Business Analytics has grown to become a powerful tool for most businesses in the past couple of years. The advent of the internet, especially social media, has tremendously increased the quantity of data at our disposal. Over time, it can be observed that certain customers behave in a certain way, or perhaps more sales are made during a certain period. To better understand these hidden trends, business owners need to apply statistical methods, quantitative methods, and quantitative methods on historical data. This is what business analytics is about.
With business analytics, business owners can make informed decisions to drive sales and increase overall revenue. Imagine observing that teenagers mostly buy a particular product while young adults buy another product. Amongst other things, you would be able to make laser-focused ads based on demographics, leading to a better conversion rate.
What are the applications of Business Analytics?
Business Analytics has penetrated all strata of business. However, let’s list out some key applications of business analytics in the business world.
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Customer Relationship Management helps to understand how a customer behaves. This is a fundamental process for higher customer retention. With business analytics, you can analyze key performance indicators such as demographics, socio-economic information, lifestyle, buying patterns, etc.
- Human Resource
One of the duties of the human resource department of a business is to help absorb the best talents during recruitment. Business analytics can analyze past data of successful candidates that turned out well on the job. Data such as the best rate, average years of experience needed for the job, education background, personality, etc., can be used to identify the ideal candidate for a position.
- Banks and Credit Card Companies
Credit card assignment takes a couple of considerations by banks and credit card companies. Business analytics can be used to get insight into the right individual to approve a credit card for. From past data, the business analyst can determine the financial situation of the right candidate, spending habits, lifestyle preferences, behavioral trends, and so on.
- Marketing
As mentioned earlier, historical data can be analyzed to understand the best marketing strategy to use. You can understand whether a particular ad connects well with your audience. You can discover the intensity of the ads to finally close on an ideal consumer. Business analytics would also expose you to the trends that convert, best ways of identifying your target audience, their behavior and many more.
The Benefits of Business Analytics
1. Making a more informed decision: Business analysis allows business owners to make a more informed decision based on historical data. Over the years, businesses that make data-driven decisions outperform those counterparts that make decisions based on feelings or trial and error. This is because the companies have a robust overview of the decisions that lead to sales and those that led to losses. They can now take steps to amplify and possibly automate rewarding processes while they diminish unrewarding processes.
2. Higher revenue: The goal of every business is to make revenue. By embracing processes that have worked, business owners can increase their revenue through business analytics. For instance, a laser-targeted ad sent to the right audience can make a tremendous difference in the company’s revenue. This is what business analytics brings to the table.
3. Business Analytics makes you make proactive decisions: Predictive models can envisage the future trend based on records. Having such insight would make you stay ahead of your competitors. You could also automate the processes such that steps are taken in real-time when an envisaged action occurs.
4. It improves efficiency in the business: Since business analytics collates a chunk of data and discovers insights, business owners can make decisions faster. Automating the reactions further expedites the decision-making process. In other words, if this, then that. In a study, a phone operator created a predictive model that could identify when there would be power outages seven days before it occurs. Having known this, they can
5. Lessened risk: By making decisions based on previous happenings or trends, business owners are more confident with their decisions. Thus, business analytics helps mitigate both short-term and long-term risks. As an example, it is a given that ads with images/videos are more relatively engaging than pure texts. Business owners can confidently decide between hiring good graphic designers for their ads. Knowing fully well that the return on investment would be high.
How to learn Business Analytics
- Enroll in an online business analytics course:
If you are considering learning business analytics, enrolling in an online course is one of the easiest ways to make a pivot even without a BA degree. If you are working professionally, with a 9 to 7 job, this is also a great opportunity as most online BA training courses have flexible schedules. Furthermore, they are cost-effective. An online business analytics course is way cheaper than getting a BA degree. With online training, you can manage your time. In addition to that, it gives you the privilege of working and collaborating with individuals with likened career goals.
- Get hands-on experience by taking on projects.
For any skills, the major learning takes place by doing. Business analytics is no different. To make the best from the business analytics course, you need to simulate real-world problems and solve them. You could also enroll in courses that incorporate capstone projects in their syllabus. Not only that, ensure that the instructor possesses years of industry experience. This way, you will have a deeper dive into the most useful tools and focus less on the noise when solving real-world problems. You could also go a step further by practising on your own and collaborating with others in doing cool projects.
In summary, business analytics is simply a non-negotiable tool in today’s world. And the good news is that just anybody can master it. You do not need to have a BA degree to master it. Enroll in online business analytics training and practice often.
