Business Analytics with Excel
Introduction to Business Analytics
Engage and Think
Imagine you walk into your favorite coffee shop,
where you notice the barista pulling up sales data on
their tablet. They're using this information to decide
how many batches of your favorite seasonal drink to
prepare for the day. Based on past sales data from
similar days, they adjust ingredient orders to ensure
they meet demand without overstocking, optimizing
both cost and customer satisfaction.
How do you think the coffee shop could use data to
ensure your favorite drink is always available when
you want it without wasting resources?
Learning Objectives
By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:
List the types of business analytics with real-world examples
to understand its application in different business contexts
Identify applications of business analytics to highlight its
relevance in the decision-making process
List the capabilities and features of Excel as a business
analytics tool
Introduction to Analytics
What Is Analytics?
It is a scientific process used to examine raw data to draw meaningful and logical
conclusions. In today's data-driven world, it plays a vital role in various domains, such as:
Sports Finance
Business Government
Study of Analytics
Analytics often involves a study of historical data to look for
the potential trends to:
Understand the effects of certain decisions
Evaluate the performance of the business
The study of historical data sets the stage for practical applications in business contexts.
What Is Business Analytics?
It specifically focuses on interpreting and applying data-driven trends to
improve business decision-making.
Business analytics is the process
of collecting, cleaning, analyzing,
and interpreting data to identify
trends, patterns,
and insights.
Business Analytics: Example
Scenario:
The operations head of a multinational tire
company faces challenges with quality control,
noticing an uptick in production defects.
To tackle this, they need a thorough analysis of
defects categorized by unique defect codes during
manufacturing at various plants worldwide.
Data such as Operator Name, Machine, Plant
Name, and Defect Code is carefully recorded for
this purpose.
Business Analytics: Example
Through an in-depth business analysis of defect logs, the
operations head is empowered to:
Detect Analyze Optimize
Develop a real-time dashboard Utilize analytics to track and
Apply insights to improve
to detect and categorize visualize defect trends,
quality control procedures.
defects. identifying high-risk areas.
Quick Check
Which of the following best describes the concept of
analytics for an aspiring data analyst?
A. The process of collecting large sets of data without
examining them.
B. The exclusive use of statistical methods to predict
future trends.
C. The discovery, interpretation, and communication
of meaningful patterns in data.
D. The creation of visual representations of data
without analysis.
Types of Business Analytics
Types of Business Analytics
There are four distinct types of business analytics:
Descriptive Predictive
Explains what has happened Depicts what could happen
Diagnostic Prescriptive
Determines why it happened Talks about what should happen
Descriptive Analytics
It is known as the simplest
class of analytics.
It allows breaking a big chunk of data
into smaller pieces, extracting relevant
information from the data.
It provides a brief synopsis of what
happened.
Descriptive Analytics: Example
It can help a telecom company identify the most popular data plan
among teenagers.
Descriptive analytics answers what has happened?
Diagnostic Analytics
It aims to uncover the root causes of specific outcomes or trends by exploring
relationships between variables and identifying contributing factors.
It involves analyzing data to determine why certain events occurred.
Diagnostic Analytics: Example
It can help a telecom company analyze why the latest data plan
release saw decreased sales.
Diagnostic analytics answers why did it happen?
Predictive Analytics
Predictive analytics help condense data.
It uses different statistical, data modeling,
and data mining techniques to study the
latest and past trends.
It allows business analysts or data
scientists to make predictions.
Predictive Analytics: Example
It can help a telecom company forecast the potential rise in demand
for 5G services in the next quarter.
Predictive analytics answers what is likely to happen?
Prescriptive Analytics
It improves decision-making by identifying the optimal option
among various options.
It goes beyond predicting future outcomes by also suggesting actions to benefit from the
predictions and showing the implications of each decision.
Prescriptive Analytics: Example
It can recommend a telecom company a targeted upgrade offer
to increase retention of high-value customers.
Prescriptive analytics answers what should we do about it?
Quick Check
Which type of analytics helps a phone company decide
what special deals to offer customers, so they don't
switch to another company?
A. Predictive analytics
B. Descriptive analytics
C. Diagnostic analytics
D. Prescriptive analytics
Applications of Business Analytics
Applications of Business Analytics
The core areas where analytics drives business success are:
Financial analytics Performance analytics
Customer analytics Risk analytics
Financial Analytics
It is a crucial tool for driving competitive advantage by enabling deeper
financial insight and forecasting.
