Do you own a business and experience a ton of data every day from daily operations or transactions?
Want to drive powerful insights from your existing data?
Remember these terms—business intelligence and business analytics—because both can significantly help you achieve the ultimate business transformation utilizing data.
But do you have a basic idea about BI and Business Analytics?
If not, then it would be better to understand its core concept to find out which one is best for your company and business.
It is with you and others who need clarification about business intelligence services (BI) vs. business analytics (BA). Understanding its importance, we have created an article for you and others who have similar thoughts and want to adopt any of it for their business.
While going through this article, you’ll know what BI and BA are and the difference between business intelligence and business analytics.
Let’s start with some basic definitions!
Business Intelligence is a technical process that collects, stores, and delivers actionable insights businesses can leverage for sustainable growth.
It represents data in a user-friendly view through reports, dashboards, info graphs, and charts.
It happens with the help of tools called Business Intelligence (BI) Tools like Power BI, Tableau, etc, which help users access different types of data such as historical and current, third-party, and in-house data.
Users analyze this information to get insights into the business performance.
Here, you might have a question:
Descriptive analysis (analysis of historical and current data) is the secret behind business intelligence. It uses data from multiple sources, such as financial reports, financial surveys, ERP systems, CRMs, Operational Databases, Data Warehouses, and social media data.
The extracted information helps identify trends later and allows management to make informed decisions.
Company ‘X’ was losing customers due to dissatisfaction with the services and products.
So, later, the management of ‘X’ leveraged Business Intelligence to find out how many customers were unhappy with the services and track down the points where issues occurred.
After making the changes, they prevented the loss of customers and improved the service quality.
If you are also experiencing the same issue, you can also leverage it for your business with the help of a custom software development company dealing in Business Intelligence solutions.
The critical functionality of Business Intelligence is forecasting, so if we go for its real-life use cases, then it is helpful in –
Business Analytics is a subset of Business Intelligence. It is used to interpret historical data to identify trends and involves statistical methods, data mining, predictive analysis, and machine learning.
You might be interested in knowing how business analytics (BA) works.
It starts with data collection by setting the parameters to collect the relevant data. Once the datasets are created, they are processed with analytics software and tools to gain insights and reveal patterns.
It also includes uncovering the objective variable’s components via statistical methods. The next stage is to develop mathematical models to predict the outcomes.
Once it is done, optimization takes place to maximize the outcomes. The final stage is to make data-driven decisions and take actions based on them.
Company ‘Y’ is generating good profit by leveraging Business Analytics. With BA’s help, they found a seasonal trend in sales volume at specific times.
So, they created the campaign based on the demographics and users’ preferences. It resulted in great revenue generation.
Business Analytics is helpful in multiple ways, such as:
Now, you have complete, basic information about BI and BA. But still, we have not concluded, so it is crucial to determine the difference to clarify things.
Although we have covered the definition part in this blog earlier, in simple terms, it can be like this: Business Intelligence implementation refers to reporting historical data for monitoring business performance (Descriptive Analysis).
In contrast, Business Analytics refers to predicting future trends to make data-driven decisions (Predictive Analysis).
Business Intelligence (BI) insights are helpful for operational reporting and day-to-day decision-making processes. On the other hand, BA insights refer to strategic decision-making, guiding long-term planning, and resource allocation.
BI solutions are easy to implement, whereas Business Analytics is complex and requires analytical expertise.
Business intelligence (BI) monitors corporate performance, tracks key metrics, and creates regular reports. BA serves as a tool for strategic planning, identifying business opportunities, and streamlining company procedures.
BI uses internal data sources, transactional databases, and operational systems. Compared to it, BA involves integrating internal and external data sources such as social media and sensor-obtained data.
Business Intelligence is more user-friendly and requires less technical proficiency than BA platforms, which require data science expertise.
Business Intelligence is more flexible than Business Analytics as it responds to changing business needs.
BI offers well-defined tools and methodologies and is mature compared to BA (a relatively new field and still developing).
Business Intelligence (BI) and Business Analytics (BA) are both beneficial and right in their place, but it depends on your requirements. So, let’s have a look at it.
Business intelligence and business analytics are both fantastic for business growth. Both are important and offer multiple benefits, so deciding the best is pointless.
Descriptive analysis (BI) and predictive analysis (BA) are both important for a business. These things also depend on the size of the business or organization.
It is beneficial to start with Business Intelligence to improve operations, boost efficiency, and meet your business goals. Later, you can move on with business analytics to improve your business process.
Arka Softwares can make it easy for you if you need more clarification. As a leading Business Intelligence services provider, we can help solve complex data analytics and reporting challenges for your organization.
You can rely on us to get the best answers to your complex business intelligence and analytics challenges. It would be pleasant for us to hear from your side.
You can simply book a 30-minute consultation with our BI expert.