Data Analytics
Data Analytics
Data Analytics
The term “Data Analytics” describes a series of techniques aimed at extracting the relevant and valuable information from extensive and diverse
sets of data gathered from different sources and varying in sizes.
Data analytics techniques can reveal trends and metrics that would otherwise be lost in the mass of information. This information can then be
used to optimize processes to increase the overall efficiency of a business or system.
This data is analyzed and integrated into a bigger context to amplify business operation and make it as effective as possible.
Raw data is like a diamond in the rough. Data Mining takes the rough part, and then Data Analytics provides the polish. That's the general
description of what Big Data Analytics is doing.
For example, manufacturing companies often record the runtime, downtime, and work queue for various machines and then analyze the data to
better plan the workloads so the machines operate closer to peak capacity.
Data analytics can do much more than point out bottlenecks in production. Gaming companies use data analytics to set reward schedules for
players that keep the majority of players active in the game. Content companies use many of the same data analytics to keep you clicking,
watching, or re-organizing content to get another view or another click.
1. The first step is to determine the data requirements or how the data is grouped. Data may be separated by age, demographic, income, or gender.
Data values may be numerical or be divided by category.
2. The second step in data analytics is the process of collecting it. This can be done through a variety of sources such as computers, online
sources, cameras, environmental sources, or through personnel.
3. Once the data is collected, it must be organized so it can be analyzed. Organization may take place on a spreadsheet or other form of software
that can take statistical data.
4. The data is then cleaned up before analysis. This means it is scrubbed and checked to ensure there is no duplication or error, and that it is not
incomplete. This step helps correct any errors before it goes on to a data analyst to be analyzed.
Key Takeaways
Data analytics is the science of analyzing raw data in order to make conclusions about that information.
The techniques and processes of data analytics have been automated into mechanical processes and algorithms that work over raw data
for human consumption.
Data analytics help a business optimize its performance.
A company can also use data analytics to make better business decisions and help analyze customer trends and satisfaction, which can lead to
new—and better—products and services.
1. Descriptive analytics describes what has happened over a given period of time. Have the number of views gone up? Are sales stronger this
month than last?
2. Diagnostic analytics focuses more on why something happened. This involves more diverse data inputs and a bit of hypothesizing. Did the
weather affect beer sales? Did that latest marketing campaign impact sales?
3. Predictive analytics moves to what is likely going to happen in the near term. What happened to sales the last time we had a hot summer?
How many weather models predict a hot summer this year?
4. Prescriptive analytics suggests a course of action. If the likelihood of a hot summer is measured as an average of these five weather
models is above 58%, we should add an evening shift to the brewery and rent an additional tank to increase output.
Now let’s look at the fields where data analytics makes a critical contribution.
Recommendation Engines
Internal and external recommender engines and content aggregators are one of the purest representations of data analytics on a consumer level.
The mechanics behind it is simple:
1. The user has some preferences and requirements, noted by the system.
2. Web crawling or internal search tools for relevant matches based on user preferences.
3. If there is a match, it's included in the options.
There are two types of user preferences that affect the selection:
Direct feedback via ratings;
Indirect via interacting with the specific content from the various sites.
As a result of this, the user gets the content s/he will most likely interact with offered.
One of the most prominent examples of this approach is used by Amazon and Netflix search engines. Both of them are using extensive user
history and behavior (preferences, search queries, watch time) to calculate relevancy of the suggestions of the particular products.
Also, Google Search Engine personalization features enable more relevant results based on expressed user preferences.
Fraud Prevention
Powers of hindsight and foresight can help to expose fraudulent activities and provide a comprehensive picture.
The majority of fraudulent online activities are made with assistance of automated mechanisms. The thing with automated mechanisms is that
they work in patterns and patterns are something that can be extracted out of the data.
This information can be integrated into a fraud detecting system. Such approaches are used to filter out spam and detect unlawful activities with
doubtful accounts or treacherous intentions.
Price Optimization
One of the critical factors in maintaining competitiveness on the market in ecommerce and retail is having more attractive prices than the
competition.
In this case, the role of data analytics is simple - to watch the competition and adjust the prices of the product inventory accordingly.
