Project management Business Analytics – Knowing your business future

Business Analytics? What is it? What is its applicability? Learn how data can foresee the future with Business Analytics. Check it out now!

Due to the rapid evolution of information systems technology in various branches of society, we have observed a current market with a much more complex business environment. Innovation in information processes has become increasingly critical to the success of companies, and these processes basically boil down to the enhancement of raw data in information.

We have already talked about Business Intelligence in “BI – Transforming Data in Intelligence” (link) and today we will talk about Business Analytics (BA). In short, both technologies help us in converting data into knowledge, but ..

What is Business Analytics?

It is a set of technologies capable of extracting what is really relevant to the company, and should act as a compass for the company to measure risks and opportunities, and predict results. The Business Analytics is based on descriptive, predictive or prescriptive data analysis.

It is used for existing data to provide the knowledge needed to solve current problems and opportunities, predict future problems and opportunities, and how to deal with current and future problems and opportunities that arise from a action plan. It also enables us to discover the current opportunities and future trends of customers regarding their product / service.

This technology methodically analyzes the data of an organization in an iterative or repetitive way to obtain new perceptions and understanding of business performance emphasizing the statistical analysis. The study of these data enables companies to answer questions such as “What is happening?”, “Why is it happening?” And “What is going to happen?”.

Data analyzes can be classified as descriptive, predictive or prescriptive. Let’s go to them:

Descriptive data analysis involves gathering, organizing, tabulating, and describing data. It is commonly called “reporting” for generating reports, and it helps us answer the “what’s going on?” And “why is it?” questions.

Predictive analysis goes beyond the description of data characteristics through reporting, it uses such data and “old” reports to obtain patterns in an attempt to “predict” the future. It enables us to discover associations between different variables and to confront them in order to predict the possibility and probability of a “phenomenon” occurring on the basis of these relations.

While prescriptive analysis suggests a course of action, as a physician prescribes a medicine, it helps us discover a plan of action to heal problems or provide a better use of the opportunities. It is used to analyze variables and suggests a plan to control them.

Nowadays organizations that only use Business Intelligence techniques may end up becoming less competitive than those using Business Analytics tools to glimpse the future.

Analysis of data from different types of dashboards? Yes, we have in the new version Scriptcase 9, come check it out!