Business Analysis vs. Business Analytics: What's the Difference?
Business analysis and business analytics are distinct fields often confused with one another. Business analysis identifies business needs and proposes solutions, while business analytics focuses on investigating past business performance using various techniques.
Business analysis aims to improve functions and processes, whereas business analytics emphasizes statistical and data analysis. Both disciplines are crucial in today's data-driven business environment, offering unique advantages that complement each other for organizational success.
What is Business Analysis?
Business analysis involves understanding business needs and identifying solutions to business problems. Business analysts ensure that the service or product delivered by the technical team meets the client’s requirements. Solutions can range from systems development to organizational change, process improvement, or strategic planning and policy development. The focus is on understanding the current state of the business, identifying opportunities for improvement, and defining requirements for implementing changes.
Business analysis includes:
Strategic Planning: Assessing the organization's business model and defining strategic goals.
Business Model Analysis: Evaluating the policies, market approach, and impact of an organization's business processes and procedures.
Process Design: Streamlining and improving a company's business processes to enhance efficiency and productivity.
System Analysis: Evaluating a system or application to identify its strengths and weaknesses and determining strategies for improvement.
What is Business Analytics?
Business analytics involves investigating past business performance using various tools, techniques, and skills. It helps in gaining insights into future performance and focuses primarily on data and statistical analyses. Business analytics deals with examining past and present data—collected from operations, logs, and activities—to gain insights and forecast business performance. This data is then organized and examined to predict business outcomes.
Key Differences Between Business Analysis and Business Analytics
Focus
Business Analysis: Processes, techniques, and functions.
Business Analytics: Data and statistical analysis.
Purpose
Business Analysis solves complex business problems and gives efficient solutions.
Business Analytics predicts future states and drives business decisions.
Required Skills
Business Analysis: Functional, business, and domain knowledge.
Business Analytics: Statistical, mathematical, and programming knowledge.
Main Goal
Business Analysis improves performance by standardizing processes.
Business Analytics helps in further improvement of opportunities.
Activities
Business Analysis defines and standardises business processes.
Business Analytics creates dashboards to track performance metrics and predict sales.
Type of data usage
Business Analysis is specific to the organization's operations
Business Analytics encompasses a broader range of data sources.
Two Disciplines for Organizational Success
Business analysis identifies specific improvement opportunities and proposes solutions, while business analytics provides the data-driven context for decision-making. Business analysts transform data analysts’ raw data findings into practical strategies. Leveraging both business analysis and business analytics can help organisations to effectively harness their data assets, optimise processes, and gain a competitive edge.
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