The system is organized around a couple of mechanisms:
1. Crawler tool that checks the prices on the competitor's marketplaces;
2. Price comparison tool which includes additional fees such as shipping and taxes;
3. Price adjustment tool that automatically changes the cost of a particular product.
To manage discounts or special offer campaigns, one can also use these tools.
Data analytics underpins many quality control systems in the financial world, including the ever-popular Six Sigma program. If you aren’t
properly measuring something—whether it's your weight or the number of defects per million in a production line—it is nearly impossible to
optimize it.
Healthcare combines the use of high volumes of structured and unstructured data and uses data analytics to make quick decisions. Similarly, the
retail industry uses copious amounts of data to meet the ever-changing demands of shoppers. The information retailers collect and analyze can
help them identify trends, recommend products, and increase profits.
Business Analytics:
Business analytics (BA) is the iterative, methodical exploration of an organization's data, with an emphasis on statistical analysis. Business
analytics is used by companies that are committed to making data-driven decisions. Data-driven companies treat their data as a corporate asset
and actively look for ways to turn it into a competitive advantage. Successful business analytics depends on data quality, skilled analysts who
understand the technologies and the business, and an organizational commitment to using data to gain insights that inform business decisions.
Once the business goal of the analysis is determined, an analysis methodology is selected and data is acquired to support the analysis. Data
acquisition often involves extraction from one or more business systems, cleansing and integration into a single repository such as a data
warehouse or data mart. Initial analysis is typically performed against a smaller sample set of data. Analytic tools range from spreadsheets with
statistical functions to complex data mining and predictive modeling applications. As patterns and relationships in the data are uncovered, new
questions are asked and the analytic process iterates until the business goal is met. Deployment of predictive models involves scoring data
records -- typically in a database -- and using the scores to optimize real-time decisions within applications and business processes. BA also
supports tactical decision-making in response to unforeseen events. And, in many cases, the decision-making is automated to support real-time
responses.
BI technologies offer present (real-time), historical, and predictive views of internally structured data relating to all departments within an
organization, which exponentially enhances operational insight and improves the decision-making process.
Put simply: Business intelligence is the process of discovering valuable trends or patterns in data to make more efficient, accurate decisions
related to your business goals, aims, and strategies.
As pattern recognition is a decisive part of BI, artificial intelligence in business intelligence plays a pivotal role in the process. When approached
correctly, pattern recognition is one of the key hallmarks that distinguishes BI experts from BI amateurs. By helping users to discover integral
insights autonomously, AI technologies assist tremendously in pattern recognition, making the process more intuitive, more streamlined, and
ultimately – more accurate.
A host of business intelligence concepts are executed through intuitive, interactive tools and dashboards – a centralized space that provides the
ability to drill down into your data with ease. But more on that later.
Business Intelligence is the process comprising of technologies and strategies incorporated by the enterprise industries to analyze the existing
business data which provides past (historical), current and predictive events of the business operations. Business Analytics is the process of
technologies and strategies used to continue exploring and to extract the insights and performance from the past business information to drive
Following are the Difference between Business Intelligence and Business Analytics
1. Business Intelligence uses past and current data whereas Business Analytics uses past data to extract insights and run the business operations
2. Business Intelligence mostly concentrates on reporting the analyzed data whereas Business Analytics concentrates on multiple tools that
information management, enterprise applications and governance, risk and security compliances.
4. Business Intelligence is the way of analyzing the existing data whereas the Business Analytics will have Business Intelligence reports acts as
inputs for the analytics to process the extracted information in a more sophisticated way to visualize the analyzed data.
5. Business Intelligence uses statistical analysis, predictive analysis, and predictive modeling to set the current trends and figure out the reasons
for current outcomes or happenings whereas Business Analytics have no control over huge amounts of Data to retrieve, analyze, report and
6. Business Intelligence consists more as User Interface Dashboards to carry out the analysis and operations whereas Business Analytics has a
lot of tools to work upon and that also needs some software application knowledge to carry out the tasks to be done.
7. Business Intelligence gives insights or information about the data itself rather than making extra transformations or conversions to give data
insights and on the other side Business Analytics involves the way of problem-solving by enabling the technologies by transforming the raw
form of data into a meaningful way to convey the solution in an easy way.
