What is the difference between business intelligence and advanced analytics?

Did you know that the BI market is growing faster than business analytics? How is it possible when business intelligence and analytics overlap, albeit in a limited capacity? The two disciplines differ in the techniques used, category focus and applications.

This article discusses these topics and why business intelligence and business analytics aren’t the same.

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What is the difference between business intelligence and advanced analytics?

If you want a business intelligence vs business analytics comparison, you’re likely searching for a BI or BA software solution. Or, maybe you’re a data science enthusiast wondering which discipline you should study. No matter the role, this article is for everyone — what you should be able to achieve with a business analytics vs business intelligence solution and what you need to know to become a business analytics professional.

Feel free to read through or jump to the desired section for specific information.

What Is Business Intelligence?

BI is the set of technologies, applications and practices for collecting your business data, which is the source of your organization’s business intelligence. Traditional BI meant static reports, while self-service reporting and visualization libraries differentiate modern BI analytics tools.

You can do much with a modern BI tool without asking a data expert.

Spreadsheet software, OLAP tools, data mining solutions, reporting software and dashboarding tools are examples of BI platforms.

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What Is Business Analytics?

Business analytics is analyzing historical data for business operations and future planning. Data mining, aggregation, visualization, predictive analytics and forecasting are some techniques used for business analytics.

John Meyers, Director and Group Lead at Stealth Hospitality, sums up business analytics vs. business intelligence in real-life terms.

I generally ask [people choosing between BI and BA], “So what are you thinking of, are you looking at the differences between a more traditional approach — reporting, summing, grouping, things of that nature— or…analytics where you are able to use statistical methods to find new and exciting information within your data?”

What is the difference between business intelligence and advanced analytics?

BI analytics is reporting-centric, while business analytics relates to deep-diving into data for decision support. Business analytics depends on BI — your company’s historical data is critical to assess operational performance and strategy.

Industry experts consider embedded analytics, big data analytics and enterprise reporting sub-categories of BI and analytics.

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Comparison

Here’s how the two compare.

BIBusiness AnalyticsBusiness intelligence analyzes present and past data to understand what happened.Business analytics evaluates past data to predict what will happen in the future. It’s related to long-term operations.You need BI to run daily operations by tracking present performance.Business analytics helps improve operations and productivity organization-wide, focusing on future strategy.Business intelligence is descriptive with tables and reports of business performance data.Business analytics is complex, incorporating diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive analytics.BI supports decision-making by answering specific queries and viewing key metrics.Business analytics is open-ended. You can dive deeper as you go, posing iteratively detailed questions to get the desired insight. Business analytics usually has an eye toward improvement and preparation for change.Its applications include performance management through visual insight and reporting.Its applications include forecasting business performance and market trends through statistical data analysis and modeling.Power BI, Qlik Sense, MicroStrategy and Dundas BI are BI tools.Business analytics tools include word processing tools, cloud-based spreadsheets, documents, MS Office tools, etc. Power BI, Qlik Sense, MicroStrategy, and Dundas BI are business analytics and business intelligence solutions.

Read our business analytics vs. data analytics article to learn how they compare.

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Market Summary

We assessed business intelligence vs. business analytics in market growth, and BI software adoption seems to grow faster. It’s excellent news for BI and business analytics markets since many business intelligence solutions serve business analytics too.

Mordor Intelligence predicts the BI software market will reach $40.50 billion by 2026. Big data, visual analysis and reduced time to market are the reasons for this growth spurt.

What is the difference between business intelligence and advanced analytics?

Big data analysis demands advanced techniques like data mining, statistical analysis, text mining and data modeling. With data visualization techniques, advanced analytics drives the increased demand for business analytics and business intelligence solutions.

Mordor Intelligence predicts the business analytics market will grow to $103.65 billion by 2026. A CAGR of 7.3% indicates its slow growth compared to BI, which is 12%.

What is the difference between business intelligence and advanced analytics?

A shortage of business analytics professionals could be a reason for this. Additionally, small and mid-sized enterprises might find it tough to set up a business analysis ecosystem.

As a solution, leading software vendors offer integrated suites of the products you might need for business analytics. However, pricing is a concern here, and some of these suites might be out of reach if you are an SME.

Let’s look at the roles related to these two disciplines. Two similar roles — business analyst and business analytics professional — confuse people.

What do they entail?

Roles

Your role is to interpret customer requirements into business projects and convey them to stakeholders, including senior management, development and support teams.

Knowledge of requirements gathering, scenario analysis, flowcharting, and document and workflow analysis is necessary.

What a Business Analyst Does

  • As a business analyst, you’ll solve process-related challenges. You might act as a systems analyst, requirements engineer, product and workflows analyst, business architect or management consultant.
  • You’ll need excellent communications skills and should be able to create wireframe prototypes and workflow diagrams using Excel, Word and PowerPoint.
  • Reviewing business operations, tracking KPIs and participating in system calibration, testing and reengineering are part of the role. Devising strategies to improve performance and boost revenue is part of your responsibilities.
  • You should have technical documentation skills.

