Data has become the key ingredient in a business success model.

With the right data, marketers,

strategists, and managers can identify critical improvement areas and allocate resources for optimized
results. For marketing and sales, data and business analytics has a special importance. Functions in
both of these domains can achieve effective results with the help of accurate data and business
analytics.

Analytics helps businesses and their representatives make better decisions. It provides them with
good information to act upon, which leads to more efficient customer services, product creation, and
solutions development. Ensuring that these goals are met, data is required. Hence, it plays a vital role
in helping businesses do better marketing and get higher sales.

Let’s find out more about how business analytics and data science can help businesses stand apart
from the competition. Before moving ahead, know that IMS Proschool provides Business analytics
courses to students from all backgrounds.

What is Business Analytics?

Business Analytics represents the combination of skills, technologies, and practices we use to
analyze an organization’s data and performance. It includes insights and trends that are often hidden
between the numbers and are required to make data-driven decisions. With effective analytics,
businesses can narrow their choices to a minimum and identify the most helpful ones. One of the best
outcomes of using business analytics is higher revenue.

The majority of the use cases of business analytics is to identify the opportunities that help a
company generate higher revenue. Whether it is by getting more sales, saving money, or by
optimizing existing processes, business analytics is required.

A business can use Business Analytics for a wide range of purposes. These include;

 To analyze data from several sources and data centers. This includes extracting data from
their existing online interfaces, marketing tools, or CRM software.
 The data extraction will allow these businesses to implement advanced analytics and
statistics. The purpose here is to find patterns. These patterns can relate to identifying
customers’ buying behavior or anything else required by the business.
 Business analytics also fits well in terms of monitoring KPIs and changes in real-time. This
allows a business the luxury of making changes in their approach or product according to the
customer’s preferences and marketing performance.

 Descriptive

In the descriptive analytics system, the analysts interpret historical data and KPIs to figure out trends
and patterns. This is meant to determine the bigger picture. Moreover, it helps understand the current
situation in relation to the past. More importantly, the analysts use data mining and data aggregation
tools in this type of business analytics.

Most of the time, companies use this type of business analytics to get a detailed view into their
customer’s behavior. They use this to create better marketing strategies.
  Diagnostic

The Diagnostic business analytics technique refers to past performance to determine the factors that
led to a change in specific trends. In this approach, the analysts will use Drill-Down, Data Discovery,
Data Mining, and Correlation approaches to identify and understand the specific events.

As a result, the analysts are able to reach an understanding of a particular event. It will also help
identify the reason behind the occurrence of the event. For this, two different algorithms are used,
classification and regression.

 Predictive

Predictive analytics harnesses the power of statistics to forecast and assess the outcome of the future.
In this, the analysts predict with the help of machine learning and statistical models.

However, this approach works together with the descriptive analytical model to identify the
likelihood of a specific event or exercise. In general, this type of analytical practice is used by sales
and marketing professionals.

 Prescriptive

The prescriptive analytical method is meant to help us understand how to tackle a situation in the
future. “Prescriptive” implies how to correct the situation or take precautionary measures to get the
desired outcomes. In this type of analytical system, deep learning analytical methods are applied.

The type of analytical process you can use for your purpose depends on the business situation.

Importance of Business Analytics for Marketing Team

Data is the best form of gold for a marketing team as they can use it to build marketing strategies.
With this, they can easily take their marketing efforts to the last detail of their customers and
implement targeted strategies. Here are some reasons showing Business analytics’ importance for
marketing.

 Assessing Marketing Strategies

Marketing has always been an expensive affair for businesses. They spend a significant percentage of
their budget on marketing. Using business analytics aspects will ensure that businesses get the
maximum ROI on their spending.

A data-driven marketing strategy will help these businesses optimize their marketing campaigns to
target the specific aspects of their customer’s journey. With targeted marketing, the results improve,
as there is less “shooting blind arrows” and more of approaching the right customers.

