Analytics: The Next Big Thing!

New technological evolutions such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, the internet of things and automation have proved to be catalysts for growth. However small business leaders have decided to concentrate most of their investments on data analytics.

Analytics is important for business for making good decisions. The practice of analytics is all about supporting decision making by providing the relevant facts that will allow one to make a better decision.

According to IDC’s infobrief “The Next Steps in Digital Transformation” 47% of surveyed entrepreneurial companies adopted business analytics or business intelligence software for data analytics.

Business Analytics is “the study of data through statistical and operations analysis, the formation of predictive models, application of optimization techniques, and the communication of these results to customers, business partners, and college executives.” Business Analytics requires quantitative methods and evidence-based data for business modeling and decision making.

Small business leaders have often felt left behind by the growing acceptance of analytics, fearing that their workforce, customer base, or operations were too small to justify the cost. Budgets are usually so tight that it’s difficult to take money from one department to pay for a new solution when ROI is not 100% predictable. The cost of implementing and maintaining technology, especially business intelligence analytics is high.

Implementing business analytics is not something a company can do overnight. However if company follows some best practices for business analytics they will get the levels of insights and become more successful. Here are few practices for Business Analytics which an organization must follow according to their needs:

1. Know the objective: Define your business use case and the goal ahead of time

2. Define the criteria for success and failure

3. Select methodology and be sure about internal and external factors

4. Validate models using predefined success and failure criteria

Importance of Analytics:

1. Business analytics is a tool to make a sound commercial decision. It can help improve profitability of the business, increase market share & revenue and provide better returns to a shareholder.

2. It facilitates better understanding of primary and secondary data that affects the operational efficiency.

3. It serves as a competitive advantage to companies. In this digital world making information available is easy but the important thing is how this information is utilized by the company to improve their decisions.

4. It helps to convert raw data into valuable information that can be presented as per the required format and used by decision makers.

5. It helps for analyzing business value Chain. Analytics will tell how the existing information is going to aid the business in finding out the gold mine that is the way to success for a company.

6. It helps to gain industry knowledge and know how the business will go about in near future and what is that the economy already has it on hands. That’s how one will avail the benefit before anyone else.

7. Data Analytics provides analyzed data that helps one in seeing opportunities before the time, that’s another way of unlocking more options

Data Analytics is on the uphill and there is a steady rise in the league of analysts, this is going to largely impact the business, sports and politics of the economy. Below are few ways in which data analytics will shape businessess:

1. New job Opportunity:

Data analysts are in demand now and organizations are expected to hire more data analysts in coming years. As this is a new profession that is coming in people are now making their career in this field. Businessmen are looking for analysts for their assistance to make raw data into information and use this information for making better decisions. Pipeline to the future for Data Analysts is bright as more and more startups are looking for data analysts, as people now understand the gist of it and what analytics can provide us with.

2. The Growing Need for Coordination of Analysts with IT

As the demand for data analytics is growing there has been pressure on IT to provide these analysts with proper infrastructure and tools on which they can work.By providing business users with leading-edge analytics tools allow them to create sophisticated analytics without requiring programming assistance from data scientists and without waiting for data from IT companies.

3. Predictive Analytics is mainstream in Marketing :

Marketers always try new innovative techniques to gain a competitive advantage and increase numbers. Data Analytics is one such innovation which marketers are using for improving their decision making process.

Today only 23% of the organization are using location intelligence for business decisions however in near future this percentage is going to change and increase. Analysts can provide businesses with better information which they can utilize for betterment and growth prospects of a company. A lot more is entering the field and there is so much to explore so if one wants to be ahead, this is the time to build in new strategies on the basis of Data Analytics and grab the open options