SAP and Yandex Data Factory have announced a new strategic partnership to develop cloud-based predictive analytics services for the retail, e-commerce, banking and telecommunications sectors.

Using the machine learning & data analytics capabilities of Yandex Data Factory, the team will offer services such as personalised offers of goods and services, churn prediction and recommendations for the retention of customers, which will be based on the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud platform.

While the offering could seemingly be extended to other verticals, the team are focusing on more consumer orientated areas due to the volume of data these companies have already collected. There does not seem to be any reason why it could not be extended beyond the industries mentioned, though there would have to be a suitable amount of information collected to realize the full potential of the offering.

“While the advantages of big data analysis are well-understood, many in the retail, e-commerce, banking and telecommunications sectors will have concerns over integrating data analysis technology with their existing systems,” said Alexander Khaytin, chief operating officer at Yandex Data Factory. “We wanted to remove this obstacle and therefore deliberately partnered with SAP – one of the leading providers of data and business automation tools in these sectors – so that we can offer our clients advanced predictive and prescriptive analytics, without additional integration costs.”

The Yandex big data algorithms are based on matching a customer’s profile with another customer who has demonstrated the same purchasing tendencies. In theory, should two customers have a similar profile, predictions on what one will do can be based on the actions of the second. Yandex claims it can reduce the costs of acquiring new and retaining current customers by up to 10%.