Top 10 Business Analytics Tools You Should Know About
Business Analytics is the process of having the right combination of data and business analytics tools to enable better decision-making and take the business to another height. Without the right tool, it may not be possible to have accurate judgments. In this industry, where the data available is quite big, it is very important to refine the data skills to scale up in the business or any other profession.
Research has said that the global market of business analytics will surpass US$ 420 billion by the end of 2027, with India touching 118.7 billion by 2026. There are multiple business analytics tools available that are quintessential for making a smart decision.
Business analytics is a rapidly growing field in the modern era, driven by the powerful combination of statistics and computer science. This growth has created a wide range of career opportunities, highlighting the importance of understanding its meaning and significance.
Analytics tools vary from basic spreadsheets to complex predictive models, all used to identify patterns and relationships. This iterative process continues until the desired business goal is achieved. Descriptive analytics is an essential component of business analytics, analyzing historical data to determine specific responses from a group of individuals.
Business analytics encompasses several methodologies, such as data mining, predictive analytics, statistical analysis, and transforming data into valuable insights. It is also utilized to identify and forecast trends and outcomes, making data-driven decision-making easier.
Business analytics refers to the utilization of quantitative techniques to extract insights from data, in order to make informed business decisions. There are four primary methods of business analysis and these four methods can be used individually or in combination to analyze past performance and enhance future business results.
· Descriptive:
This involves analyzing historical data to recognize trends and patterns. Descriptive analytics delves into your data and utilizes key performance indicators (KPIs) to demonstrate the present condition of your business. This might include real-time information on your customers’ demographics, interests, or buying patterns.
It may also include sales figures or financials, as well as social media metrics such as the number of Facebook likes, tweets, or followers you have. Unlike other types of analytics, descriptive analytics does not attempt to identify cause-and-effect relationships and is based purely on factual data.
· Diagnostic:
This involves analyzing historical data to determine the reasons behind a particular outcome.
· Predictive:
This involves using statistical methods to forecast future outcomes. By utilizing historical data and recent trends, businesses can determine what products their customers may be interested in and whether they are likely to make future purchases. Predictive analytics can assist in identifying the customers who are most likely to purchase a product if a marketing campaign with limited discounts is required.
· Prescriptive:
This involves the use of testing and other techniques to identify the best course of action in a given scenario. It is a type of business analytics that provides the optimal solution for a given situation.
Unlike descriptive analytics, which shows what has already happened, and predictive analytics, which attempts to forecast what might happen next, prescriptive analytics utilizes this information to suggest potential solutions based on similar scenarios, such as year-on-year data, seasonality data, and product launch data.
For instance, if ticket sales for a Christmas show are lower than last year’s sales, prescriptive analytics could recommend reducing prices or adding a matinee performance as a response. Business analytics is frequently described as providing an overview of a situation.
This means it allows for a more comprehensive examination of various factors, relationships, and entities before making a decision. Additionally, analytics can help sharpen the perspective of managers and CEOs, allowing them to better understand issues and potential solutions.
Business analysts use various types of software applications to capture both quantitative and qualitative data from diverse business systems, which are then consolidated into a central repository. This enables analysts to scrutinize and analyze the data, ultimately leading to more informed decision-making.
Typically, organizations employ a combination of business analytics software, which can include statistical tools, predictive modeling software, and data mining tools. These applications provide a comprehensive understanding of key insights that can help to enhance efficiency, productivity, and profitability within the organization.
Data analysis is a valuable tool that can aid in making informed business decisions when faced with important crossroads. Whether it’s providing context, verifying or refuting a hypothesis, or devising a smart strategy, the insights gained from analyzing data can be incredibly beneficial in decision-making.
Consequently, the importance of big data and the skilled individuals who can effectively analyze it has become increasingly recognized on a global page.
Benefits of Using Business Analytics Tools:
Ø Aid in better-informed strategic decision making
Business analytics tools definitely provide tremendous help in decision-making. Let’s understand this with an example: In 2018, Uber upgraded its Customer Obsession Ticket Assistant (COTA), a tool that utilizes natural language processing and machine learning to help agents address support tickets more quickly and accurately.
To determine if the new version of COTA was more effective than the previous one, the company used prescriptive analytics. By using A/B testing, which involves comparing the results of two different choices, Uber discovered that the updated tool led to quicker service, more precise resolution recommendations, and higher customer satisfaction ratings.
These insights not only improved Uber’s ticket resolution process but also resulted in millions of dollars in savings for the company.
Ø Unique Customer Experience
Tools have become an indispensable element of an organization’s foundation for success. When viewed through a business-specific lens, it offers valuable insights that can help organizations understand how consumers interact with their products or services.
For instance, a telecom company can employ predictive models to assess the effectiveness of its marketing strategies and retain customers for a longer duration. Similarly, an e-commerce business can use business analytics to determine why visitors stay on their website and return, and for how long they stay.