Moreover, data-driven strategies help personalize customer experiences and marketing. The
marketing teams are better equipped to create specific strategies and also reduce the acquisition cost.
As a result, the marketing teams can also increase engagement levels with their customers and also
achieve better Customer Value Analytics (CVA).

 Creating Surveys

With the help of business analytics, marketers can always ask the right questions from their
customers and target audience. The importance of this step is visible when creating the solution.
Because if you can understand what your customers need, you are better able to create the desired
solution.

Without access to data, you can keep on creating endless surveys and questionnaires and then
analyze the answers to identify the results. But with access to data, you can gain insights prior to
creating surveys.

Using business analytics helps accelerate the surveying process and set the right KPIs.

 Identify Target Audience

Businesses must understand that not every person is their customer. There are a limited number of
people who need their product. It will be more productive if a business entity will market its product
in front of interested customers rather than including everyone in the mix.

With the help of business analytics tools and techniques, you will find it easier to categorize your
ideal customers. You can create a customer persona and build brand messaging that is closely
associated with these individuals.

You can go on to collect information from different channels and classify them with business
analytics tools. As a result, you can evaluate and create a pre-verified list of potential customers.
Implementing the marketing strategies at this level will provide better ROI.

 Analyze Customer Behavior

When you need to understand your customers, business analytics is one of the best solutions. It will
allow you to tailor your services and solutions according to your customers choices and preferences.
From here, you can address the issues your customers are facing and project your product as the
panacea for all the issues.

You can drive better content that is relevant to your customers and also share helpful content. All
these aspects come together to form a cumulative marketing mix that will bring effective results.

Based on your customer’s buying behavior and patterns, you can further create strategies or modify
them for better conversions, higher visibility, and enhanced sales.

Importance of Business Analytics for Sales Team

For the sales team, business analytics is equally important as it is for the marketing team. The key
component here is the insights and trends we can deduce by using business analytics techniques.
Some of the insights include creating bespoke pricing strategies, knowing the customer’s response,
and enhancing public engagement. Here’s how we can use business analytics in sales.

 Work on Pricing Strategies

The right pricing strategies will set your product apart from the competition and attract higher sales.
However, to set the right price and provide the best value to your customers, it is important to take
the help of business analytics for setting the right price.

Using business analytics will help a business eliminate the “sounds about right” pricing strategy. This
will help them move towards a value-based pricing system.

 Identification of Weak and Strong Products

Another way to use business analytics in the sales process is identifying the strong and weak
products. In this, the business can determine the trending products and the ones that are seeing a
declining trend in terms of sales.

With this, the sales team can find out which products are lagging behind due to competition or which
ones do not fit with the current market margins. Having this information in hand means businesses
can identify how long it takes for a deal to close. It can show the results of specific sales campaigns
and which elements in a product can spark the customer’s interest.

 Review Sales Process and Pipeline

Cumulatively, business analytics can help the sales team organize their sales process by reviewing it
effectively. The representatives can get a clear picture of the sales process and discover the loopholes
along with the entire strategy.

Business analytics has the potential to transform the sales process and pipeline. It will provide a
historical and predictive data set that businesses can use to identify better opportunities and prospects

Human Capital is regarded to be the most important asset and as one of the
greatest investment to provide sustainable competitive advantage for any
organization. But if it is truly is an asset why doesn’t appear in the balance
sheet? Given the rather intangible character of human capital, HR is often
seen as software rather than hardware. The financial impact of HR strategy
is not measured consistently. Most research into this topic is rather
academic.

In many companies there has been a lack of understanding and visibility of

how human capital is managed — a shortage of analytical insights about
where investments are made, what form the investments take, their impact,
and how best to shift resources and practices. For example, in a survey
conducted by Mercer, CFOs reported that their organizations spent 36% of
the revenue on human expenses, but only 16% of the CFOs said that they
had anything more than a moderate understanding of the return on human
capital investment. Without clear metrics and lack of an in depth view of the
data on workforce, the organizations have not had business intelligence
reporting as their key asset and thus have not had the access into insights of
creating strategies to drive better business performance.