8. Business Intelligence can be applied more to structured data from enterprise applications such as Financial Software Systems or Enterprise
Resource Planning (ERP) to get insight from the past financial information or from the past financial transactions and in the areas of supply
chain and operations. Business Analytics can be applied to both unstructured and semi-structured data by transforming them into some
9. Business Intelligence consumes the data in the same format to get insights out of it whereas Business Analytics transforms or breaks the
existing data into different forms or elements and studying them as a whole to get some insights out of it.
10. In Business Intelligence, the data can be produced in the form of Dashboards, reports or pivot tables for different users like executives,
managers and for analysts respectively whereas Business Analytics uses past Business Intelligence capabilities and information to help the
11. Business Intelligence is the content of data what you are having with you whereas Business Analytics is the way how you are using or
12. Business Intelligence is all about accessing the big data Business Analytics is the use of different latest technological methodologies to
13. Business Intelligence is used to run the businesses effectively whereas the Business Analytics is the way of changing the business to make it
14. As Business Intelligence being the subset of Business Analytics and the benefits of Business Analytics is causing BA to get more popular
and drawing attention from business users to get more useful things out of it.
15. Business Intelligence incorporates different tools and methodologies for use in the stages of data analysis in which the common types of tools
include, data reporting, Real-Time analysis, Mapping Analysis, Online Analytical Processing, Dashboarding etc., and Business Analytics
incorporates different stages and phases of analyses such as SWOT analysis, use case modelling, predictive modelling, data modelling user
stories, requirement analysis, functional requirement and non-functional requirement analysis etc.,
COMPARISON
Definition Analyses past and present to drive current Analyses past data to drive current business
business needs
Usage To run current business operations To change business operations and improve productivity
Ease of Operations For current business operations For future business operations
Tools SAP Business Objects, QlikSense, TIBCO, Word processing, Google docs, MS Visio, MS Office
Applications Apply to all large-scale companies to run current Applies to companies where future growth and
Field Comes under Business Analytics Contains Data warehouse, information management
etc.,
Real-time analysis is an emerging business tool that is changing the traditional ways enterprises do business. More and more organisations are
today exploiting business analytics to enable proactive decision making; in other words, they are switching from reacting to situations to
anticipating them.
One of the reasons for the flourishing of business analytics as a tool is that it can be applied in any industry where data is captured and
accessible. This data can be used for a variety of reasons, ranging from improving customer service as well improving the organisation’s
capability to predict fraud to offering valuable insights on online and digital information.
However business analytics is applied, the key outcome is the same: The solving of business problems using the relevant data and turning it into
insights, providing the enterprise with the knowledge it needs to proactively make decisions. In this way the enterprise will gain a competitive
advantage in the marketplace.
So what is business analytics? Essentially, business analytics is a 7-step process, outlined below.
The first stage in the business analytics process involves understanding what the business would like to improve on or the problem it wants
solved. Sometimes, the goal is broken down into smaller goals. Relevant data needed to solve these business goals are decided upon by the
business stakeholders, business users with the domain knowledge and the business analyst. At this stage, key questions such as, “what data is
available”, “how can we use it”, “do we have sufficient data” must be answered.
This stage involves cleaning the data, making computations for missing data, removing outliers, and transforming combinations of variables to
form new variables. Time series graphs are plotted as they are able to indicate any patterns or outliers. The removal of outliers from the dataset is
a very important task as outliers often affect the accuracy of the model if they are allowed to remain in the data set. As the saying goes: Garbage
in, garbage out (GIGO)!
Once the data has been cleaned, the analyst will try to make better sense of the data. The analyst will plot the data using scatter plots (to identify
possible correlation or non-linearity). He will visually check all possible slices of data and summarise the data using appropriate visualisation
and descriptive statistics (such as mean, standard deviation, range, mode, median) that will help provide a basic understanding of the data. At this
stage, the analyst is already looking for general patterns and actionable insights that can be derived to achieve the business goal.
At this stage, using statistical analysis methods such as correlation analysis and hypothesis testing, the analyst will find all factors that are related
to the target variable. The analyst will also perform simple regression analysis to see whether simple predictions can be made. In addition,
different groups are compared using different assumptions and these are tested using hypothesis testing. Often, it is at this stage that the data is
cut, sliced and diced and different comparisons are made while trying to derive actionable insights from the data.