Therefore, the business analysis offers organizations the necessary data to gain a competitive advantage and provide the best possible service to their customers, resulting in the best possible outcomes.
Ø Betterment of operational efficiency
Business analytics can be utilized to improve business processes and operations, not just for financial benefits. A report by KPMG on infrastructure trends discovered that numerous companies use predictive analytics to predict maintenance and operational problems before they become major issues.
For example, a mobile network operator stated that it uses data to forecast outages a week before they occur. This allows the company to avoid outages by scheduling maintenance more effectively, resulting in not just cost savings, but also keeping its assets performing at optimal levels.
Ø Overall growth in the management and business
Business analytics is crucial in understanding risk and optimizing decision-making processes. It can effectively analyze all of an organization’s data, whether structured or unstructured, to provide insight into potential outcomes and help prevent or manage crises.
Business analytics can also be used to interact with customers and allocate resources effectively when a call to action is necessary. Without it, resources could be wasted on customers who will likely default on their payments, but with it, accurate predictions can be made to ensure all issues are handled efficiently.
Overall, business analytics helps improve risk management and enhances management practices. For example, banks can use business analytics to assess credit and customer loyalty ratings when deciding whether to lend money to a potential customer. It can also help determine if high-risk payments are worth the risk or if delinquent accounts are likely to recover.
Ø Better monetary returns
Businesses that adopt data and analytics programs can achieve substantial financial benefits. According to McKinsey’s research, companies that invest in big data can achieve a six percent average rise in profits, which increases to nine percent for investments that span five years.
Similarly, a recent study by BARC demonstrated that businesses capable of quantifying their gains from data analysis report an average eight percent increase in revenues and a 10 percent decrease in expenses. These results highlight the significant financial rewards that a comprehensive business analysis approach can bring, which many firms can take advantage of as the big data and analytics market continues to expand.
Ø Simplification of the Accounting Process
The truth is that budgeting and investment choices play a vital role in determining the success of an organization. Therefore, it is crucial to support these decisions with statistical data and logic to ensure that the company does not suffer losses.
Business analytics can help manage tangible assets and provide insights into a company’s financial performance. It can highlight areas that consume a significant portion of profits, such as power bills, tariffs, salaries, and other related expenses.
Ø Stick to the budget
For small businesses, marketing budgets can be limited. However, implementing business analytics can help optimize every penny by gaining a deeper understanding of customers, anticipating their evolving needs, gaining a competitive advantage, and introducing innovative ideas and products to the market.
Ø Improving Effectiveness
In today’s world, businesses can quickly obtain data through the use of business analytics. This enables them to detect any interruptions in their progress or performance in near real-time, resulting in savings of time, money, and resources. Business analytics tools are software applications that collect data from various business systems and merge it into a central data repository, like a data warehouse, to be analyzed and evaluated.
A variety of tools are employed by most businesses, including spreadsheets with statistical functions, software packages for statistical analysis, data mining tools, and predictive modeling tools. Using these tools, businesses gain a comprehensive understanding of the organization and can make informed decisions about business operations and customer acquisition.
Business analytics tools go beyond reporting results to explain why certain outcomes occurred. This helps identify weaknesses, anticipate potential issues, alert decision-makers to unexpected events, and even forecast future outcomes based on business decisions.
This knowledge gives organizations the confidence to achieve business objectives, remain competitive, and enhance overall customer satisfaction. These tools are critical for businesses to organize and make sense of the vast amount of data generated by the modern internet of things and enterprise cloud applications, which are commonly used in supply chain management, enterprise resource planning, and customer relationship management applications.
In this article, we will understand how to leverage these tools for better decision-making. Some of them are discussed below:
Also Read:
Top 10 Business Analytics Tools
1. Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Excel is the predominant and most commonly used software for data analysis. It helps in dealing with a wide range of data. When the decision is based on the data provided then this software helps a lot with its feature of formulas and graphical presentation of the data for better understanding.
Data visualization is a cross-disciplinary area that deals with the representation of data using visual means. When dealing with extensive amounts of data, such as in a time series, visualizing it can be a highly efficient way of communicating information.
2. Microsoft Power BI
Power BI is an appealing option for individuals who aim to streamline their reporting processes and integrate multiple data sets. However, the primary objective of most organizations is to improve the level of performance through the tools.
Microsoft is one such company dedicated to making better data-driven decisions by utilizing Power BI to analyze data. By providing proper training on how to use this tool, it becomes really effective and gives better results.
By utilizing Power BI, you can encourage your employees to collaborate on a sophisticated platform, where they can manipulate data. Combining insights from historical and real-time data can make analyzing trends and making predictions more accessible.
3. Tableau Big Data Analytics
Tableau Big Data Analytics is considered to be one of the top business analyst software options due to its dynamic and advanced capabilities for analyzing unstructured text. Tableau’s platform for business analytics comprises strong and dependable statistical tools, enabling users to conduct a thorough analysis of social media networks and forecast trends based on present and past data.
