Your company collects a massive amount of data in various forms every day. To identify business problems, make the right decisions, and boost your profitability, you need tools and strategies that can effectively convert the data pool into actionable insights. Business intelligence and business analytics are excellent data management solutions that you can use to understand recent and historical data and derive actionable insights.
Most people tend to use the two terms interchangeably. However, business intelligence and analytics have different objectives and areas of application. When combined and used together effectively, the two complement each other and maximize your efforts to achieve your business goals.
What Is Business Intelligence (BI)?
True to its name, BI essentially involves the use of business data to make informed decisions. This encompasses observing, amassing, and communicating the information for interpretation. BI will help you filter through your current chunks of data to decipher relevant patterns and trends to make better choices regarding the current and future operations.
Most companies rely on business intelligence analysts to handle this process. These experts work alongside information scientists to analyze the collected data, decipher the patterns, and communicate effectively with the company's relevant individuals on implementation.
Depending on your company's section and your industry of specialization, business intelligence can be applied by your company's research analysts, computer systems analysts, and financial analysts.
The overall business intelligence strategy and the respective analysts responsible for steering the field allow for collecting and interpreting raw data. This way, companies can monitor information in real-time and make quick and informed choices in the present.
What Does Business Analytics Entail?
The business analytics (BA) strategy facilitates the utilization of business intelligence to its optimal potential. It does this by interpreting data to predict future patterns based on past and current data. The approach is ideal for entities that seek to change or transform their current operations and start making informed, futuristic decisions.
You can use this approach to strategize, identify any sales and marketing opportunities, enhance your relationships with clients, decrease threats, and indicate potential risks effectively. These actions will be based on evaluations of previous events' causes and the likelihood of a similar thing occurring again.
The process is vital to your business. It aids your efforts to mine information, statistically scrutinizes different occurrences and their respective causes, review and test previously-made decisions, and conduct predictive forecasting. The approach offers predictive models that simplify your strategy creation. You'll not be affected by the numerous industry changes; rather, you'll continue operating proactively according to insights that define future outcomes.
Business Intelligence vs Business Analytics
The primary distinguishing factor between business intelligence and analytics is the respective questions each concept seeks to answer.
Business Intelligence Entails Descriptive Analytics
The BI strategy prioritizes descriptive analytics. This means that it offers summaries of both the present and historical data to show what's currently taking place and what happened. In essence, the concept answers the questions "how" and "what" to allow companies to replicate whatever works well and make relevant changes to ineffective strategies.
Business Analytics Is Centered On Predictive Analytics
On the other hand, business analytics (BA) entails predictive analytics. Here, the analysts mine data and also use machine learning and modeling to predict future outcomes. This concept essentially answers the vital question "why" to make more informed predictions on future events or occurrences. Through business analytics, entrepreneurs and company executives can easily anticipate developments and make the relevant changes.
Real-World Application of BA & BI
The distinction between the two can be best expressed through real-world applications of the two concepts. For example, assuming you own an online store that sells homemade jewelry.
Through business intelligence, you'll gain useful reports on both the current and past state of your company.
BI lets you know whether your blue feather earrings' sales have spiked in San Francisco in the past thirty days. You'll easily determine the number of blue feather earrings to produce to meet demand with this knowledge.
On the other hand, business analytics will ask why there was a sales spike in blue feather earrings in San Francisco. To get the right answers, you mine your company data and learn that most of the traffic resulted from a post by a local fashion blogger who purchased your earrings and posted their review.
You can opt to send complimentary products to several other fashion bloggers in other states with this insight. Since you already have the previous sales data, you can easily anticipate the number of products you'll manufacture. You'll also estimate the necessary supplies to meet the demand if each blogger posts about your blue feather earrings.
Why You Need a Business Analyst
Business analysts are valuable for any business. They can help you make viable tweaks to improve your operations and meet your company goals. Here are more benefits of working with an outside analyst:
Increased ROI – Business analysts will help you optimize the benefit of a particular investment while also minimize the cost of implementation by identifying more cost-efficient tools and solutions. Ultimately, this will increase your ROI.
A higher success rate – Handling a project with a business analyst's guidance could lower the chances of project failure. These experts will always keep things on track and ensure the manager is leading the right project to achieve the company goals.
Reduced expenses – A considerable part of your business analyst's job involves implementing cost-effective solutions and cutting on project rework, requirements churn, and underutilized functionality.
Stakeholder collaboration – Requirement errors are among the leading causes of rework, leading to wasted project spending. Business analysts collaborate with stakeholders to reduce these reworks and determine the correct requirements.
Are you looking for an experienced business intelligence and analytics agency to help you achieve your company goals? Search no more. Magnataur is here to address your BI and BA needs, ensuring you achieve enterprise quality processes, efficient program management, and informed decisions.
Start a conversation with us today, and we'll begin finding a solution for your business needs.