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Business Analytics Explained

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Business analytics (BA) is the practice of iterative, methodical exploration of an organization's data, with an emphasis on statistical analysis. Business analytics is used by companies committed to data-driven decision-making.

BA is used to gain insights that inform business decisions and can be used to automate and optimize business processes. Data-driven companies treat their data as a corporate asset and leverage it for a competitive advantage. Successful business analytics depends on data quality, skilled analysts who understand the technologies and the business, and an organizational commitment to data-driven decision-making.

Business analytics techniques break down into two main areas. The first is basic business intelligence. This involves examining historical data to get a sense of how a business department, team or staff member performed over a particular time. This is a mature practice that most enterprises are fairly accomplished at using.

The second area of business analytics involves deeper statistical analysis. This may mean doing predictive analytics by applying statistical algorithms to historical data to make a prediction about future performance of a product, service or website design change. Or, it could mean using other advanced analytics techniques, like cluster analysis, to group customers based on similarities across several data points. This can be helpful in targeted marketing campaigns, for example.

Business analytics applications

Business analytics tools come in several different varieties:

  1. Data visualization tools
  2. Business intelligence reporting software
  3. Self-service analytics platforms
  4. Statistical analysis tools
  5. Big data platforms

Self-service has become a major trend among business analytics tools. Users now demand software that is easy to use and doesn't require specialized training. This has led to the rise of simple-to-use tools from companies such as Tableau and Qlik, among others. These tools can be installed on a single computer for small applications or in server environments for enterprise-wide deployments. Once they are up and running, business analysts and others with less specialized training can use them to generate reports, charts and web portals that track specific metrics in data sets.

Once the business goal of the analysis is determined, an analysis methodology is selected and data is acquired to support the analysis. Data acquisition often involves extraction from one or more business systems, data cleansing and integration into a single repository, such as a data warehouse or data mart. The analysis is typically performed against a smaller sample set of data.

Analytics tools range from spreadsheets with statistical functions to complex data mining and predictive modeling applications. As patterns and relationships in the data are uncovered, new questions are asked, and the analytical process iterates until the business goal is met.

Deployment of predictive models involves scoring data records -- typically in a database -- and using the scores to optimize real-time decisions within applications and business processes. BA also supports tactical decision-making in response to unforeseen events. And, in many cases, the decision-making is automated to support real-time responses.

About KoolReport

KoolReport is an reporting framework written in PHP for faster and easier data report delivery. KoolReport can be used to create data report, dynamic dashboard or bigger business intelligence cockpit.

It support various connections to SQL databases such as MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle or non-SQL database like Mongo. Furthermore, data from CSV or Excel files also can be used as data input for KoolReport. Data after loaded will be piped to various data processes to turn them from raw to processed one. KoolReport also support data visualization in which users can choose various type of charts from different well-known libraries such as Google Chart or ChartJs.

KoolReport is released as free and open-source software under MIT license which virtually grant users right to maximum.

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If you are looking for an advanced version of KoolReport which provide a powerful data analysis, more options of data visualization as well as more assisted functionality such as PDF, Excel export, you may get a license of KoolReport Pro. It will help you save a ton of time in dealing with data reporting.

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#97 opened on Aug 29, 2017 by Robert with last post of KoolReport
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#4 opened on Apr 27, 2017 by Johny with last post of Johny