Business analytics is about being proactive in decision making. At this stage, the analyst will model the data using predictive techniques that
include decision trees, neural networks and logistic regression. These techniques will uncover insights and patterns that highlight relationships
and ‘hidden evidences’ of the most influential variables. The analyst will then compare the predictive values with the actual values and compute
the predictive errors. Usually, several predictive models are ran and the best performing model selected based on model accuracy and outcomes.
At this stage the analyst will apply the predictive model coefficients and outcomes to run ‘what-if’ scenarios, using targets set by managers to
determine the best solution, with the given constraints and limitations. The analyst will select the optimal solution and model based on the lowest
error, management targets and his intuitive recognition of the model coefficients that are most aligned to the organisation’s strategic goal.
The analyst will then make decisions and take action based on the derived insights from the model and the organisational goals. An appropriate
period of time after this action has been taken, the outcome of the action is then measured.
Finally the results of the decision and action and the new insights derived from the model are recorded and updated into the database.
Information such as, ‘was the decision and action effective?’, ‘how did the treatment group compare with the control group?’ and ‘what was the
return on investment?’ are uploaded into the database. The result is an evolving database that is continuously updated as soon as new insights and
knowledge are derived.
Enhancing product value for total customer satisfaction is every company’s end goal. Target markets of different industries are dynamic with
their needs often changing according to society’s standards, issues, and fads. Knowing this, it is necessary to pull ahead of the competition
through unique innovation of ideas and products which would readily attract customers.
Before business analytics became the version we know today, businessmen had to make do with error-ridden analytic models which also
potentially damaged their plans. Since there was no constructive way to initialize organized data extraction, earlier versions of analytics did not
work well for its first generation of users. Traditional analytics teams had to dig hard and deep whenever they tried to gather information about
their consumers.
The data gathered is vital in statistical analysis, which in turn is essential for decision making. Decision making is the critical process which
makes or breaks a company’s goals. A slight mistake or an overlooked factor can delay a decision and may even put the business plan to a halt.
But how does analytics really work? What benefits can your company gain from it?
Analytics helps you measure how much of your mission statement is accomplished
A good business has its own missions statement, which is a set of values presented to their consumers either as a marketing plan or as basis of
checking in on their own development. Many businesses retain or promote employees using the values in their mission statements as guidelines.
Although this is helpful in determining who helps your company succeed, it isn’t strategic enough to leave it at that. Values must also be
quantified and expressed in a tangible way such as generating more profit for the company.
Quantified values can help the business improve their analytical process because it defines a common goal that should be followed by everyone
involved in the business. When these values are quantified, they will be evaluated by the employees in order to gain a clearer view of what is
expected from them. The more informed they are, the more productive they will become.
Accessibility to important data gives companies the power to make accurate decisions that could leverage businesses. Not only does it provide
useful data, it also allows companies to make decisions faster and more efficiently than before.
Companies can maximize the use of analytics when they share the discussion to as many employees as needed. Ever heard of the saying “two
heads are better than one?” A group is usually able to analyze data better and reach objective and informed decisions compared to just one
person.
Recent versions of analytics care about how you present your data to your analytics team. Comprehensive charts and graphs can be used to make
sure that decision-making is more interesting. Through visual representations of extracted data, relevant and useful insights can be extracted in a
much clearer way.
With analytics’ data visualization, information that you need about your market is there on your table, presented in a visually appealing and
organized manner.
Modern consumers change their mind easily as fads come and go, and they are easily swayed by “better” offers. Analytics can give you insight
about how your target market thinks and acts. You will be prompted to be dynamic at all times to serve the needs of your ever-changing
consumers.
Changes in the industry can occur at a very rapid pace. It is not unusual to see larger companies being devoured by promising start-ups. Protect
your business from unpredictability with analytics so that you may be able to innovate and pre-empt your products according to your consumer’s
needs and preferences.
Analytics Offer Efficiency
Efficiency for businesses has been improving since the advent of business analytics. With the ability to gather a large amount of data at a fast rate
and present it in a visually appealing way, companies can now formulate decisions to help achieve specified goals. Analytics encourages a
company culture of efficiency and teamwork where employees are able to express their insights and share in the decision-making process.
Analytics also provides companies with better choices on such matters like where to take the business as well as determining the steps needed to
achieve new goals.
Missing topics:
Characteristics of analytics.