Business analytics focuses on developing new insights and understanding of business performance based on data and statistical methods.
Business Analytics cover a broad spectrum of decision-enabling capabilities with techniques that are classified in four wide-ranging categories:
- Descriptive: The interpretation of historical data to identify trends and patterns.
- Diagnostic: The interpretation of historical data to determine why something has happened.
- Predictive: The use of statistics to forecast future outcomes.
- Prescriptive: The application of testing and other techniques to determine which outcome will yield the best result in a given scenario.