Wednesday 16 May 2018

Business Intelligence vs Business Analytics

Data is generated from a multitude of channels and to derive insights from them for the benefit of the business, business intelligence and business analytics play a crucial role. These are not new approaches that businesses adopt, but they surely are growing fast to meet all business challenges. They help businesses in analyzing data for effective decision-making processes, and also guiding various other strategies related to customer care, research, marketing, etc. While both use data analysis to improve the efficiency and viability of the business, these two processes are quite different. To help you understand clearly, we have described some of the important differences between these two:-



Difference in terms

Business intelligence (BI) includes practices, technology, architecture, strategies, etc. used by businesses to collect, analyze, and transform raw data into valuable and crucial business information to aid in taking better informed decisions. It supports in identifying new business opportunities, increasing its overall current operational efficiency, measuring and improving performance, etc. BI process is vast and involves data collection and mining, online analytical processing, querying, reporting, etc.

In Business Analytics (BA), with the employment of various statistical and quantitative techniques to analyze and maintain data and present information, businesses are able to improve their productivity and performance. Business analytics are of three types: descriptive (analyze and interpret historical data), predictive (analyze current and historical data), and prescriptive analytics (includes both predictive and descriptive analytics).


Difference on the basis of time

Business Intelligence doesn't dig into too much of why's or predict future, but they just list out both the past and current data and big trends to drive current business needs. This past and current data holds utmost importance as it helps in enabling informed decision-making, problem identification, and solutions, which further results in increasing operational efficiency and maintaining higher productivity of a business.

On the other hand, Business analytics uses historical data or past business performances from many source systems and attempts in predicting what will happen in the future. Business analytics helps in moving forward and predicting in a smarter way.

Difference on the basis of Tools 

SAP, IBM, Cognos, TIBCO, PowerBI, Microstrategy, QlikView, etc. are some of the most popular BI tools that help businesses to analyze the data, prepare and present their reports in easy and understandable format. These tools help business users to create actionable information, respond to various challenges, make innovative decisions, create intelligent dashboards, collect powerful data, cost reductions, access data in real-time, etc.

Introduction of new Business Analytics tools and software, with the use of statistical functions, mathematical figures, data mining, etc. help in determining past business trends which drives future markets and also allows businesses to be prepared for any adverse situations in the future. Some of the most popular BA tools are Tableau, SAS, Excel, Splunk, RapidMiner, Open Refine, Jaspersoft, etc.

Difference on the basis of benefits 

Business Intelligence

Retaining a valuable customer is very important to increase sales and therefore, business productivity. It helps organizations keep abreast of the latest sales trends by keeping tracks of their valuable customers' preferences and buying habits, promoting products through discounts and offers, maintaining effective communications with them, etc.
By monitoring market trends to determine customer preferences, businesses use BI to maximize their marketing efforts by prioritizing campaigns, promotions, analyzing campaigning results, engaging in social media, etc. which enables them to make best marketing decisions and strategies that will eventually lead to better ROI.
It helps businesses in making complicated decisions in a real-time with the information they receive and this is because of the involvement of powerful elements in it such as ad-hoc reporting, predictive analytics, mobile business intelligence, application integration, etc. Also, BI helps in providing various tools to business users that helps in analyzing, tracking and maintaining data to better understand operations and thus, make better decisions.
It helps to increase business productivity and growth by increasing operational efficiency, measuring company’s progress and performance across several key sectors such as cost, time, resources, scope, quality, etc. diagnosing and solving various problems before they turn into bigger risks or threats, organizing and managing all the data including the hidden or lost ones, gaining competitive advantage over business rivals, collaboration with other businesses through data sharing, etc.

Business Analytics

It helps in maximizing customer value for businesses by identifying repeat customers, and also providing ways to optimize marketing investment
BA helps companies to make smart decisions in a short period of time, which is important for a business to stay ahead of a competition and increase its productivity. It provides faster and greater insight of data and trends with the help of data visualization, including charts, graphs and visual aids, etc. and therefore, leads to faster decision-making.
Businesses can explore historical data using BA software and techniques. With predictive analysis, they can predict and be prepared for future problems or challenges. Also, staying abreast of the latest forecasts can give rise to innovative ideas, services, and information for promoting company’s growth.
Many organizations that use business analytics can gain and maintain a competitive advantage because of their advanced yet effective database management processes and techniques, integration and analysis of business data into valuable information or strategies, efficient tools for presenting and sharing data within their businesses and exploring new and useful data for better outcomes, etc.
 
Difference on the basis of users

Industries that are using Business Intelligence include oil industry for marketing and reducing costs;  retail industry to reduce theft by tracking products quantity; apparel industry to track the latest trends and survey competitors with the help of visualization tools;  food industry to maintain sustainability, equipment efficiency, etc.  libraries to manage their resources.

Business Analytics are used in financial markets including investment banking, financial planning, budgeting, forecasting, etc. mining sites, manufacturing for measuring target performance, supply chain management; CRM to boost relationship with customers; HR for finding candidate’s  or employee’s information; marketing to analyze trends, appeal customers through advertising techniques, etc; healthcare sectors, E-commerce, etc.



Both BI and BA are widely used by businesses. Despite their differences, they have the same objective of providing businesses with effective methods and tools to use data and also support decisions that further help in their growth and development.

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