For instance, let’s take a very common metric – the Absenteeism rate. Every
absent person is causing an exponential amount of loss in revenue. Besides
personal cost, an absent worker puts a heavy strain on others, lowers
overall productivity and delay actual delivery to clients. Research by the CRF
Institute into the HR management of up to 500 employers shows that since
absenteeism is a strong indicator for both physical and mental well being of
the staff, influencing absenteeism brings back investments in HR. Findings
from this research indicate that development of staff and business
opportunities, flexible working arrangements and counselling to support
work-life balance have significant effect on the absenteeism rate. Thus,
absenteeism can be represented as a financial asset and offering employees
right benefit shall have huge impact on absenteeism which translates
directly into business results.

[1]Steps for implementing HR Analytics in an organization

Implementing HR Analytics in an organisation requires a structured approach

in order to give fruitful results. A considerable amount of cost both direct as
well as in direct is involved while implementing such a process and so it
becomes more important for organisations to have well sorted process for its
implementation. The major steps involved for implementing such a process
are as followed

Step 1: Determining the critical areas or issues of the organization

It deals with identifying the most critical problems or sectors of the

company. Higher level as well as middle level executives will the most
important role in determining the same. Without settling the critical issue
the company faces in the larger context of the business, any analysis will be
focused on confirming an executive’s hunch instead of thoroughly examining
and solving the problem.

Step 2: Making a Conceptual Model to Guide the analysis

The next step deals with forming a model to give an idea of the flow of
organisational processes in the selected areas. The relevant data that is
required to be captured at each of this processes needs to be determined.

There is also a need to understand how missing data may limit the
interpretation of the findings.

Step 3: Capture and process relevant data

This step deals with capturing important data available to analyse. More
often than not organisations start collecting data that is not needed or
cleaning data that may be important. So relevant data which can provide
meaningful information needs to be captured and different databases
containing similar information needs to be integrated. After the data is
captured it needs to be processed in a form that can be analysed.

Step 4: Apply Analytical Tools and techniques

This step involves applying different analytical techniques and tools to the
relevant data captured and come up with meaningful information which can
aid the organisation. This should address the issue in such a way so that it is
practical and relevant to the business. There are a range of analytical and
statistical tools available and each of them has their own strengths and
weaknesses. Thus the tool needs to be judiciously chosen based on the cost
of the cost to the organisation, complexity and quantity of data to be
analysed and the impact it will have on the organisation.

Step 5: Presenting the analysed data into a meaningful solution to the

stakeholders

The analysed data needs to be processed in a form that is understood by the

various stakeholders of the process. The results presented must be in
consistency with management policies and culture of the organisation. The
various stakeholders should be made an active part of the dialogues to
connect analytical results with their business experience. The inputs from
the stakeholders shall infuse light into the obtained results and provide the
path for taking up transformative actions.

Step 6: Designing and implementation of the Action Plan

This step provides dividing the action plan into a series of steps that needs
to be implemented to make sure that the desired result is achieved. The
proposed solution must be translated into a sustainable set of actions and
such actions should be regularly monitored to obtain desired outcome. The
tools and processes required for successful implementation of such actions
at every step needs to be recognized. The role of various stakeholders in
implementing the action the action plan must also be made clear

Domains in HR where Analytics can be used

Business Analytics has immense scope and possibilities in the field of Human
Resource Management. The various domains of Human Resource
Management where analytics can be used are –

 Recruitment
 Retention
 Performance and Career Management
 Training
 Compensation and Benefits
 Workforce
 Organizational Benefits

Barriers of Organizations to use HR Analytics

Implementing HR Analytics in various operations of an organisation may face

many challenges. The major barriers of organisations to use HR Analytics
can be one or more of the following:

 Lack of understanding of the organisation as to how analytics should

be used to improve business
 Lack of management bandwidth due to competing priorities.
 Lack of skills internally in line of business to implement such a process
 Inability to get the relevant data required for the application of such a
process
 Existing culture in the organisation does not encourage sharing
information and hence such a process
 Lack of ownership or other concerns with data obtained for this
purpose.
 Lack of sponsorship or support from the executive level to implement
such processes
 Implementing such practices is not cost effective compared to the
existing practice

