US startup Obviously AI has launched a Web platform that promises to put the power of machine learning and analytics in the hands of non-technical business users, by providing hosted data analysis and natural language queries.

Data at organizations can be incredibly siloed, difficult to access, and overwhelming for thousands of business users across the globe. From finding a list of items in a haystack of data, to running complex predictive analytics, business users often have to wait for weeks for data engineers to get a single question answered

Obviously AI's no-code tool is extremely easy to use with results on any query returned in under a minute. Users simply upload their dataset from CSV, databases or CRMs and then get a Google-like search bar to ask a question in natural language.

For predictive questions, such as "Which customers are likely to cancel their subscriptions?" the platform will understand what the user is asking, find the right data, and build a machine learning algorithm on the fly. It also shows you exactly what factors drove your results, so you don't have to guess how it got them.

Similarly, the platform can answer analytical questions that look for existing patterns in data, such as "What is the average daily foot traffic for my retail stores?" Users do not need any familiarity with writing complex SQL queries or working with programming languages to code regressions, neural networks and other ML algorithms.

"We realized that business users truly cared about getting decision making insights about their customers, products and its usage. This often meant writing frustrating SQL queries and waiting on web engineers who would try to figure out machine learning algorithms," said Nirman Dave, Co-founder and CEO, Obviously AI. "That's why we have been on a mission to make data science effortless just by asking questions. It's amazing what marketers, salespeople and other non-technical business users can learn when they use our platform."

How it works

To make predictions, Obviously AI uses state-of-the-art natural language processing to break apart a question, interpret it and find the right data. Then it runs hundreds of machine learning algorithms in parallel and evaluates each one for accuracy to find the right algorithm for your dataset. Finally, it identifies top attributes that impact the outcome you are trying to predict and delivers highly accurate reports in under a minute.

Here are the sorts of straight-forward yet vitally important questions Obviously AI can address:

• Which users are most likely to make an in-app purchase?
• How much is a customer willing to pay for my product on Wednesdays?
• Which customers are most likely to commit fraudulent activity in February?
• Will Tim Smith miss his appointment today?
• Which users are likely to buy again?
• Age and location of user paying more than $500?

Analytics is equally simple: input your dataset, and ask a natural language question such as "What's the average income from customers in cities in California?" Obviously AI will understand the question, find the right data and visualize it in a beautiful graph. Outputs can be exported into presentations or more closely analyzed.

"The predictions come faster than any other tools - literally in less than a minute and with incredible accuracy," said Dave.

The platform is ideal for a range of small and medium businesses or small departments of larger companies that don't have a data science team or cannot scale one. For example, in marketing the software can predict churn, lifetime value and returning customers. For SaaS companies, it can assist in predicting conversion KPIs and in-app purchases.

Even in traditionally non-technical markets like retail, the software can optimize assortments, predict inventory burn and forecast staffing. Similarly, for healthcare companies it can assist administrators to predict and prevent hospital readmissions, predict which patients are less likely to adhere to prescribed drug regimens and as well as help predict appointment no-shows.

Other use cases include insurance, banking and gaming.

All the user needs to get started is a CSV file and a question they want to ask. The platform is available in Free, Pro and Pro Plus versions.

https://www.obviously.ai/