You’ll track product life cycles by consistently communicating with project managers.

A business analyst acts as a project manager in smaller setups, so project management is a nice-to-have skill.

What a Business Analytics Professional Does

  • As a business analytics professional, you’ll solve data-related queries by manipulating and modeling enterprise data. You’ll work with numbers, using logical thinking, predictive analytics and statistics to streamline data-related processes.
  • You should know programming languages like Python, R and Julia.
  • You’ll write SQL queries to gather and analyze data. Statistical modeling is a required skill for forecasting market trends and business performance.
  • You should possess excellent data storytelling skills.

Some industry use cases can help us better understand BI and analytics.

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Use Cases

Overlap is likely between business analytics and business intelligence use cases since the two disciplines are closely intertwined.

Software Development

BI: Departments like marketing, sales and HR need transactional and operational reporting, while accounting will have its own set of revenue and expense reports.

What is the difference between business intelligence and advanced analytics?

An executive dashboard for an automobile company with metrics on sales, dealers, recalls and sentiment analysis.

Business Analytics: As a business analyst, you’ll provide decision support by gathering and analyzing information from in-house sources. You’ll not be involved directly in the project implementation. But, knowing clients’ needs helps you align the company’s direction with the undertaken projects.

Consumer Services and Goods

BI: With market intelligence, you can uncover key buyer metrics and patterns. These include customer demographics, conversion rates, area-wise product performance, website and in-store visits, bounce rates and cart abandonment patterns.

Business Analytics: Viewing the same metrics, you’ll perform sales and demand analysis, production planning, demand forecasts, and sales and pricing planning as a business analyst.

Using qualitative and quantitative KPI analysis, you’ll identify opportunities to improve business performance and processes. A business analyst works closely with the sales and business leadership teams.

What is the difference between business intelligence and advanced analytics?

A Power BI dashboard breaks down sales metrics by month and region.

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Banking and Financial Services

BI: Financial lending companies and banks use business intelligence analytics reports on applied loans, applicants’ profiles, defaulters, recovered loans and more.

Business Analytics: You’ll advise your employers on improving loan application workflows, offering attractive repayment plans, launching a mobile app and other lead-capturing initiatives.

What is the difference between business intelligence and advanced analytics?

A financial accounting dashboard with the monthly performance report.

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Healthcare

Hospital BI: Electronic health records help improve care quality with better charting and documentation through centralized patient data access. EHR supports billing, telehealth, e-appointments and scheduling workflows, among others.

What is the difference between business intelligence and advanced analytics?

A hospital performance dashboard to monitor key metrics across all departments in Sisense.

Business Analytics: As a business analyst for a healthcare setup, you’ll create strategies to streamline the above mentioned processes and maintain efficiencies, suggesting necessary improvements. It involves workforce management, designing attractive health checkups and care packages, and partnering with insurance providers and other third-party services.

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Next Steps

If you seek a BI or business analytics solution for your organization, comparing business analytics vs. business intelligence can point you in the right direction.
Since many BI products support business analytics, it’s better to do your due diligence when choosing a solution. It can be tricky to balance your needs with your budget.

You don’t want to spend on capabilities you already have and want a feature set that addresses your needs without buying multiple software solutions. If you’re wondering where to start, we got you covered.

  • Reach out to us to help define your needs with a readymade BI requirements template or create a checklist. Or, refer to our business analytics requirements template.
  • Go through a feature-by-feature analysis of the leading business intelligence analytics solutions with our BI software comparison report and business analytics software comparison matrix.
  • Shortlist potential vendors.
  • Reach out to them with an RFP.
  • Review the received proposals with your stakeholders.
  • Finalize the product and proceed with the purchase process.

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Which are your preferred solutions for business intelligence and analytics? Have you used one? How was the experience? Let us know in the comments!

What is the difference between analytics and business intelligence?

For example, while business intelligence might tell business leaders what their current customers look like, business analytics might tell them what their future customers are doing. Some experts use business analytics as a term to describe a set of predictive tools used within the realm of business intelligence.

Which is best business intelligence or business analytics?

When your analysis concerns what is happening now and why Business Intelligence is your choice for data management, contrastingly, Business Analytics answers the question: What is likely to happen next? Use BI to form strategies for current situations and BA for strategies that would impact future operations.

What are the 4 types of advanced analytics?

4 Key Types of Data Analytics.
Descriptive Analytics. Descriptive analytics is the simplest type of analytics and the foundation the other types are built on. ... .
Diagnostic Analytics. Diagnostic analytics addresses the next logical question, “Why did this happen?” ... .
Predictive Analytics. ... .
Prescriptive Analytics..

What is the key difference between business intelligence and big data analytics?

Business intelligence describes the strategies, technologies, and tools that companies use to obtain business information. It also describes the information itself. Data analytics is the technical process through which we obtain actionable insights from raw data.