With data becoming widely available and more easily accessible, industries
are quick to realize the value of insights that analytics can uncover. In
Human Resources, with the automation of many HR transactions, from
recruitment to retirement along with the need to perform strategically,
analytics of the workforce is more important than ever. HR analytics about
the total amount and the quality of talent, knowledge, and expertise to
move your organization forward and stay ahead of competition. It’s about
measuring the return on human capital investment and measuring the
impact and how HR is driving performance, productivity, and profitability.
Analytics of the workforce, a company’s most important asset, should be an
opportunity for businesses, particularly for HR, to transform itself and align
with the business strategy. Organizations should thereby look into
opportunities of leveraging this field to build a strong and effective
workplace.

Meaning of Healthcare Data Analytics

Healthcare data analytics refers to the process of working on raw datasets related to
healthcare and analyzing them to find hidden patterns, trends, etc., thus paving a way
for further improvements at patient-level as well as business-level.

Since we talked about healthcare-related data in the above definition, let us now
understand what healthcare data is. Healthcare data is nothing but any data that is
related to the patient and the healthcare facilities such as medical records, scan and
test reports, hospital records, etc. Different tools are used to collect this data. Some of
the important tools and ways are electronic health records (EHRs), patient portals,
master patient indexes (MPIs), online health-related mobile applications, etc. Not only
does this help in data-driven informed decision-making, but it also helps in providing a
personalized experience and treatment to the patients.

Types of Data Analytics

There are different types of Data Analytics based on the type of problem they solve
and the questions they answer. The main three types of Data Analytics are:

(i) Descriptive Data Analytics

(ii) Predictive Data Analytics
(iii) Prescriptive Data Analytics
Descriptive Data Analytics revolves around data and findings related to what has
happened already in the past. It does not involve making any inferences or predictions
with the data. It is rather a type of analytics that forms the base for further analysis and
other types of data analysis. It basically involves collecting historical data and
presenting the data in an organized manner for easy understanding. Very basic levels of
statistical methods such as average, percentage change calculations, Mean etc. are
used in Descriptive Analytics.

Predictive Analytics is the type of data analysis where probabilities are used to
forecast possible future events and outcomes. In predictive analytics, complex statistical
techniques are used to predict the outcomes. For example- Statistical Data Modeling,
Data Mining etc. Predictive Analytics is rather a step towards Machine Learning and
Artificial Intelligence which involve predictive models.

Prescriptive Analytics is the stage in data analysis where the learnings from
Descriptive and Predictive Analytics are used to suggest the best actionables for the
business problem or challenges. This type of data analytics uses rather complex
statistical tools and techniques to figure out the right course of action. Complex
algorithms based on internal as well as external data are used to achieve the results.
Because of this reason, Prescriptive Analytics is not a routine practice adopted by
organizations as it requires specialized tools and statistical processes.

Enroll now in Intellipaat’s Data Analytics Courses in Bangalore to gain complete

knowledge of data analytics.

Why is Healthcare Data Analytics Needed ?

The data analytics market in the healthcare space has only increased over the last few
years. Considering the rising costs of medical treatments globally, a proper body of
knowledge was needed to reduce the costs at the business-level as well as the
professional-level. McKinsey, in one of its reports, states that healthcare expenses
constitute 17.6 percent of the GDP in the USA, which is approximately US$600 billion,
more than what is the set benchmark for the ideal size of population in the country. This
is a serious indicator of bigger trouble. Hence, the usage of healthcare data analytics is
being promoted these days.

Healthcare data analytics aims at reducing the cost of healthcare operations and
processes. Hence, the treatment cost for patients will gradually go down. Not only this,
healthcare data analytics has opened the doors to a plethora of job opportunities for
qualified and skilled data analytics professionals. These professionals come with data-
driven minds and strategic thinking, which is the need of the hour for the global
healthcare industry.

