Business Analytics for Concepts - Techniques and Applications

Questions: 1.Why does each step in the business analytics process have a past, present, and future dimension? 2.What is a competitive advantage, and how is it related to BA? 3.Why does having the ability to aid in decision-making make BA important? 4.How does BA help achieve sustainability? 5.What is digital analytics? Answers: Introduction The business analytics is one type of practice of the methodical exploration and eth iterative state of an organization's information that mainly focuses on the statistical analysis. The business analytics are used by the companies for taking the data-driven decision making within the organization. They are using the business informs and decisions to enhance the process of decision-making approaches more flexible and efficient in the organization (Hofmann Klinkenberg, 2013). The data-driven companies are treating the data as an important asset and consider it as the competitive advantage. The successful business analytics depends on the quality of the data, understand the technology in a better way and organize the decision in a much better way than the others in the organization. Their area has been divided into the two parts- the business intelligence and statistical analysis. 1. Based on the two types of the business analytics, Laursen Thorlund said that the business analytics is mainly involved in examining the historical data in order to get a sense of how the business, the team as well as the staffs perform on a particular period of time. This is one type of matured practice done in the organization which is quite fair and relevant (Laursen Thorlund, 2016). On the other hand, the statistical analysis involves the deeper knowledge of the predictive analysis which uses the algorithms. These algorithms can be applied to the historical data in order to predict the future performance of the product, services as well as the website design.1. The other analysis can also be used which are based on the advanced technologies known as cluster analysis. These two types of the business analytics provide the necessary dimension to the past, present and future perspective. Based on these two types, the analysis becomes easy and provides the exact result of the organization. As per Ragsdale, the descriptive analysis tracks the performance and understands the present state of the business (Ragsdale, 2014). The predictive approach analyzes the change in the trend of the data and helps to access those in the future. This approach also uses the past performance in order to generate the further recommendations that deal with the managing procedure in the near future. 2. Various companies make several plans to generate the successful outcomes in the market. When the plans are not effective, then the business starts to lose. Therefore, the planning is considered as the most part of the business. When the methods are applied in a correct manner then the results will be obtained as per the planned idea (Sharma, Mithas Kankanhalli, 2014). The business planning process has been divided into the sequence of strategy, then down to the tactical methods and finally the operational phase. Generally, the information is passed from the lower level, then processed in the middle phase and finally went to the higher level of authorities. These are the basic steps involved in the planning process of the business analytics. The first competitive advantage is the price leadership that deals with the marketing standpoints which offers the services and products to the customers at lower cost with huge profits. The business analyst helps to identify the main factors, the competitors, and monitors the report. They also help to maintain the price level at the lower level and measure its margin. The next advantage is related to the sustainability which ensures the resource usage and maintains a balance in the environment (Shmueli Lichtendahl Jr, 2017). The business analyst helps to identify the resource and reallocate the resource in order to prevent the damage. The operational efficiency is another type of advantage that improves the internal business operations as well as the activities of the competitors. According to Sharma, Mithas Kankanhalli, the business analysts identify the operation area where the correction is required and the modification even. Innovation is another important factor of the business which leads to reducing the complexities and results in better performance (Sharma, Mithas Kankanhalli, 2014). The business analysts obtain those ideas and use them in an effective way to enhance the productivity of the organization. The business analysts also get the desired opinion for the problem solving and fixing the things in a better way. 3. There are several potential applications for the decision-making process used by the business analysts. One of them is the increase customer profitability where the BA provides the detailed information about the current pricing methods and the competitors of the market. This information can be used further to put the business on a profitable scale which will properly balance the sales volumes as well as the increase rate of the prices. The risk reduction method used by the BA helps to get the required information which will avoid the issues in the field of the sales, budgets, and technology (Shmueli Lichtendahl Jr, 2017). The merchandise optimization strategy uses the predictive methods in a step-wise manner and determines the optimal results of the organization. The human resource management decision used by the BA helps to compute the productivity, revenue, and cost-estimation. Due to these abilities, the BA is the important element in the companies. 4. The BA helps to ensure the resources of the business that will balance the factors of the environment as well as the bottom of the firm's profitability. BA in the company identifies those resources and uses it in an efficient way. Whenever it is necessary of reallocating the resources, BA even does that keeping the profitability as the priority (Sharma, Mithas Kankanhalli, 2014). The best part of the BA is that they offer the effective methods and approaches to reallocate the resources, to use them in an optimal manner and to achieve the best results out of it. 5. The digital analytics is the combination of the collection, analysis, measurement, visualization and the interpretation of the digital data that usually illustrate the user behavior on the mobiles, websites as well as on the mobile sites (Laursen Thorlund, 2016). The most important part of the digital analytics is to understand how the sites and apps are formed and used. With the use of the analytics data, the organizations are optimizing the data based on the customer experience on the websites, mobile, and apps. Conclusion According to organization point of view, the BA is the most important members those who are responsible for bringing the change and competitive advantage into the organization. With the innovative efforts and approaches made by the BA, the profit scale of the company is always at the higher position in the marketplace. The introduction to the digital analytics helps to develop the market in a more appropriate way which will define the behavior of the user. The BA is very much essential for the investment as well as for the sudden changes in the organization. They are highly skilled with the change in the technology and help the firm in reallocating the resource as when required in the organization. They easily explore the ideas and methods that are relevant for the company. References Hofmann, M., Klinkenberg, R. (Eds.). (2013).RapidMiner: Data mining use cases and business analytics applications. CRC Press. Laursen, G. H., Thorlund, J. (2016).Business analytics for managers: Taking business intelligence beyond reporting. John Wiley Sons. Ragsdale, C. (2014).Spreadsheet Modeling and Decision Analysis: A Practical Introduction to Business Analytics. Nelson Education. Sharma, R., Mithas, S., Kankanhalli, A. (2014). Transforming decision-making processes: a research agenda for understanding the impact of business analytics on organisations.European Journal of Information Systems,23(4), 433-441. Shmueli, G., Lichtendahl Jr, K. C. (2017).Data Mining for Business Analytics: Concepts, Techniques, and Applications in R. John Wiley Sons.