Evolution of Business Intelligence: From Descriptive to Predictive Analytics
- What are the types of business analytics that companies should be able to leverage to really improve their performance?
- From descriptive to predictive analysis, in this article we will look at the potential and characteristics of each possible procedure.
Business analysis: the first steps
At the 1960s, the world's largest companies were already beginning to initiate pioneering business analytics by collecting business process data on magnetic tape: this was the prehistory of descriptive analytics as we know it today.
From there, we move on to greater freedom through the SQL language, which in the decade of the 1980s However, since then, we have made great strides, developing everything from business intelligence strategies to the latest predictive analytics techniques.
The different approaches to business analysis
Descriptive analysis
Descriptive analytics is an evolved data processing system that, as the name suggests, uses typical BI tools to describe and therefore represent what has happened and what is happening at the enterprise level.
Therefore, if the predictive analytics of the Business Intelligence The more modern one is used to look into the future, the descriptive one is used for projected in change to past events.
The analysis of the above dynamics, if compared with relative performances, can in fact lead to the generation of valuable information for further commercial activities.
2. Diagnostic analysis
Diagnostic analysis, on the other hand, is more specific: the purpose of this particular activity is, in fact, identify the causes of a problem that has led to a reduction in the company's performance, as well as the factors that have allowed for an increase in productivity.
Thanks to it, being aware of the negative and positive aspects of each of the actions carried out in the past, the management can optimize the company's activities by adopting specific and, above all, proven strategies.
3. Preventive analysis
Halfway between diagnostic and predictive analysis is preventive analysis, which is concerned with preventing negative events as far as possible. The typical example is that of the actions to be taken to avoid an excessive user abandonment rate in a digital service. The purpose of preventive analytics, therefore, is to enable the company to anticipate and minimize future accidents, The company has been involved in the development of new products and services, large or small, that may occur.
4. Predictive analytics
This type of typically business analysis, projected in the prediction of what should happen in the future of a company, is probably the most powerful activity in the landscape of Business Intelligence.
Its possible uses are varied, from optimizing campaigns to identifying new service opportunities for the company.
To enhance the role of predictive analytics there were especially the enormous horizons opened by Big Data, The new market and customer analysis tools, with their immense possibilities for market and customer analysis, are, of course, always available. Predictive Analytics operated by professionals capable of exploiting the forecasting potential of the company's objectives.
5. Prescriptive analysis
The last of the main types of business analytics is prescriptive, which goes beyond the results of predictive analytics.
Instead of focusing on the actual performance of a given business activity, prescriptive analysis aims to recommend operational measures useful to improve the final result over time.
All of this is possible thanks to the synthesis of technologies from Data Mining and Machine Learning, and to the careful observation of business rules.
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