The Definition of Business

Analytics
Business analytics is the process of transforming data into insights to
improve business decisions. Data management, data visualization, predictive
modeling, data mining, forecasting simulation, and optimization are some of
the tools used to create insights from data.
Yet, while business analytics leans heavily on statistical, quantitative, and
operational analysis, developing data visualizations to present your findings
and shape business decisions is the end result.
• Business analytics (BA) involves collecting, analyzing, and interpreting large
amounts of data to develop insights that inform business decisions and
strategies.
• BA helps organizations better understand their customers, products, and
business operations.
• Business analytics is used to collect and analyze a lot of data.
• Business intelligence is used to help interpret and present data.
• Together, BA and BI help improve business performance using the insights
gained from data analysis.

• At its core, business analytics involves a combination of the following:

• identifying new patterns and relationships with data mining;
• using quantitative and statistical analysis to design business models;
• conducting A/B and multi-variable testing based on findings;
• forecasting future business needs, performance, and industry trends with
predictive modeling; and
• communicating your findings in easy-to-digest reports to colleagues,
management, and customers.
Business Intelligence vs. Data Analytics vs. Data Science
For professionals using AI, identifying patterns isn’t quite as simple as applying a formula and
reading the results. Instead, the process entails:
aggregating the data, as more than one structured and unstructured source may be involved;
data mining, or classifying the data and identifying trends;
forecasting, or using the results of data mining to influence future business decisions; and
data visualization, or the presentation of data mining and forecasting into an accessible format
that non-technical professionals can understand.
No single professional goes through all of these tasks. Rather, they’re divided up amongst three
distinct roles that, while many use their titles interchangeably, have separate responsibilities.
Aggregation frequently falls on business intelligence professionals, who examine a multitude
of data sources and then clean it up and package it for analysis. Generally, business
intelligence professionals spend their days monitoring the amount and variety of data
coming in and organize it into reports or dashboards.
The business analytics professional—sometimes called a data analyst—then approaches the data
from a higher level, examining it for patterns, making it usable, creating models from it, and
finding ways in which these numbers and strings of text can improve department or business
processes or make future financial or performance projections.
The data scientist, meanwhile, is the senior-most member of this group. This professional often
acts like an investigator, searching for ways business processes could be improved and then
backing up any proposals or solutions with data. This role, requiring more technical and
computer-science know-how, involves manipulating and creating scenarios based on data
and using these insights to develop supporting visualizations.
 Types of business analytics

