Business Analytics Questions & Answers 2024/2025

Business Analytics Questions & Answers 2024/2025 What is business analytics? - ANS-insight at the point of impact; it makes extensive use of data, statistically and quantitative analysis, explanatory and predictive modeling, and fact-based management to drive decision making What questions gain insights? - ANS-Q1: How are we doing? A1: Scorecards and dashboards Q2: Why? A2: Reporting and Analytics What questions gain foresight? - ANS-Q3: What should we be doing? A3: Planning, Forecasting, Predictive Analytics What does alignment require? - ANS-Data, business process integration between all units What are the 3 D's of data analytics? - ANS-Data Driven Decisions and actions What are the drivers of Business Analytics? - ANS-1. dramatic increase in the amount of data to analyze 2. Affordable and user-friendly technology 3. Growing demand in business for self-serve BA 4. The need to understand what drives business performance and how to optimize these drives 5. Increased competitive global market place What is the strategic role of BA? - ANS--support all levels of the Ors’s plans: strategic, tactical, operational - provide insights to formulate corporate strategies and drive business actions - employed as a critical tool to monitor, optimize corporate performance What is the analytical competitor? - ANS-organizations competing on analytics systematically to outthink, outexecute, and outperform competition What are the 3 types of business analytics? - ANS-Descriptive, Predictive, Prescriptive Descriptive marketing analytics - ANS-Qs: What happened, what is happening now? (real-time) BA: summary statistics, data visualization, dashboard Predictive marketing analytics - ANS-Qs: What could happen in the future, what trends? (future) BA: Forecasting, regression, predictive model, data mining Prescriptive marketing analytics - ANS-Qs: What is the best action, what should we prescribe? (action) BA: random testing, optimization modeling, simulation What are the 3 levels of BA? - ANS-Past, Present and Future What factors determine the past level of BA? - ANS-New Insight: How and why did it happen? (model) Known Information: What happened? (report) What factors determine the present level of BA? - ANS-New Insight: What's the best action? (recommended) Known Information: What is happening now? (report) What factors determine the future level of BA? - ANS-New Insight: What’s the best and worst that can happen? (predict, optimize, simulate) Known Information: What will happen? (extrapolate) BI vs BA - ANS-BI: measure, monitor against goals (it centric) BA: investigate, explore, discover (business centric) How do you measure the effectiveness of performance management? - ANS-strategy, tactics, operations how do you measure the efficiency of performance management? - ANS-Business process - value to resources What is the performance management process? - ANS-1. Define performance indicators 2. set performance goals 3. measure performance 4. analyze and perform measures 5. decide and act 6. monitor performance Performance Management - ANS-measure and monitor, analyze, decide and act based on past performance data DELTA analytical success factors - ANS-D- High quality data E- Enterprise orientation L- Analytical leadership T- Long-term strategic Target A- Team of Analysts Analytical Capability- Data - ANS-- the prerequisite for analytics - data must be clean, common, integrated and accessible in a central data warehouse - Competitive advantages to use measurements that are distinctive, proprietary and important Analytical Capability- Enterprise - ANS-Successful analytical competitors: - manage their data and analytics program at an enterprise level - create enterprise-wide analytical capabilities and invest in enterprise-scale analytical technologies Analytical Capability- Leadership - ANS-- leaders fully embracing analytics and leading a fact-based decision-making culture - the most critical trait of analytical co Analytical Capabilities- Targets - ANS-- start with a primary target for the initial analytical efforts - over time, the use analytical decision making will expand in an organization - long term success depends on the specific strategic applications Analytical Capability- Analyst - ANS-- key analytical resources: analysts and data -Analytical talent is needed at many levels What are the levels of analytical talent? - ANS-- champions (lead the talent) - Professionals -Semi-Professionals -Amateurs Stages in analytical maturity - ANS-Stage 1: analytically impaired Stage 2: Localized analytics Stage 3: Analytical inspirations Stage 4: Analytical companies Stage 5: Analytic competitors Why must Business and IT departments have a common goal? - ANS-to develop an effective database and analytics function to achieve organizational objectives Business vs IT - ANS-Business: consumers of analytics, decision makers. Want fast, self-serve BA, ad hoc BA IT: Data governance, security, reporting, and BI. Want scalability, build once use many times