Use of Data Analytics in Covid-19 Outbreak

The Covid-19 pandemic has created an urgent need for application of data analytics in
the healthcare industry. Many hospitals and healthcare organizations have successfully
utilized the benefits of Data Analytics to tackle the pandemic. Let us understand the
various ways in which Data Analytics has been used in the Covid-19 outbreak:

 Forecasting
Since there was no information available regarding the effects or severity levels
of Covid-19 in the pandemic’s initial phase, a lot of lives were lost. However, as
time passed by, there was a decent amount of data available regarding the
symptoms, severe health conditions, days of hospitalization of a Covid-19 patient
etc. This data has helped researchers to create predictive analytics to forecast
the severity and survival chances of Covid-19 patients. Data Analysts have built
models that take into account certain set of parameters like age of the patient,
minimum oxygen saturation and type of Covid-19 case. Many hospitals have
come forward and implemented this predictive analytics strategy and have been
successful in saving many lives.

 Demand Planning
As hospitals were facing rise in number of patients each day, there were many
 cases of delay in patient admission, unavailability of doctors, mismanaged supply
of medicines and other medical supplies. All these challenges demanded to be
solved and now, with the application of Data Analytics techniques, these issues
seem to have been settled a lot. Data Analysts have worked on predictive
models which can predict the availability of beds, doctor schedules, medicine
supplies, patient discharge schedules etc. The model extracts data fed into the
system such as patient details, doctor schedules, bed allotments etc. This has
helped healthcare facilities to devote a larger portion of their time into treatment
of the Covid-19 patients.

 Virus Traceability and Mapping

In the beginning, the spread of the virus was unknown which took many innocent
lives and the government as well as the healthcare organizations knew nothing
about what to do. However, researchers have worked on large sets of Covid-19
related data to identify trends and patterns regarding the spread of Covid-19
such as possible areas that can be affected, the rate of increase in the virus,
possible number of daily Covid cases etc.

Hence you can see how Data Analytics has been used to tackle a pandemic and how
much more it can do for the healthcare sector. To understand this, let us further have a
look at the applications of healthcare data analytics.

Applications of Healthcare Data Analytics

Healthcare analytics has helped millions of healthcare professionals to better take care
of their patients alongside reducing operational costs and saving time. Below we will
explore some of the applications of healthcare data analytics:

Staffing Prediction

One of the major concerns that worries healthcare facilities is the allocation of nurses
and other staff for a particular patient in a particular period of time. Allocating too many
workers is going to shoot up the labor costs. Healthcare data analytics helps in effective
allocation and staff management by predicting which worker will be allocated where and
at what time.

Electronic Health Records (EHRs)

The major benefit of using healthcare data analytics is the utilization of the large amount
of data lying here and there. EHRs are a means to store patient-related data in an
organized manner. They are like digital records that can be accessed anytime by the
concerned parties for the patient’s treatment. EHRs usually store data such as past
medical history, allergies, lab results, doctors’ diagnoses, etc. Healthcare data analytics
is a boon as the EHRs are also known to send reminders with respect to regular health
checkups, etc.

Strategic Planning

Data analytics has always helped organizations in strategic decision-making. The same
applies to healthcare data analytics. The managers of healthcare facilities can
effectively manage the treatment facilities and serve maximum possible patients with
the help of data-driven strategic planning. Healthcare data analytics helps managers in
making predictions regarding resource availability, treatment facilities, checkups, etc.
This has promoted strategic decision-making and also boosted the trust and faith of
patients in medical treatments.

Fraud Reduction

Healthcare analytics has not only helped in predictions and decision-making but also in
data security by identifying pattern changes in network traffic—predicting possible
breaches, identifying vulnerabilities, etc. These developments in healthcare data
analytics have also helped in smooth claim settlements and cash advances to patients.

