What is Business Analytics?

Business analytics (BA) is the set of skills, technology, and processes used to iteratively explore and investigate historical business performance in order to obtain insight and drive business planning. Business analytics focuses on using data and statistical approaches to gain new insights and understanding of business performance. Business intelligence, on the other hand, has typically focused on employing a set of metrics to both measure past performance and drive business strategy. To put it another way, business intelligence is concerned with the description of data, whereas business analytics is concerned with prediction and prescription.

To guide decision-making, business analytics makes substantial use of analytical modelling and numerical analysis, including explanatory and predictive modelling, as well as fact-based management. As a result, it is intimately linked to management science. Analytics can be used as a source of information for humans to make decisions, or it can be utilised to make entirely automated decisions.