Is data analytics a new word for business intelligence?

Organizations across the world are struggling to develop the proficiency to aggregate, analyze, and make the available data valuable. With the volume and variety of data we have today, the shift from achieving new insights to making a strong impact on businesses has become more important than ever. The most effective data-driven organizations today are honing their skills to quickly utilize and make meaningful use of this big data to find the most effective and best actions or outcomes. 

Big data analytics and business intelligence help organizations discover the power within their data assets and create better ways to meet critical objectives. These include reducing costs, satisfying customer base, expanding market presence in different geographies, and using data to drive innovation and optimizing business decisions. 

Business intelligence is referred to analyzing an organization’s raw data through a variety of software applications. As an independent discipline, it involves several data related activities such as data mining, online analytical processing, querying and reporting. It also helps in giving insights on historical trends and current business performance.  The best BI applications provide easy access to business users to allow them to quickly gain business insights.

Whereas, data analytics is a step forward, it not only just gives useful insights but also helps in creating business impact.  Predictive data analytics gives organizations future business models and algorithms that enable them to not only predict the most likely outcome, but the possible solutions.  This methodology or system enables organization to standardize and automate the whole process so that decision-making is not based on gut feeling but rather on fact based data.

Thus, business intelligence is an umbrella term which comprises big data and predictive analytics. Organizations are realizing the potential of BI, analytics, and big data to deliver value to business users by providing quality, interactive, and user-friendly applications.