Improved Distribution and Medical Logistics

The supply chain framework forms the backbone of the healthcare industry. A single
instance of delayed delivery or mismanaged logistics can lead to life risks and critical
problems. Healthcare analytics is a whole new approach to manage the distribution of
medicine and healthcare appliances to facilities. It has helped in the effective planning
of operations and reduced the variability in the supply chain.

Top Business Analyst Skills

A business analyst must perform multiple duties; hence they need to have a strong skill
set that is an amalgam of technical and non-technical skills.

Here, we will take you through the top ten vital business analyst skills that are a dire
necessity.

1. Understanding the Business Objective

 A business analyst should be able to comprehend an organization’s goals and

problems.

 It requires them to recognize business problems and come up with the most suited
solution.

 It is good if business analysts have domain knowledge in the organization they are
working in. This will help them with the required deliverables.

 In most cases, business analysts work towards enabling a change with the motive of
increasing sales, scale-up production, improving revenue streams, etc.

Understanding the business motive is the first step in a business analyst’s life; it is a
special skill by itself. Now, let’s proceed to the next set of business analyst skills.

2. Analytical and Critical Thinking

As the famous quote by Thomas Alva. Edison goes:

“Five percent of the people think;

ten percent of the people think they think;

and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.”

This shows that, although thinking sounds basic, it is an underrated ability. Analytical
and critical thinking is one of the core business analyst skills.

 A business analyst must analyze and translate the client’s requirements distinctly.

 Critical thinking helps a business analyst in assessing multiple options before arriving
at the aspired solution.

 Business analysts focus on gathering and understanding the client’s needs. Critical
thinking enables them to prioritize business requirements.

 A good analytical bend of mind will help a business analyst reach the stated goals
even when there is a limitation in the resources and the conditions are nonideal.

3. Communication and Interpersonal Skills

The next skill in our list of business analyst skills are commonly heard of skills
- communication and interpersonal skills.

 Being understood is as important as understanding. You should have the ability to

communicate concisely with the stakeholders and clients with regard to the
requirements.

 A business analyst uses communication and interpersonal skills at different phases,

for example: when a project is being launched, while collecting requirements, when
collaborating with stakeholders, while validating the final solution, and so on.

 Business Analysts use verbal and written communication to convey ideas, facts, and
opinions to stakeholders.

 Good communication and interpersonal skills will give confidence to a business

analyst while facilitating meetings.

4. Negotiation and Cost-Benefit Analysis

Needless to say, negotiation is a crucial skill every business analyst must-have. The
next skill on our list of business analyst skills is the negotiation and cost-benefit
analysis.
 Business analysts negotiate at every project phase. At the initial stage of a
project, negotiation skills are used to decide what they must include in the project's
vision.

 Business analysts then use their negotiation skills to determine which requests turn
into requirements and their priority levels.

 As the project progresses, negotiation skills play a significant role in deciding the
functional design that fulfills the requirements. Negotiation skills are also used to
make technical decisions.

 Business analysts carry out a cost-benefit analysis to assess the costs and benefits
expected in a project. When organizations undertake new projects, business analysts
make use of cost-benefit analysis to establish if they should embark on those
particular projects.

5. Decision-Making Skills

At number five, we have another non-technical skill, and that is decision-making skills.

 The decisions made by a business analyst has a direct and indirect impact on the
company's business. Hence, they should think of all the aspects before presenting
their decision.

 Before making a decision, a business analyst interprets the problem and finds
alternative business approaches.

 They then test all the alternative approaches and make a decision based on their
thoughts regarding these approaches. They finally test and implement the solution.

 Business analysts also take the last call in ensuring that a particular technical design
conforms to the discussed business requirements or not.

We will now take you through a few technical skills in our list of business analyst skills.

6. Programming Languages

 Business analysts should have hands-on programming knowledge in order to

perform quicker and better data analysis.

 Knowledge of R and Python is extremely beneficial. Complex problems can be

solved by writing efficient codes.

 R and Python comprise several libraries and packages for data wrangling, data
manipulation, data visualization, and analytics. Additionally, a sound understanding
of statistical software like SAS and SPSS is recommended.
 With the help of the above programming languages, massive data can be analyzed
and visualized finely. Also, business models can be created for making business
predictions.

