Business analytics is primarily working with data, studying the performance of a company. It is carried out by specially trained specialists – business analysts. Based on data analysis, they help managers identify business problems and find opportunities for its sustainable development. Through the recommendations of the business intelligence solutions provider, the company’s management receives up-to-date and reliable information about what is happening in the company and beyond. This approach helps to make informed and high-quality business decisions.
How business intelligence differs from business analysis
Experts are still arguing what business intelligence is: is it identical to business analysis or is it a separate area of knowledge. To understand this, let’s look at the main goals of business analysis and business intelligence.
Business analysis is the study of a company’s activities in a broad sense: analysis of an enterprise’s development strategy, its business processes, organizational structure and information systems park, designing and configuring the interaction of all this with the business environment and the external environment.
The main goal of business analysis is to develop and implement organizational changes that would allow the company to achieve its main goals in the best possible way.
The main goal of business intelligence is to support management decisions and organizational changes with high-quality, relevant and objective data.
Here are the three main tasks of business intelligence:
- Get data about the work of the company in the form of numbers
- Process and structure this data – make it suitable for further analysis
- To analyze the data – to find patterns in the activities of the enterprise and simulate forecasts of its development in certain conditions
Thus, business intelligence is a part of business analysis that is responsible for collecting, processing and analyzing data. It is the first and necessary step in effective organizational change management.
Which companies need business intelligence and why?
Business intelligence is essential for all companies that want to make quality management decisions. Only decisions that are based on facts can be qualitative. Business intelligence is responsible for collecting and processing these facts.
It is important not only to collect data on the activities of the enterprise, but also to prepare them for managers:
- Structure
- Analyze – identify trends and trends that affect factors
- Present the results of the analysis in a visual form
- Prepare recommendations on how to use this data to improve the company’s operations
What are the trends in business analytics?
Typically, directions in business intelligence are determined through data analysis methods: cluster analysis, correlation analysis, regression analysis, linear programming methods. In the Business Set, we defined the business intelligence subtypes a little differently.
We distinguish four areas of business intelligence, which often align with Business Analytics services to offer deeper insights and solutions. Each of them corresponds to one of the key elements of the control system. These elements are:
- Enterprise development strategy
- Business processes
- IT architecture
- Organizational-role structure
Summarize
- Business intelligence is a part of business analysis related to the performance of a company: with its help, data is received and processed, patterns are found, forecasts are made, and business decisions are made.
- All companies need business intelligence to make quality management decisions. Without analyst reports, managers will not see the full picture of what is happening in the company and beyond.
- The areas of business intelligence correspond to the elements of the management system: analytics for developing a company’s strategy, business process analytics, IT services and organizational structure analytics.
- A good business analyst should be able to identify company problems and opportunities, work with analysis methods and tools, and design and implement organizational changes. It is not necessary to hire a full-time business analyst – you can involve him once a year or quarterly.