Explore and Forecast
It helps financial executives explore different ways to answer specific finance-related
questions and forecast future financial situations.
Greater Value
It helps investors choose the best possible investment opportunities.
Multiple Views
It helps the companies take multiple views of their data and derive insights to take the
necessary action.
Financial Analytics: Example
In telecom, financial analytics assess profit margins and costs, guiding strategic
infrastructure investments aligned with consumer demand to enhance profitability.
Performance Analytics
It uses data and technology to analyze business performance and identify areas for
improvement.
Plan strategies
Meet service level Pinpoint areas of
agreements Performance improvement
Analytics
Manage daily Create budgets for
operations business
Performance Analytics: Example
It can track network uptime and signal strength, leading to data-driven maintenance and upgrades,
keeping the telecom network robust and customers consistently connected.
Customer Analytics
It is a process that helps organizations make critical decisions and deliver
offers that are anticipated.
It allows organizations to take
necessary decisions based on
customer insights.
It uses market segmentation,
predictive analytics, data modeling,
and visualization.
It plays a pivotal role in the
prediction of customer behavior.
Customer Analytics: Example
It leverages behavioral data to predict trends, enabling telecoms to offer timely promotions, anticipate
demand for services, and build strong customer relationships.
Platform as a
Service
Risk Analytics
It is a crucial part of business strategy as risk management affects the success of the business.
It foresees future uncertainties to evaluate
a project’s success or failure.
It helps organizations manage and
mitigate risks.
It allows decision-makers to make wise
decisions and take corrective actions.
Risk Analytics: Example
In telecom, risk analytics can evaluate threats ranging from network failures to cybersecurity, ensuring
proactive risk management and safeguarding both the company and its customer base.
Quick Check
is the practice of using data and
technology to study how your business is performing
to continuously make it better.
A. Performance analytics
B. Financial analytics
C. Risk analytics
D. Customer analytics
Excel
What Is Excel?
Excel is a powerful spreadsheet software developed by Microsoft, used in various
industries for data analysis, management, and visualization.
It is extensively used for:
Business analysis Data storage
Reporting Educational purposes
Excel Capabilities
It offers intuitive analytic
It has extensive analytic capabilities
features to model and analyze
to perform statistical analysis.
a company’s data.
It comes with an in-memory
It is the tool of choice to start
technology compatible with
your data analytics journey.
millions of bytes of data.
It has the added advantage of It performs the necessary analysis
visibility, a flat learning curve, and without being dependent on
good reporting functionalities. specialized solutions.
Excel as a Business Analytics Tool
Enhances data analysis
Makes exploring data and
and insights with its
deriving results easy
AI capabilities
Serves as a widely
Performs powerful data
accessible BI tool for
analytics processes with
diverse organizational
few clicks
needs
Empowers robust data
analytics through
advanced functions and
formulas
Demo: Excel Walkthrough
Duration: 10 Minutes
Demonstrate how to navigate Excel using keyboard shortcuts
Racetrack of Skills
Conditional formatting
Data cleaning and and important functions
preparation Analyzing data with pivot
table
Analytics with Excel
Dashboarding
PQ
Macros and power query
Data analysis using
statistics
Quick Check
Which of the following are Excel capabilities?
A. Performs analysis without a specialized solution
B. Generates data on its own
C. Offers intuitive analytic features
D. Distinguishes the type of analytics performs
Guided Practice
Overview Duration: 25 minutes
The objective of this exercise is to analyze the sales data of an e-commerce store to enhance business
strategies. The focus is on identifying popular product categories and regional preferences to refine
marketing and inventory strategies.
Key Takeaways
Analytics is a scientific process that examines raw data to draw
meaningful and logical conclusions. It is used across industries to
derive crucial business decisions.
Analytics has been divided into four different types, namely:
• Descriptive, which explains what has happened
• Diagnostic, which identifies why it did happen
• Predictive, which determines what could happen
• Prescriptive, which talks about what should happen
Business analytics can be divided into several types, such as customer
analytics, financial analytics, performance analytics, and risk analytics.
Additional Resources
• Data analysis in Excel: The Best Guide –Simplilearn Tutorials
• Basic tasks in Excel - Microsoft Support
• Installation guide for Excel
Q&A