7. Creation of Reports and Dashboards

The next vital skill we have is the creation of reports and dashboards.

 Business analysts must be proficient in using various business intelligence tools for
creating reports and dashboards.

 Business analysts develop general reports and dashboard reports to solve decision-
making problems.

 Sound knowledge of Tableau, QlikView, and Power BI is necessary to make different

reports based on the business requirements.

8. Database and SQL

The next skill every business analyst should have is the knowledge of database
and SQL.

 Business analysts most often work with structured data. In order to store and process
this heavy data, they should have a sound understanding of relational databases like
Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL database, Oracle DB, as well as NoSQL databases.

 Every business analyst must carry hands-on experience with SQL. This will help
them access, retrieve, manipulate, and analyze data.

 They must write data definition and data manipulation commands like create, delete,
select, update, insert, etc.

9. Microsoft Excel

Next, in our list of business analyst skills is knowledge of Microsoft Excel. This is a
fundamental skill that every business analyst must-have.

 Excel is one of the oldest and strongest analytics and reporting tools; business
analysts use it to perform several calculations, data, and budget analysis to unravel
business patterns.

 They summarize data by creating pivot tables. They make different charts using
Excel to generate dynamic reports related to a business problem.
 Excel is used to create revenue growth models for new products based on recent
customer forecasts, plan an editorial calendar, list expenses for products, and create
charts to show how close the product is to budget across each category.

 Business analysts use Excel to calculate customer discounts based on monthly

purchase volume by product. They even summarize customer revenue by product to
find areas where there is a need to build stronger customer relationships.

10. Documentation and Presentation

Last, in the list of business analyst skills, we have documentation and presentation.

 A business analyst should document their project teachings and results very well,
clearly, and concisely.

 They should confidently present their project findings and outcomes in front of the
stakeholders and clients. With the help of organized documentation, business
analysts can communicate technical concepts easily to non-technical employees.

 Jotting down project lessons is vital, as this will help them make better decisions in
the future.

 Later, if similar problems crop up, business analysts can use the previous solutions,
thereby saving time and preventing unwanted issues.

Now that we have covered all the vital business analyst skills, I’ll show you how
Simplilearn can help you become a business analyst.

Components of Business Analytics

The components of business analytics involve;

1. Data Aggregation: Before analysis, data must be accumulated, streamlined

and cleaned up to escape replication, and filtered to eliminate incomplete data.
Data can be aggregated from transactional data and volunteer data.

2. Data Mining: In order to recognize and acknowledge prior unidentified data

trends and patterns, models are designed through massive data. Data mining
 exploits various statistical techniques to obtain interpretation such as
classification, regression technique, and clustering.

3. Text Mining: Data is also assembled in the form of textual information from
social media websites, call center scripts, blog comments, etc, to drive powerful
connections indexes that are used to develop new items most in-demand,
promote user services and experiences, and analyze opponent performance.

4. Forecasting: Future events or behaviors based on previous data can be

forecasted by scrutinizing processes that take place during a particular season
or period. For example, retail sales for the holiday, and energy consumption for
a city in summer.

5. Optimization: Organizations are continuously revealing the best possible

opportunities and promising actions via designing interesting simulation
techniques like to identify peak sales price and spike in-demand to scale
production, major opportunities slots for sales, promotions, and new items.

6. Data Visualization: Knowledge and observation extracted from data can be

conferred with extremely interactive graphs to outline exploratory data
analysis, modeling results, and numerical forecasting. (read more about data
visualization here)
 Stages and Components of Business Analytics

3-stages of Business Analytics

Business Analytics always remains a buzz in almost every industry, an individual

equipped with business analytics skills results in a sharp business decision, huge profit
limits, adequate operations, and amused customers.

The person once knows how and when to play with data, he can apply suitable
analytical tools to extract influential insights from data and make imperative
advantages.

