, finding the best options to get to the desired state. This applies domain knowledge to narrow the scope of searched options in order to find the best choices.

The Deductive Approach and How to Improve It

The Deductive approach may be thorough, but it’s time-consuming, data-heavy, and often misaligned with what customers actually need.

Deductive approach first has to gather data to comprehensively measure the current state (not all data will be used), then recommend actions to reach desired state (not all actions are possible), and the customer then interprets the recommended actions (execution risk). Data supports assessment, excess work is performed, and results are open to interpretation.

The best way to overcome the limits of the deductive approach is by incorporating domain knowledge. While challenging, the payoff is significant and leads to faster, smarter, and more effective solutions.

Utilizing domain knowledge is challenging but very beneficial. It reduces problem scope thus reducing data needed and analytics work required. It provides a solution format thus allowing for the ability to optimize the solution and to verify the solution.

The Inductive Approach as Used by Advanata

Here’s how Advanata brings domain knowledge into the analysis process. It starts with defining a Business Problem using key components that customers can easily provide given their domain expertise. Once defined, Advanata then applies Data effectiveness to quickly generate a clear, actionable solution that is fully aligned with the customer’s requirements.

Domain knowledge can be obtained by Advanata by distilling human expertise into business problem components (goals, options, and resource). This establishes problem status and potential options. The business problem is then inserted into the data effectiveness framework in order to obtain a solution in the form of actions.

Now that we have incorporated domain knowledge into the analysis process we arrive at the Inductive approach, which eliminates the need to establish detailed status and instead focuses directly on finding the optimal solution to the customer’s problem.

The inductive approach calculates the optimal actions given problem status and only outputs allowable actions. Available data is gathered to support calculating the optimal actions and all data will be used. Finally, the customer precisely performs the exact optimal actions. Data supports execution, only essential work is performed, and results are precise and actionable.

Prioritizing Customers Creates Satisfied Customers

While the Deductive approach has its place, especially when domain knowledge is scarce, it can be excessive for real-world applications. Even analytically perfect solutions can lead to confusion and misalignment when not taking into consideration the customer’s unique situation. Advanata takes a customer-led approach, ensuring that domain knowledge and output requirements are fully incorporated from the start, delivering solutions that truly meet the customer’s expectations and requirements.

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