There are different types of business analytics

• Descriptive analytics is an analysis of historical data to summarize
trends and patterns. For example, you might use it to look at past
sales performance and see the trends over time.
• Diagnostic analytics is also an analysis of historical data, but its
purpose is to identify the root causes of events or performance
issues. For example, if you find that sales performance dipped in
the past, then you’ll want to look into why that happened.
• Predictive analytics analyzes historical data to forecast future
outcomes and spot any potential opportunities or risks. So, if
you’re looking at that sales performance data, you can predict
seasonal dips in sales.
• Prescriptive analytics takes the data from predictive models and
helps you find recommended courses of action. If you anticipate a
dip in sales around the holidays, alert the sales team so they can
adjust revenue goals for the quarter.
 Essentials of Business Analytics
1. Data collection and management: The first step in business analytics is collecting
and managing data from various sources, such as customer databases, sales
records, and social media platforms.
2. Data analysis: Once the data is collected and managed, it needs to be analyzed to
gain insights. This involves using statistical methods and software tools to identify
patterns, trends, and relationships in the data.
3. Data visualization: After the data is analyzed, it needs to be presented in a
meaningful way. Data visualization techniques, such as charts, graphs, and
dashboards, can help communicate insights effectively.
4. Predictive modeling: Predictive modeling is a technique that uses statistical
algorithms and machine learning to make predictions about future events or trends
based on past data.
5. Business intelligence: Business intelligence tools provide a way to extract insights
and analyze data from multiple sources in real-time, allowing businesses to make
informed decisions quickly.
6. Data-driven decision making: Ultimately, the goal of business analytics is to enable
data-driven decision making. By using data to inform business decisions, companies
can optimize their operations, increase efficiency, and achieve their goals more
effectively.
 Elements of business analytics
• Descriptive analytics: This element involves analyzing past data to understand
what happened and why it happened. It includes techniques such as data mining,
aggregation, and visualization.
• Diagnostic analytics: This element involves analyzing past data to identify the
causes of specific events or outcomes. It includes techniques such as root cause
analysis and correlation analysis.
• Predictive analytics: This element involves using past data to make predictions
about future events or outcomes. It includes techniques such as regression
analysis and time-series forecasting.
• Prescriptive analytics: This element involves using data and models to suggest
actions that can improve business outcomes. It includes techniques such as
optimization and simulation.
• Data management: This element involves collecting, cleaning, and storing data in
a way that facilitates analysis. It includes techniques such as data integration and
data governance.
• Data visualization: This element involves presenting data in a visual format that
helps stakeholders understand and interpret the insights derived from analysis. It
includes techniques such as charts, graphs, and dashboards.
• Business intelligence: This element involves using technology and software to
automate data collection, analysis, and reporting, enabling real-time insights and
 Importance of business analytics
• Data-driven decision-making: Business analytics provides organizations with the
tools and insights needed to make data-driven decisions. By using data to inform
decision-making, organizations can optimize their operations, improve efficiency,
and achieve their goals more effectively.
• Competitive advantage: Business analytics enables organizations to gain a
competitive advantage by identifying opportunities and risks in the market,
predicting customer behavior, and optimizing their operations. This can help
businesses stay ahead of the competition and drive growth.
• Improved performance: By analyzing data and identifying areas for improvement,
organizations can optimize their operations and improve performance. This can
lead to increased efficiency, cost savings, and higher profits.
• Better customer insights: Business analytics can help organizations better
understand their customers by analyzing customer behavior, preferences, and
trends. This can help businesses tailor their products and services to meet
customer needs and increase customer satisfaction.
• Risk management: Business analytics can help organizations identify and mitigate
risks by analyzing data and predicting potential outcomes. This can help businesses
make more informed decisions and reduce the likelihood of negative
consequences.
 Business Analytics Examples and Tools
• Many business analytics and business intelligence tools can automate
advanced data analytics tasks. Here are a few examples of commercial
business analytics software:
• Knime Analytics Platform includes machine learning and high-
performance data pipelining
• Dundas Business Intelligence has automated trend forecasting and an
intuitive interface
• Qlik's QlikView has data visualization and automated data association
features
• Sisense is renowned for its data warehousing and dynamic text-analysis
capabilities
• Splunk comes with a user-friendly interface and data visualization
capabilities
• Tableau offers sophisticated capabilities for natural language
processing and unstructured text analysis.
• Tibco Spotfire is an automated statistical and unstructured text analysis
 Business Analytics Tools Used by Companies Today
• 1. Excel
• Amongst all the analytical tools available in the market, Excel is still the most versatile tool used for business analytics. It is one of the cheapest, most
accessible, and easiest to use. With powerful features like form creation, PivotTable, VBA, etc, it can work with small as well as large amounts of data.
Excel is one of the easiest tools to pick up, you will even find professionals from any background excelling in Excel. Don’t forget to check-out the
course Excel Course and Training – Self Paced
• 2. SAS
• SAS is a robust, easy to learn, and versatile tool that finds wide usage in the analytics industry. Loaded with a range of statistical tools, SAS is often