Here are the three stages of business analytics:

1. Descriptive Analytics: An application of a prime statistical technique that

explains what a dataset contains, the main two techniques used are data
 aggregation and data mining that signify this method is used for understanding
the elemental behavior and not to make predictions.

2. Predictive Analytics: An advanced statistical application or a research method

to figure out predictive variables and make predictive models determining
patterns and relationships among variables.

3. Prescriptive Analytics: An application of decision system, management

science and operation research methodologies to conduct appropriate use of
admissible resources.

In addition to it, we would recommend you to read Top 10 Big Data Technologies in
2020 where you learn the latest tools highly deployed for big data analytics.

Talking About the Process of Business Analytics

Business Analytics techniques can be deployed in any industry where data is

conquered and handy to obtain business solutions through concerned data and curve it
into understanding and knowledge to make valuable decisions. Multiple BI tools are
implemented that helps an organization to obtain a competing asset in the market.

Business Analytics in Action: 7-steps Process outlined below;

Step 1: Address the Business Problems

Initially, business problems need to be addressed, the purpose of applying analytics is
sometimes designated categorically or broken into parts. So, relevant data is selected
to address these business problems by business users or business analysts equipped
with domain knowledge.

Some examples are: keeping modeling for a postpaid subscription, fraud detection for
credit cards, or customer analysis of a mortgage portfolio. Business experts define
perimeters for the analytical process which is crucial for assuring general
understanding of the goal.

Step 2: Identify Potential Interest from Data

All sources of data having potential interest are required to identify. The key asset in
this step is the more the data, the better it is. All the data will then be accumulated and
consolidated in a data warehouse or data mart or at a spreadsheet file. Some
exploratory data analysis is executed to do the computation for missing data,
removing outliers, and transforming variables.

For example, time-series analysis graphs are plotted to figure out some patterns or
outliers, scatter plots are used to find correlation or non-linearity, OLAP system for
multidimensional analysis.

Step 3: Inspect the data

Once moving to the analytics step, an analytical model will be predicted on the
prepared and transformed data using statistical analysis techniques like correlation
analysis and hypothesis testing. The analyst figures out all parameters in connection
with the target variable. The business expert also performs regression analysis to
make simple predictions depending upon the business objective. In this step, data is
also often reduced, divided, crumbled and compared with various groups to derive
powerful insights from data.

7-step representation of Business Analytics Process

Step 4: Interpretation and Evaluation by Experts

Finally, after obtaining model results, business experts interpret and evaluate them.
Results may be clusters, rules, relations, or trends known as analytical models derived
from applying analytics. Experts use predictive techniques like decision trees, neural
networks, logistics regression to reveal the patterns and insights that show the
relationship and invisible indication of the most persuasive variables.

Several prediction models are executed to select the best performing model on the
basis of model accuracy and consequences. But yet, to explore unknown though
engaging and tribal patterns are challenging that can add value to data and convert
into new turnout opportunities.

Step 5: Optimization of Best Possible Solution

Once the analytical model has been validated and approved, the analyst will apply
predictive model coefficients and conclusions to drive “what-if” conditions, using the
defined to optimize the best solution within the given limitations and constraints.

Necessary considerations are how to serve model output in a user-friendly way, how
to integrate it, how to confirm the monitoring of the analytical model accurately. An
optimal solution is chosen based on the lowest error, management objectives, and
identification of model coefficients that are associated with the company’s goals.

Step 6: Decision Making and Estimate conclusions

Analysts then would make decisions and endure action based on the conclusions
derived from the model in accordance with the predefined business problems. Spam
of period is accounted for the estimation of conclusion, all the favorable and opponent
consequences are measured in this duration to satisfy the business needs.

Step 7: Upgrade performance system

At last, the outcome of decision, action and the conclusion conducted from the model
are documented and updated into the database. This helps in changing and upgrading
the performance of the existing system.
Some queries are updated in the database such as “ were the decision and action
impactful?” “ what was the return or investment ?”,”how was the analysis group
compared with the regulating class?”. The performance-based database is
continuously updated once the new insight or knowledge is extracted.