tl;dr
Predictive analytics uses historical data and statistical or machine-learning models to forecast a future outcome: a customer's likely payment date, next quarter's cash position, the probability that an invoice is fraudulent.
In finance, predictive analytics shifts reporting from describing what already happened to anticipating what's likely to happen next, which is what lets a finance team act ahead of a cash shortfall or a collections problem rather than reporting on it after the fact.
See how this works in Light's Reporting.