suitable for any large organization’s data mining process. It uses ML, AI, and automation to meet Business Analytics requirements by simplifying the
process of analyzing large sets of data in less time. To gain the best use for SAS analytics SAS has added more modules for IoT, SAS anti-money
laundering, Data mining, data visualization, text analytics, forecasting, SAS analytics pro, and many more.
• 3. Microsoft Power BI
• Microsoft Power BI is one of the most popular business analytics tools which excels in data visualization and helps users create interactive user
reports. It offers data warehousing capabilities including data preparation, and data discovery, and allows users to identify real-time trends and
deliver reports. Besides providing a desktop-based interface, the “Power BI Desktop”, it also provides cloud-based business services, known
as “Power BI Services”, which can be accessed from almost anywhere.
• 4. Tableau
• Tableau is another powerful Analytics tool that can connect to any data source and create customizable data visualizations, maps, and dashboards. Its
powerful data discovery and data-cleaning function allow users to perform analytical functions in seconds. It is easy to learn, robust, and does not
include any complex scripting. Tableau’s statistical functions help users to perform in-depth analyses and predict patterns based on current and
historical data.
• 5. Qlik Sense
• Qlik Sense, created by Qlik is another powerful next-generation analytics tool that allows users to create visualizations, charts, interactive dashboards,
and many more. It is a cloud-based Analytics software that uses Machine Learning and sophisticated Artificial Intelligence to improve the quality of
data mining and data processing. It provides analytics capabilities for all types of users and is flexible across public, private, and hybrid clouds.
• 6. Splunk
• Splunk is another widely used business analytics tool that was launched by Splunk Technology, a company from San Fransisco. Splunk is used for
processing machine log file data, capturing, indexing, and finding correlations between real-time data. This data is used for generating graphs,
reports, dashboards, etc. Splunk is generally used in small and medium-scale industries.
• 7. MicroStrategy
• MicroStrategy is a top business analytics tool that offers data discovery, data visualizations, and web services. It combines a range of business
analysis techniques that hosts other sources to fetch data for analysis and also allows the user to create and share reports from any location or
device. It also allows the smooth processing of unstructured text data. Operating Microstrategy requires just a basic understanding of programming,
data analysis, and SQL.
• 8. Sisense
• Sisense is a business analytics software that allows users to perform extensive analysis and visualization of complex and enormous amounts of data. It
is used by both small businesses as well as enterprise-level businesses. It helps the users bring data from a wide variety of sources, combine multiple
 advanced analytics?
• Advanced analytics refers to the use of advanced
quantitative and statistical techniques to analyze
and interpret data. It goes beyond traditional
business analytics, which typically focuses on
descriptive analytics, such as summarizing data and
identifying trends.
• Advanced analytics techniques are used to gain
deeper insights into data and enable more accurate
predictions and forecasts. They can be used to solve
complex business problems, identify opportunities
for growth, and optimize business operations.
 Some common advanced analytics
techniques include:
• Predictive analytics: Predictive analytics uses statistical algorithms and machine
learning models to analyze historical data and make predictions about future
events or trends.
• Prescriptive analytics: Prescriptive analytics uses mathematical optimization
and simulation techniques to identify the best course of action based on
multiple scenarios and constraints.
• Text analytics: Text analytics uses natural language processing (NLP) techniques
to analyze unstructured text data and identify patterns, relationships, and
sentiment.
• Machine learning: Machine learning uses algorithms to analyze data and
identify patterns and relationships that can be used to make predictions or
automate decision-making processes.
• Data mining: Data mining uses statistical techniques and machine learning
algorithms to analyze large datasets and identify patterns and relationships.
• Network analytics: Network analytics uses graph theory and social network
analysis techniques to analyze relationships between nodes in a network and
identify key influencers and communities.
 What is web analytics?
• Web analytics is the process of analyzing the behavior of visitors
to a website. This involves tracking, reviewing and reporting data
to measure web activity, including the use of a website and its
components, such as webpages, images and videos.
• Data collected through web analytics may include traffic sources,
referring sites, page views, paths taken and conversion rates.
The compiled data often forms a part of customer relationship
management analytics (CRM analytics) to facilitate and
streamline better business decisions.
• Web analytics enables a business to retain customers, attract
more visitors and increase the dollar volume each customer
spends.
• The two main categories of web analytics are off-site web
analytics and on-site web analytics.
 Analytics can help in the following ways:
• Determine the likelihood that a given customer will repurchase a
product after purchasing it in the past.
• Personalize the site to customers who visit it repeatedly.
• Monitor the amount of money individual customers or specific
groups of customers spend.
• Observe the geographic regions from which the most and the least
customers visit the site and purchase specific products.
• Predict which products customers are most and least likely to buy in
the future.
The objective of web analytics is to serve as a business metric for promoting specific
products to the customers who are most likely to buy them and to determine
which products a specific customer is most likely to purchase. This can help
improve the ratio of revenue to marketing costs.
In addition to these features, web analytics may track the click through and drilldown
behavior of customers within a website, determine the sites from which customers
most often arrive, and communicate with browsers to track and analyze online
behavior. The results of web analytics are provided in the form of tables, charts
and graphs.
 Benefits of business analytics

