Chapter 1: Using Business Analytics to Address Business Questions

Vocabulary flashcards covering core concepts, figures, models, and analytics types from Chapter 1.

Business Value

All the items, events, and interactions that determine a company's financial health.

Business Process

A coordinated, standardized set of activities conducted by both people and equipment to accomplish a specific business task.

Global Datasphere (2025 Prediction)

The projected annual size of the global datasphere by 2025, reaching 175 ZB.

Business Analyst

A data specialist who curates and uses data to help an organization make effective business decisions.

Data Overload

A situation where an increasing amount of data hinders an analyst's work because too much data cannot be properly synthesized or interpreted.

Data

Raw facts that have little meaning on their own.

Context

The setting, event, statement, or situation that surrounds and gives meaning to raw data.

Information

Data combined with context, organized in a way to be useful to an analyst or user.

Knowledge

Understanding or familiarity with information gained through experience or study.

Decision

A conclusion reached after knowledge is considered.

Information Value Chain

The conceptual model showing how raw data and context combine into information, which leads to knowledge, and ultimately results in a decision.

Data Scientist

A specialist who knows how to work with, manipulate, and statistically test data.

Decision Maker

An organizational role (such as management) that requires knowledge and information to make business decisions.

Business Analyst as Interpreter

The liaison role of a business analyst who bridges management (the decision-maker) and the data scientist (the developer).

Business Analytics

The use of data to create knowledge, help draw conclusions, and address business questions.

Marketing Analytics

Business analytics focused on measuring and improving marketing performance, primarily by providing insights into customer preferences and trends.

Accounting Analytics

The use of business analytics to measure accounting performance and address questions in audit, financial accounting, managerial accounting, and tax areas.

Financial Analytics

The use of business analytics to measure and evaluate financial performance, such as predicting customer receivables collection or evaluating capital investment returns.

Operations Analytics

The measurement and improvement of operational efficiency and effectiveness across human resources, IT operations, and supply chain logistics.

Analytics Mindset

The ability to ask the right questions, extract, transform, and load relevant data, apply appropriate data analytic techniques, and interpret and share results with stakeholders.

SOAR Analytics Model

A recursive four-step analytics framework consisting of: 1. Specify the Question, 2. Obtain the Data, 3. Analyze the Data, and 4. Report the Results.

Descriptive Analytics

An analytics type that answers the question: 'What happened?'

Diagnostic Analytics

An analytics type that answers the question: 'Why did it happen?'

Predictive Analytics

An analytics type that answers the question: 'What is likely to happen in the future?'

Prescriptive Analytics

An analytics type that answers the question: 'What action(s) should we take?' based on expected future outcomes.

Adaptive Analytics

An autonomous analytics type that answers the question: 'How does the system adapt to changes?'

Analytics Ascendancy Model

A model showing how analytics advances from Descriptive to Diagnostic, Predictive, Prescriptive, and Adaptive/Autonomous, increasing organizational value and required skill.

Data Visualizations

Graphic representations of data, usually in the form of a graph, chart, or other image.

Exploratory Data Visualizations

Visualizations used to uncover patterns, anomalies, and insights in data during the 'Analyze the Data' step of descriptive or diagnostic analytics.

Explanatory Data Visualizations

Visualizations used as an important means of reporting business analytics findings to decision-makers and stakeholders during the 'Report the Results' step.