Scribd
Upload
2 views

BUS 312 Chapter 1 Notes

Chapter 1 provides definitions and insights into key concepts related to business analytics, including business value, processes, and the roles of business analysts and data scientists. It discusses the importance of transforming data into meaningful information and the various types of analytics used in marketing, finance, operations, and accounting. Additionally, it introduces the SOAR method for conducting effective data analysis and highlights the significance of data visualization in uncovering insights.

Uploaded by

natalie
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
2 views

BUS 312 Chapter 1 Notes

Chapter 1 provides definitions and insights into key concepts related to business analytics, including business value, processes, and the roles of business analysts and data scientists. It discusses the importance of transforming data into meaningful information and the various types of analytics used in marketing, finance, operations, and accounting. Additionally, it introduces the SOAR method for conducting effective data analysis and highlights the significance of data visualization in uncovering insights.

Uploaded by

natalie
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 3

​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Chapter 1 Notes

Definitions

1.1
●​ Business Value: all the items, events, and interactions that determine a company’s
financial health.
●​ Business Process: a coordinated, standardized set of activities conducted by both people
and equipment to accomplish a specific business task.
●​ Business Analyst (BA): a data specialist who curates and uses data to help an
organization make effective business decisions.
●​ Data Overload: access or exposure to too much data; prevents data from being properly
synthesized and interpreted.
●​ Analytics Mindset: the willingness and ability to specify which questions need to be
addressed, find and extract pertinent data that might address those questions, analyze
those data, and then report the results of business analytics to decision-makers.
1.2
●​ Data: raw numbers and facts that have little meaning on their own.
●​ Context: the setting, event, statement, or situation in which data can be more fully
understood and evaluated.
●​ Information: data organized in a way that is meaningful to the user in a given context.
●​ Knowledge: understanding or familiarity with information gained
●​ Decisions: conclusion reached after consideration of knowledge is considered
1.3
●​ Data Scientist: a data specialist who knows how to work with, manipulate, and
statistically test data.
1.4
●​ Marketing Analytics: business analytics to measure and improve a company’s marketing
performance; most important part is providing insights to customer performances/trends
●​ Financial Analytics: business analytics to measure, evaluate, and improve financial
performance; evaluates future investments like investments in new equipment, based on
risk and expected performance
●​ Operations Analytics: business analytics to measure and improve the efficiency and
effectiveness of a company’s operations; consists of all the actions needed to run the
company/generate income
●​ Accounting Analytics: business analytics to evaluate financial performance and to
address accounting questions; measures and records the marketing, financial, and
operations transactions anc communicates the outcome by reporting financial
performance
1.6
●​ Data Visualization: the graphic representation of data, often in the form of a graph,
chart, or other image.
●​ Exploratory Visualization: a graphical representation that is useful for uncovering
patterns and useful insights in the data, generally as part of descriptive or diagnostic
analytics.

1.1
●​ Management identifies the processes that create the most value and minimize the costs of
those processes.
●​ Positive: Vast amounts of data can help BA’s offer insight into the company’s challenges
●​ Negative: Vast amount of data can turn into data overload
●​ BA’s develop an analytics mindset to understand the questions their business is asking
and the nature/quality of the business’ data
●​ Businesses have processes, understanding and looking for ways to improve processes
1.2
●​ Information is data with context
●​ BA’s transform data into information by processing that data and combining it with
business context (ex: time of year, location, specific business need).
●​ 25 quintillion bytes of data are created each day and rate of data growth continues to
increase
●​
1.3
●​ Management: Decision-maker; needs knowledge and information to make decisions
●​ Business Analyst: Interpreter; the one that knows what data is needed and knows how to
communicate with decision maker and data scientist
●​ Data Scientist: Developer; gather and obtain the data
●​ BA’s analysts have the knowledge of data quality, statistical tools, and computer
programming; they bring data-derived information to decision makers
1.4
●​ Amazon uses marketing analytics to determine which products to offer, promote, and
the price to charge their customers
●​ American Airlines uses financial analytics to determine whether it should lease/buy
airplanes and whether to finance its business with debt or others
●​ Wayfair uses operations analytics to ensure they have sourced the right furniture items
from manufacturers to the warehouse and ship to customers
●​ KPMG uses accounting analytics to evaluate the companies they audit to find errors and
look for fraud
1.5
●​ SOAR Method
-​ Specify the question: ask a business a question that is answerable with data
-​ Obtain the data: gather applicable data and understand the qualities of the data
to see if they can help answer the business question
-​ Analyze the data: analyze the data through manipulation and statistical
techniques; descriptive; income statements/what happened in the past,
diagnostics; why did it happen, predictive; what is likely to happen in the future,
prescriptive; what actions should we take, adaptive; how does the system adapt to
changes
-​ Report the results: communicate the findings to the decision makers. Static
visualization: reports, graphs, tables. Dynamic visualizations: dashboards like
pivot tables
1.6
●​ Exploratory visualization can help reveal patterns in data; useful for communicating the
findings to stakeholders
●​ Exploratory visualizations are used during the Analyze the data step to explore and
understand the data
●​ Example: When performing analytics to see what happened, a business analyst can graph
the data to get a better understanding of what occurred

You might also like