1. Improve operational efficiency through their

daily activities.
2. Assist businesses to understand their
customers more precisely.
3. Business uses data visualization to offer
projections for future outcomes.
4. These insights help in decision making and
planning for the future.
5. Business analytics measures performance and
drives growth.
6. Discover hidden trends, generate leads, and
 DATA VISUALISATION

• Data visualization is the graphical representation of

information and data. By using v
isual elements like charts, graphs, and maps, data
visualization tools provide an accessible way to see and
understand trends, outliers, and patterns in data.
• In the world of Big Data, data visualization tools and
technologies are essential to analyze massive amounts of
information and make data-driven decisions.
• Something as simple as presenting data in graphic format
may seem to have no downsides.
• But sometimes data can be misrepresented or misinterpreted
when placed in the wrong style of data visualization.
• When choosing to create a data visualization, it’s best to keep
both the advantages and disadvantages in mind.
 Advantages
• Our eyes are drawn to colors and patterns. We can quickly
identify red from blue, and squares from circles. Our culture
is visual, including everything from art and advertisements to
TV and movies. Data visualization is another form of visual art
that grabs our interest and keeps our eyes on the message.
When we see a chart, we quickly see trends and outliers.
• It’s storytelling with a purpose. If you’ve ever stared at a
massive spreadsheet of data and couldn’t see a trend, you
know how much more effective a visualization can be.
• Some other advantages of data visualization include:
• Easily sharing information.
• Interactively explore opportunities.
• Visualize patterns and relationships.
 Disadvantages

• While there are many advantages, some of the

disadvantages may seem less obvious. For example,
when viewing a visualization with many different
datapoints, it’s easy to make an inaccurate
assumption. Or sometimes the visualization is just
designed wrong so that it’s biased or confusing.
• Some other disadvantages include:
• Biased or inaccurate information.
• Correlation doesn’t always mean causation.
• Core messages can get lost in translation.
 NEW DIRECTION IN DV

• Data visualizations make it possible for you to

reap the rewards of data-driven decision
making and showcase your expertise.
 GIS- Geographic Information System

• GIS, or geographic information systems, are

computer-based tools used to store, visualize,
analyze, and interpret geographic data.
Geographic data (also called spatial, or
geospatial data) identifies the geographic
location of features.
• These data include anything that can be
associated with a location on the globe, or
more simply anything that can be mapped.
 Pieces of GIS

• People: People use GIS to answer specific

data-related questions. People collect data,
develop procedures, identify research
questions and define analysis tasks to run in
GIS. In public health, people use GIS to explore
a variety of topics. For example, researchers at
CDC have used GIS to identify how to target
polio immunization campaigns in
geographically isolated locations.
• Data: There are two main GIS types: vector data and raster data.
• – Vector data includes spatial features (points, lines, and polygons)
and attributes about that data (descriptive information).
• – Raster data are stored electronic images (e.g., pictures taken as
an aerial photograph or satellite images).
• Analysis is the process of using spatial data to answer questions.
There are many different analysis techniques.
• Hardware: GIS software is run on computers. Memory and
computing power are important because spatial data includes
many attributes making it very large.
• Software: Geographic Information Systems require specialized
software. The most commonly used GIS software at CDC/ATSDR
include ArcGIS and QGIS. These types of programs can be used in
conjunction with other types of software such as databases,
statistical packages, or programming languages to increase
functionality.
Pieces of GIS
 How is GIS used?

• Hundreds of thousands of organizations in

virtually every field are using GIS to make
maps that communicate, perform analysis,
share information, and solve complex
problems around the world. This is changing
the way the world works.
 How does GIS work?

• GIS technology applies geographic science

with tools for understanding and
collaboration.
• It helps people reach a common goal: to gain
actionable intelligence from all types of data.
 GIS Vs GPS
• GIS
• • Geographic Information system is a computer - based tool for
managing a large amount of data collected for a given geographic
region through remote sensing. GPS and other sources.
• •The geographic information system is a combination of computer
hardware, software, geographic data, and the personal.
• GPS
• • Global position system technology has tremendous applications
in every - thing from mobile phones, watches, bulldozers, shipping
containers and ATMs.
• • The main purpose of GPS is to help in providing accurate
transport data. It helps in military searches and rescue in wars. It
can work as a reliable tourist guide.