The question arises: How confident are the majority of individuals in your organizations in terms of data analytics? Despite having a thorough knowledge of the business, if your users cannot locate the relevant data or navigate dashboards effectively to address their queries, they are not helping in decision-making.
Tableau provides users with a powerful business analytics platform that comprises dependable and robust statistical tools, allowing them to perform a thorough analysis of social media networks and anticipate patterns based on historical and current data.
Numerous customers encounter such obstacles, which can hinder the adoption of analytics and impede their efforts to establish a Data Culture. Initially designed for software and web development,
4. Python
Python has grown rapidly and is now one of the most widely used programming languages. Python is an excellent tool for data analysis, with user-friendly libraries for various scientific computing applications. It is also free, open-source software that is easy to learn.
5. Hubspot
HubSpot is a software that encompasses inbound marketing, sales, and service. One of its capabilities is Marketing Analytics, which enables you to evaluate the effectiveness of all your marketing efforts from a single location. Examining a website’s performance using various metrics becomes easy with the help of this tool.
Also assessing the traffic on the website with respect to the quantity and the number of people turning into the client can be easily factored in. The option to filter the analytics by country or a particular URL structure is also possible. For each of your marketing channels, comprehensive reports are generated.
6. Creatio
Creatio is a low code platform with CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and a business process management program with all the solutions for different sizes of businesses. This software was initially designed to streamline the marketing, sales, and workflow hierarchy and to avoid delays in the work. Its self-service portal will let you collaborate with clients.
Creatio CRM is a platform with a huge variety of features such as full customer view, lead management, document flow automation, case management, opportunity management, product management, and Analytics. Personalizing the communication with the client can be done through Creatio. This software can do the grouping of products on the basis of brand etc.
7. Wrike
It is one of the easiest-to-use tools in everyday work. This business analytic tool helps a lot in decision making as it assesses in making the timelines for the work as well the update on the task as per the scheduled timings. Also, budgeting can be done effectively with the help of this tool.
It comes with the calendar, budget, approval, or rejection window and updates it accordingly. With the help of this software, all the available resources can be managed efficiently.
Here are the highly rewarding Business Analytics Courses in India
8. Microsoft Visio
This tool is useful in giving a graphical representation to any database. It is part of the MS office for the professional version. The diagrams can be connected to the database directly. It is so helpful for designing purposes like drawing floor plans, interiors, electrical graphs, etc.
9. R Data Manipulation
This tool is available for free installation. It is used for making any application or graphical software. It can be downloaded on any Windows or Mac system. It has the capability to manage a great range of work directories. It also assesses providing debugging options.
10. Domo
The Domo Business Cloud, which is a platform for low-code data apps, can enhance the abilities of business intelligence by utilizing all of your data and integrating it into any business process or workflow. It also provides push notifications, real-time collaboration through chat, and mobile apps for both iOS and Android devices.
Additionally, users can access numerous pre-built business apps, and there are APIs available for programmatic management. Domo is a software for data analysis that is ideal for optimizing workflows. It can process a huge amount of data and give the results in minutes.
This tool includes a user-friendly ETL function, with over 1,000 pre-built data connectors, along with more than 150 types of interactive charts. Domo’s security features include single sign-on (SSO) integration, personalized data permissions, and BYOK data encryption, making it suitable for enterprise-level use.
A successful organization always pays heed to the decision-making software. They start by questioning what business decisions are there for which they need data and analytics, then invest the resources and time to collect the right data and create the right analytics.
FAQs
1. What is important in any data analytic tool?
The most important thing to consider while buying or downloading any data analytic tool is how much user-friendly is that tool? Whether it will cater to the need for graphical or chart presentation of data, if yes, is that easy to learn even for beginners? Whether different types of plugins are offered or not. Export of the data to another format is possible or not because the data varies and export becomes a tedious job when the format that you need is not there.
2. What are the small-budget business analytics tools for any organization?
Microsoft Excel, Tableau, and Power BI are low-budget business analytics tools and are used in almost every organization.
3. Do I need CRM, even when my business is really small?
CRM can be used even when the organization has 5 customers only. CRM may help to increase the customer in that case. There are many CRMs available in the market. One can consider their budget and need and then buy the respective CRM.
4. Why does your team need business analytics tools?
Business analytics tools are used to retrieve, review, and analyze data, you want to be able to plan for the unexpected—not an easy routine task with barely any numbers in it. As such, most managers and IT analysts utilize more than one business analytic tool for their metrics analyses as very few solutions can do everything that’s required. Business analytics tools also help immensely in better decision-making without any delay or error.
5. Does the price of business analytics tools vary from company to company?
Yes, the price of the tools varies from brand to brand, and the complexity or size of the tool.
