BUSINESS ANALYTICS: 

 

HISTORY

Analytics have been used in business since the management exercises were put into consideration by Frederick Winslow Taylor in the late 19^th century. But analytics began to command more attention in the late 1960s when computer were used in decision support systems. Since then, analytics have changed and formed with development of Enterprise Resources Planning(ERP) system, data warehouse and other software tools and processes. In later years the Business Analytics have exploded with the introduction of computers. This change has brought analytics to a whole new level and has brought about endless possibilities.

WHAT IS BUSINESS ANALYTICS?

Business Analytics refers to the skills, technologies and practices for continuous iterative exploration and investigation of past business performance to gain insight and drive business planning. Business Analytics focuses on developing new insight and understanding of business performance and guide business planning.

Business Analytics makes extensive use of analytics modelling and numerical analysis, including explanatory and predictive, and fact based management to drive decision making. Business Analytics is querying, reporting, OLAP and alerts tools. In other words, it can answer questions such as what happened, how many, how often, where the problem is, and what actions are needed. Also Business Analytics answer questions like;

·       why is this happening?

·       what if these trends continue?

·       what will happen next?

·       what is the best outcome that can happen?    

WHY DO YOU NEED BUSINESS ANALYTICS?

As a Managing Director in any business, you need Business Analytics highly as your supporting tools in decision making. This skill will help you to spot the key areas in your business; especially when you are dealing with bulk goods. This is because, Business Analytics will give you decision aid basing on very technical issues which cannot be observed just by naked eyes. Some of this technical keys are;

·       Predict customer trends and behaviour so as to know your target customers.

·       Analyse, interpret and deliver data in meaningfully ways so that you can create better business plan for the next year.

·       Understanding how many customers leaves you, when, why and how (Customer Retention Rate)

·       Understanding how much stock should you purchase so as to ensure efficient supply to your customers and also to avoid stock-sticking especially for trending products such as fashion goods.  

·       Determining the relationship between your supply and demand so that you can know which new policies you have to implement in order to increase profit.

·       Discovering and understanding crucial patterns which may be pulling you back from success.

·       Gives a clear picture on whom to have partnership and whom to not; basing on different factors especially market share and customers’ behaviour.  

There are so many things that Business Analytics can offer you, and this is depending much on what do you want to do with your business. Also by having Business Analytics supports; you can also prepare yourself to enter the scope of Digital Marketing confidently.