Introduction to Business Analytics

Introduction to Business Analytics

• Business processes are coordinated, standardized sets of activities performed by both people and equipment to accomplish specific tasks.
• Increased data availability has led to the rise of business analysts.
• Data analysts use tools and programming languages like SQL and Python to analyze large datasets and identify patterns.
• Common responsibilities of a data analyst include data collection, cleaning, organization, analysis, visualization, and report creation.
• Business analysts curate and use data to aid businesses in making effective decisions.
• Responsibilities include identifying business needs, analyzing data, evaluating processes, developing solutions, and reporting insights.
• Data scientists are specialists who work with, manipulate, and statistically test data.

Business Value and Business Processes

• Business value encompasses all factors influencing a company's financial health.
• Business processes are coordinated business activities.
• Example business processes include DoorDash driver payments, Tesla production in China, and P&G's complaint resolution.

Analytics Mindset

• An analytics mindset is an approach that centers on the use of data and analysis for decision-making.
• Key aspects of an analytics mindset include asking the right questions, using the proper data-handling techniques, and interpreting and sharing results.
• Ability to extract, transform, and load relevant data.
• Ability to apply appropriate data analysis techniques.

Information Value Chain

• Data is raw facts with little meaning on its own.
• Context, setting, event, or statement provides meaning to data.
• Data combined with context becomes information.
• Information interpreted and understood becomes knowledge.
• Applying knowledge leads to decision-making.

Business Analytics Across Different Business Functions

• Business analytics uses data to understand business issues, draw conclusions, and address questions.
• Different business functions have distinct analytic needs, such as marketing analytics, financial analytics, and operations analytics.

Marketing Analytics

• Measures and improves marketing performance.
• Provides insights into customer preferences and trends.
• Uses data to inform marketing strategies.

Accounting Analytics

• Uses business analytics to measure accounting performance and address questions in areas like financial accounting, managerial accounting, and taxation.
• Analyzes accounting data to evaluate performance, mitigate risks, and understand behavior.

Financial Analytics

• Uses business analytics to evaluate a company's financial performance, predict cash flows, and aid in investment decisions.
• Aids in evaluating investment performance on equipment, employee training or stocks and bonds.

Operations Analytics

• Measures and improves the efficiency and effectiveness of business operations.
• Aids in managing human resources, IT operations, and supply chains.
• Examples include evaluating employee efficiency, improving product distribution and ensuring product availability.

SOAR Model

• The SOAR model is a cyclical process of specifying a question, collecting, analyzing and reporting results.
• This repetitive process helps to efficiently explore data and answer business questions.

Data Analysis Process

• Steps include asking the appropriate questions, gathering measurable information, finding the appropriate analytic techniques, interpreting results and sharing them.

Types of Data Reports

• Different reports cater to various business needs.
• Performance reports track progress against goals.
• Analysis reports highlight areas needing improvement.
• Visual data reports condense large datasets into concise information.