Identifying the caterpillars the will become butterflies

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As Wayne Gretzky famously observed, "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." What holds for sports also applies to business opportunities. If you don't look into new market areas, you won't disocver new areas for expansion. But how to do so intelligently? That's where predictive analytics comes into play.

Whereas almost all large companies are already using predictive analytics in some form, not all have tapped into the power of anticipatory analytics, which can identify changes in companies before they happen. Recent developments in the anticipatory analytics space fuel a business solution Dun & Bradstreet refers to as "material change"—the ability to identify "the caterpillars that will turn into butterflies," Nipa Basu, chief analytics officer at Dun & Bradstreet explains.

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