Announcing the Top Rated Predictive Analytics Software for 2018

Today, we awarded the 2018 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Predictive Analytics Software. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are unique in that they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user satisfaction scores.

Here are the winners in each segment, listed in order of research frequency on TrustRadius. We have also provided insights on how to pick the right predictive analytics software based on your needs and current industry trends.

Overall Top Rated

• Alteryx Analytics
• SAS Advanced Analytics
• Anaconda
• MATLAB
• RStudio

Top Rated by Enterprises

• Alteryx Analytics
• SAS Advanced Analytics
• IBM SPSS
• Anaconda
• MATLAB
• RapidMiner Studio
• RStudio

Top Rated by Mid-Sized Companies

• Alteryx Analytics
• SAS Advanced Analytics
• IBM SPSS
• Anaconda
• RStudio

What is predictive analytics software?

Predictive analytics software is a category of tools that use statistical models and machine learning techniques to identify the likelihood of future outcomes based on historical data. The quality of data is key to producing reliable results. For example, to make predictions about what customers are likely to buy in the future, it’s essential to have detailed data on what they have bought in the past, attributes of purchased products, etc. Provided there is adequate high-quality data, predictive models are created using techniques like regression testing, decision trees or other methodologies to measure the degree of correlation between variables to help predict future behavior.

Predictive analytics vs. data science

Predictive analytics is not a new technology; many of the products in this category have been around for decades. However, the emergence of the data science category of tools and activities in the last couple of years has caused some confusion. There is no hard division between these domains and data science can be thought of as an extension of predictive analytics for the big data era. Typically, though, predictive analytics projects are narrower in scope, while data science projects are more exploratory in nature and rely on much bigger data sets.

Choosing the right predictive analytics software

Given all the complexity in this space, how should buyers go about making a decision? Perhaps one of the most important decision criteria relates to who will be using the tool. Will it be used primarily by business professionals with no programming skill, but some technical acumen? In that case, GUI-based tools are the best choice.

If selecting a GUI-based tool, TrustRadius reviews can be very helpful if you know the right things to look for. User interface design is a major topic in most reviews of products in this category and comparing products on this axis can be very helpful. There are also differences in the breadth of modeling options available, and in the degree of machine learning, for example, the capability of the tool to suggest the correct statistical method for your data. Some of these tools are more intuitive and user-centric than others.

If the users are developers or data scientists, the choice of a programming language tool makes more sense. Tools like R and Python offer significant advantages like low cost, a very high-level of flexibility, and inclusion of the very latest analytics techniques. These tools also offer very little customer support and may be overkill for many kinds of projects. If choosing between Revolution R Enterprise from Microsoft, or the Anaconda distribution of Python, things to look out for are visualization capabilities and developer learning curve.

Top Rated Criteria

Products included in the 2018 Top Rated Predictive Analytics Software list must have been in the top tier of their category TrustMap on April 27, 2018, to earn a Top Rated badge. To qualify for the Predictive Analytics Software TrustMap, products must have 10 reviews and ratings on TrustRadius. Every reviewer is verified and every review is vetted before publication. Products are plotted on the map based on end-user data, including users’ likelihood to recommend scores as well as buyer research patterns. To learn more about TrustMaps and Top Rated methodology, check out this page.