Managed data analytics provides comprehensive, actionable, and real-time insights for data-driven decision-making. Here, we’ll discuss the need for business analytics solutions in SMBs and large enterprises and how analytics can help an organization become successful.
Business and managed data analytics solutions are now widely implemented by many business organizations and enterprises from different industries. These help companies effectively use their data to discover patterns, trends, and potential market opportunities and risks. Businesses can solve various problems by using these insights and making data-driven decisions.
Statistics show that the global business intelligence market is expected to touch $54.27 billion by 2030, while the BI platform market is likely to reach $45.2 billion by the same year. Almost 50% of organizations have increased the role of business analytics compared to the pre-pandemic rate. Moreover, 33% of large enterprises have employed analysts and partnered with managed analytics companies to integrate data-driven decision-making in their establishments.
There’s no denying that business analytics is the key for companies to grow in today’s market. Let’s read more about what it means, the tools used for business analytics, and how it can boost your business.
Business analytics is a set of statistical methodologies and computing technologies used for mining, processing, analyzing, and visualizing data to discover patterns, identify threats and opportunities, forecast future customer demands, and make intelligent decisions in real time.
Organizations use proprietary business data and datasets from public domains (or paid databases) to run analytics and derive meaningful insights. SMBs and large enterprises work with third-party offshore companies to access managed data analytics services for cost-effective pricing.
Business analytics solutions help streamline internal processes, adopt advanced technologies, reduce costs, optimize the use of resources, and gain a competitive edge in the markets.
Generally, there are four types of business analytics methodologies often used to derive varied insights from data.
Descriptive analytics describes the information derived from historical datasets. It shows the company’s position for a given period.
Predictive analytics is focused on the future. It predicts the outcomes for a future period by analyzing data from the past to identify recurring trends and patterns.
Diagnostic analytics helps identify the root cause of a business problem by analyzing historical and real-time data. It provides answers to the what, why, how, etc.
Prescriptive analytics is helpful in decision-making as analyzes historical and current data to provide a basis for making future decisions to achieve the business goals.
Managed Data analytics solutions have a diverse role in a business organization. From overcoming challenges to making strategic long-term decisions, expanding into new markets, increasing revenue, and enhancing customer satisfaction, analytical solutions can support your business on multiple levels. A few examples are listed below.
Understanding your customers is the key to creating compelling marketing strategies, personalizing services, and developing better products. Business analytics can help in identifying and understanding customer behavior, purchase patterns, likes, dislikes, demographic trends, and so on. This allows the sales teams to segment customers into neat categories and create tailored campaigns for each.
Customer experience is vital for your business to thrive in competitive markets. Business analytics for small businesses provides the necessary insights to find different ways to improve customer experience by making changes to product features, services, etc. Analytics helps in getting a 360-degree view of customers and markets so that the decision-makers can stay one step ahead of others.
Your products and services play a crucial role in determining your success. Regular upgrades and new features are necessary to keep customers happy. However, you need to know what your customers want before investing in product development. Business analytics helps by finding ways to improve your products and services to suit the changing market demands.
Managed analytics solutions are also helpful in developing a dynamic price model and optimizing the prices to attract more customers. Analyzing sales data will help identify the right price range to optimize profitability for your business. Since this has to be a continuous process, you can adjust the prices for the products and services based on market demand, competitor rates, short-term trends, etc.
Operational efficiency is another important aspect of a business. With the insights provided by business analytics, you can shorten production cycles, streamline supply chains, reduce costs, identify reliable suppliers, automate recurring tasks, and improve the efficiency of the product life cycle by eliminating unwanted steps.
An organization faces risks from all directions. However, using business analytics solutions can help reduce the risk through preventive measures and tackle fraudulent transactions effectively. Sales data, customer data, financial and accounting data, etc., are analyzed to highlight weak areas and potential chances of fraud. Analytics is useful in uncovering what cannot otherwise be detected by the human mind.
The ultimate goal of a business is to generate more sales and increase profitability. This requires sales and customer analytics to align your products and services, marketing strategies, and sales campaigns with customer requirements. It helps take the right message to the right audiences at the right time and through the correct channel.
Apart from the various business analytics examples discussed earlier, you can find other benefits of partnering with a managed analytics provider to strengthen your enterprise from the roots and make it future-proof.
Businesses in today’s world cannot rely on guesswork alone to make critical decisions. Data analytics can analyze large amounts of historical and real-time data to provide valuable and actionable insights that help decision-makers at all levels. This promotes strategic business growth as every decision is based on data.
