Businesses rely on analytics to create and implement strategies that improve customer experience and help them increase revenue through higher sales. Analytics is a broad term, and it isn’t easy to differentiate its purpose in most places where it is used.

One perfect example of this is Data Analytics and Business Analytics. The terms at many places are used interchangeably. However, they are different altogether. Also, most of the companies’ usage of Big Data has led to the need for Business Analytics and Data Analytics. This is because Big Data needs to be analyzed to be used optimally. 

We are going to discuss the two terms and understand the differences between them.

Understanding the Terms’ Business Analytics’ and ‘Data Analytics.’

The only common thing between the two terms is dealing with data – extracting and manipulating data, getting insight into the data to enhance business performance.

Business Analytics: 

Business Analytics involves working with data, keeping in mind more enormous business implications. A business analyst’s role is to make the following decisions for the company – whether a company should launch a new product, which existing projects in the pipeline should prioritize over others etc. They aim to measure and improve the core business areas like customer service, sales, marketing, etc. 

There are three main kinds of business analytics:

• Descriptive analytics tries to figure out the issues by checking the historical data and how businesses can utilize it to create plans.
• Predictive analytics uses machine learning and other statistical techniques to help businesses anticipate future events’ probability – it does not aim to predict the future.
• Prescriptive analytics explores the possible action that businesses can take based on the above two analyses’ results. It uses mathematical models and business rules to optimize decision making.

Business analysts are the link between the business and the world of IT. Their role is as below:

• Bring about a change in the organization by taking a holistic view of problems in the organization.
• Identify and define business requirements and discuss them with the higher management and stakeholders.
• Develop crystal clear business plans, reports and analysis and present them with stakeholders.
• Identify pain areas in business and create solutions to resolve the issues.

Data Analytics 

Data Analytics supports the business decision by giving data-based insights to the business. Data analytics is more specific – it tries to figure out customer preferences, what age range is best suited to market a particular product etc. Based on these pointers from data analytics, companies create sales and marketing plans. Today, most businesses have automated the most commonly-used data analysis techniques to speed the analytical process.

The responsibility of data analysts are:

• Design a database for the company and perform data collection activities.
• Update the database continuously.
• Using the existing data, educate the machine to learn, i.e. setup machine learning process in the organization.
• Interpret the data trends and communicate the insights to managers, leads and stakeholders.

The Difference Between The Business Analytics & Data Analytics 

Data is the new oil, and the volume of data for most organizations is growing exponentially. The success of companies will depend on their ability to use this data to their advantage. Both Business and Data analytics aim to use the data to help the company grow overall. 

However, there are significant differences between the two. Below points will help you understand the difference between the two :

1. The Goal – Business analytics make use of the data available to their organization and help their company make an effective business decision. Data analytics works with data to recognize patterns in the dataset and make predictions based on past events. In a straightforward language, data analytics will help a company get the data, and business analytics will use that data to make business decisions.
2. Data – Business analytics uses the data based on the project requirement while data analytics is about more ad hoc analysis of data.
3. Skills – If you are into business analytics, it is expected you will employ skills such as SQL, Excel, Tableau, Salesforce, CRM tools, Deep dives, KPI analysis while working with data. On the other hand, if you are into data analytics, you can employ SQL, R and Python, Data architecture, troubleshooting of data, Routine reporting, and identify data anomalies and errors in working with data.
4. Team – The role of a business analyst is more cross-functional, mostly they work with product owners and critical stakeholders, while a data analyst works with technical people.

Conclusion

It does not matter if you are a small startup or a billion-dollar company; you have to leverage data for your business growth. Both Business and data analytics help you do that. Fundamentally both Business and Data Analytics are different, but they share a common goal of analyzing data for their company’s growth.

Author Bio:

Name:  Khushali Raval

Khushali Raval is an Author at Phoneier. Having experience with 5 years of writing about phones and other gadgets. She loves to explore and write different gadgets from android phones to wearable gadgets.