What is Business Analytics and What is its Practical Application in Business and Management?
Business Analytics is the process of deriving insights from data by using a combination of technologies, skills and industry best practices to determine future business planning. With increasing amounts of data, organizations are adopting business analytics to form data driven strategies for business growth and leveraging for competitive advantage.
Business analytics is broadly divided into two main categories - business intelligence and statistical analysis. Business Intelligence involves analyzing past data to judge how a particular department or an employee has performed over time. Statistical analysis goes much deeper. It involves deriving insights from historical data by using statistical algorithms and forecasting future performance of a product or a service. It involves using predictive analytics, cluster analytics and so various statistical tools and methodologies.
The scope of business analytics is equal to the growth of data. The more the data, the more is the adoption of business analytics becomes mainstream. Nonetheless, business analytics is not something new. It has been in existence for a long time. But the current accumulation and proliferation of data is the reason why business analytics is thriving at this era more than ever as a field of endeavor. This trend is likely to continue as the amount of data generated by businesses and organization certainly will not decline. In fact, we can confidently say that business data is likely to multiply greatly in the years coming, with the current movement of work trends towards automation.
Business analytics contemplates huge amounts of historical data, revolutionizes business, generates new business models, facilitates innovation and enables delivery of exceptional results that takes the business to a whole new level. BA is also very helpful to organizations of any type as it helps it take hold of past data, and transform it into relevant information by offering futuristic insights on how to serve the customer more effectively and efficiently.
Business analytics has quite a large – and I’ll say gratifying scope. It requires the practitioner to have skills in quantitative and qualitative analysis, various statistical methods, business methods, logical thinking, big data, management, and the several tools required to understand available data towards a sound business decision. Close observation of BA is a perfect blend of IT, management, analytics, modern tools and software. This blend is perfect for engineering manifold organizational growth, hence the demand for BA professionals is ever growing.
One of the most pervasive application of business analytics is its wide use by credit card companies to prevent fraudulent activities. Several sectors like e-commerce, telecommunications, banking and related sectors, also compelled to adopt and implement business analytics are also reaping huge benefits, thereby encouraging its much faster pace of adoption, growth and wider scope.
Arming yourself therefore with Business Analytics skills and certification would go a long way to increase your demand, visibility and adaptability across a broad spectrum of industry, as all businesses and organizations have a place of relevance for the business analyst. For the entrepreneur and management staff, business analysis would reduce the risk of faulty decision making by arming you with the data and information to always come out of the boardroom smelling like roses.
I hope this helps.