In competitive markets, you cannot ignore other businesses from the industry, no matter your position. Be it a small business or an established global brand, you will have competitors wanting to lure your customers and capture the market share. Business analytics tools and techniques help stay ahead of your competitors by identifying market gaps, assessing risks, and determining the right course of action.
Drifting away from your core objectives can affect your success in the long term. This can happen when you have to adopt new technology but don’t have the necessary talent to strategize or implement the changes. A managed analytics provider offers end-to-end solutions so that your teams can continue to focus on the core processes and align the changes with your objectives.
A healthy business grows and expands over time to capture new markets and increase sales volume. Simultaneously, you should scale your processes to handle the higher volume of requirements. Analytics managed services help your business scale up or down on demand and within the defined timeline. The service providers also make your processes more flexible, agile, and transparent.
When working with data, you need to take adequate measures to ensure it is safe from hackers and unauthorized access. Managed business analytics solutions include data governance and data security plans to keep the datasets safe. Data compliance and management are also taken care of by the analytical companies. Additionally, they offer data engineering services to improve data quality, which results in accurate insights.
Cost is a major benefit of partnering with a managed analytics provider to adopt business analytics. Working with an experienced solution provider reduces unwanted expenses while providing access to advanced tools. The analytical companies tend to offer flexible pricing, which allows you to pay for the services you use. Moreover, you also free up your internal resources for business growth.
Business analytics involves the use of technology and advanced tools. So, what software is used for business analytics? What are the top ten best tools to analyze large datasets and derive real-time insights? Check the below list.
Microsoft Power BI is among the top business analytics tools used around the world. The basic version is free to use and offers many useful features for data mining, analysis, and visualization. The platform can be hosted on-premises or on the cloud. It can be integrated with different databases to run the four types of analytics required by an enterprise.
Tableau is one of the most popular business analytics tools with cutting-edge capabilities. It provides AI-based insights in real-time and can be used on the go through the mobile version. There are multiple editions of the software to suit the varying requirements of business organizations. The platform is useful for SMBs and large enterprises. The dashboards can be customized as necessary.
SAS has over 35 years of experience in the industry and has developed business analytics software to provide augmented analytics using AI and ML models. The platform can be used by business analysts, data scientists, and decision-makers to derive real-time and automated insights. The tool can be embedded into existing systems to share the reports.
Sisense is a popular business analytics tool used by many organizations. It offers AI and ML-based analytics with advanced functionalities for businesses to derive insights from unstructured data. Sisense Fusion Embed can be integrated with existing applications to derive real-time insights and visualizations. Sisense Compose SDK is also available for developers to further enhance the tool.
Microstrategy ONE is an enterprise analytics tool offering self-servicing visualizations. It combines generative AI, deep learning, machine learning, and trust & controls to provide cloud-based analytics and data visualizations through customizable dashboards. The platform has an AI chatbot that can format the reports, add visualizations, and do much more based on the input provided.
QlikView is another popular business analytics and data visualization platform based on artificial intelligence. The company offers different editions for on-premises and cloud SaaS deployment. The platform can be integrated with third-party applications and can be used by a business from almost any industry.
KNIME is a business analytics tool offering open-source and free services for developers to customize the platform to suit their business requirements. It has over 300 connectors to data sources and can be integrated with popular machine-learning libraries. The company also offers upskilling options through online courses and certification exams.
RapidMiner is an AI and data analytics platform offering end-to-end data science solutions. It extracts and transforms data from multiple sources. It can be used to build data and ML workflows and share real-time insights through the visualization dashboards. The platform is useful for managed analytics services, thanks to its robust ecosystem.
Spotfire is a powerful self-servicing business analytics platform for decision-makers to derive insights, generate visualizations, and share reports with others in a quick time. The tool combines visual analytics, data science, and streaming capabilities. It can be used by businesses from the manufacturing, telecommunications, energy, financial services, life science, and logistics industries.
Splunk is a cloud-based data platform used to search, analyze, visualize, and act on datasets. It offers fast, flexible, scalable, and cost-effective services through machine learning models and can be integrated with various third-party applications and databases. It is GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, and SOC3 compliant. The platform has a user-friendly interface.
The ever-changing market conditions and customer requirements make it a necessity for business organizations to invest in data-driven models for smart decision-making. Unlock the true potential of your data to achieve your goals and objectives. Business analytics solutions provide an in-depth understanding of your business, customers, markets, etc. Drive growth and profitability by implementing intelligent strategic decisions and becoming a popular organization in the market.
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