Data analytics

Module 5
Data analytics initiatives can help businesses increase revenue, improve operational
efficiency, optimize marketing campaigns and bolster customer service efforts. Analytics also
enable organizations to respond quickly to emerging market trends and gain a competitive
edge over business rivals. The ultimate goal of data analytics, however, is boosting business
performance. Depending on the particular application, the data that's analyzed can consist of
either historical records or new information that has been processed for real-time analytics. In
addition, it can come from a mix of internal systems and external data sources.
Data analytics (DA) is the process of examining data sets in order to find trends and draw
conclusions about the information they contain. Increasingly, data analytics is done with the
aid of specialized systems and software. Data analytics technologies and techniques are
widely used in commercial industries to enable organizations to make more-informed
business decisions.
Data analytics is the science of analyzing raw data to make conclusions about that
information. Many of the techniques and processes of data analytics have been automated
into mechanical processes and algorithms that work over raw data for human consumption.
Understanding Data Analytics

Data analytics is a broad term that encompasses many diverse types of data analysis. Any type
of information can be subjected to data analytics techniques to get insight that can be used to
improve things. Data analytics techniques can reveal trends and metrics that would otherwise
be lost in the mass of information. This information can then be used to optimize processes to
increase the overall efficiency of a business or system.
For example, manufacturing companies often record the runtime, downtime, and work queue
for various machines and then analyze the data to better plan the workloads so the machines
operate closer to peak capacity.

Data analytics can do much more than point out bottlenecks in production.
Data analytics is important because it helps businesses optimize their performances.
Implementing it into the business model means companies can help reduce costs by
identifying more efficient ways of doing business and by storing large amounts of data. A
company can also use data analytics to make better business decisions and help analyze
customer trends and satisfaction, which can lead to new—and better—products and services.
Data Analysis Steps
The process involved in data analysis involves several different steps:

1. The first step is to determine the data requirements or how the data is grouped. Data
may be separated by age, demographic, income, or gender. Data values may be
numerical or be divided by category.
2. The second step in data analytics is the process of collecting it. This can be done
through a variety of sources such as computers, online sources, cameras,
environmental sources, or through personnel.
3. Once the data is collected, it must be organized so it can be analyzed. This may take
place on a spreadsheet or other form of software that can take statistical data.
4. The data is then cleaned up before analysis. This means it is scrubbed and checked to
ensure there is no duplication or error, and that it is not incomplete. This step helps
correct any errors before it goes on to a data analyst to be analyzed.
Types of Data Analytics
Data analytics is broken down into four basic types.
1. Descriptive analytics: This describes what has happened over a given period of
time. Have the number of views gone up? Are sales stronger this month than last?
2. Diagnostic analytics: This focuses more on why something happened. This
involves more diverse data inputs and a bit of hypothesizing. Did the weather affect
beer sales? Did that latest marketing campaign impact sales?
3. Predictive analytics: This moves to what is likely going to happen in the near term.
What happened to sales the last time we had a hot summer? How many weather
models predict a hot summer this year?
4. Prescriptive analytics: This suggests a course of action. If the likelihood of a hot
summer is measured as an average of these five weather models is above 58%, we
should add an evening shift to the brewery and rent an additional tank to increase
output.
Data Warehousing
In today’s business environment, an organization needs to have reliable reporting and
analysis of large amounts of data. Businesses need their data to be consolidated and
integrated for different levels of aggregation, from customer service to partner integration
to top-level executive business decisions. This is where data warehousing comes in as it
makes reporting and analysis easier. This rise in data, in turn, increases the use of data
warehouses to manage business data.
The data warehouse (DWH) is a repository where an organization electronically stores
data by extracting it from operational systems, and making it available for ad-hoc queries
and scheduled reporting. In contrast, the process of building a data warehouse entails
designing a data model that can quickly generate insights.
Data stored in the DWH is different from data found in the operational environment. It is
organized so that relevant data is clustered together to facilitate day-to-day operations,
analysis, and reporting. This helps determine the trends over time and allows users to
create plans based on that information. Hence, reinforcing the importance of data
warehouse use in businesses.
Examples of Data Warehousing in Various Industries
Big data has become a vital part of performing data warehousing and business intelligence across
several industries. Let’s go over some of the examples of data warehousing in various sectors that
consider it an essential part of their day-to-day operations.
● Investment and Insurance sector
A data warehouse is primarily used to analyze customer and market trends and other data patterns
in the investment and insurance sector. Forex and stock markets are two major sub-sectors where
data warehouses play a crucial role because a single point difference can lead to massive losses
across the board. DWHs are usually shared in these sectors and focus on real-time data streaming.
● Retail chains
DWHs are primarily used for distribution and marketing in the retail sector to track items,
examine pricing policies, keep track of promotional deals, and analyze customer buying trends.
Retail chains usually incorporate EDW systems for business intelligence and forecasting needs.
● Healthcare
A DWH is used to forecast outcomes, generate treatment reports, and share data with insurance
providers, research labs, and other medical units in the healthcare sector. EDWs are the backbone
of healthcare systems because the latest, up-to-date treatment information is crucial for saving
lives.
Dashboards & Reporting

Reports are static documents that contain data in text and table form. They sometimes include visuals
such as basic graphs and charts but are mostly organized to highlight specific raw numbers or relevant
data sets. Reports are usually delivered to various stakeholders periodically, which means data isn’t
live. One of the attributes of reports is that they allow the creator to build full narratives with data and
optimize its presentation. Additionally, they feature data that is already cleaned, sorted, and parsed.

Dashboards are data visualization tools that can be customized and tailored to display specific
metrics, data, and KPIs. Usually, these tools are dynamic and live, so data is being updated in real-
time and visuals can show changes from minute to minute. Additionally, dashboards can be as narrow
or broad as needed, letting organizations create multiple specific dashboards to better organize their
analytics.
Where once dashboards were reserved for upper management, with the development of self-service
analytics every department across an organization can have access to relevant data. Dashboards can
be broad and overarching or can focus on more narrow aspects of an organization. For example,
human resources may have several specific dashboards for payroll, bonuses, and other functions,
while a marketing department can have dashboards for advertising, website traffic, and average lead
score.
Master data management (MDM)
It is the core process used to manage, centralize, organize, categorize, localize, synchronize
and enrich master data according to the business rules of the sales, marketing and operational
strategies of your company.
Master data management (MDM) is a technology-enabled discipline in which business and
IT work together to ensure the uniformity, accuracy, stewardship, semantic consistency and
accountability of the enterprise’s official shared master data assets. Master data is the
consistent and uniform set of identifiers and extended attributes that describes the core
entities of the enterprise including customers, prospects, citizens, suppliers, sites, hierarchies
and chart of accounts.
Master data can take the form of product, customer, supplier, location and asset information,
in addition to any information sources that drive your business.
The efficient management of master data in a central repository gives you a single
authoritative view of information and eliminates costly inefficiencies caused by data silos.
It supports your business initiatives and objectives through identification, linking and
syndication of information and content across products, customers, stores/locations,
employees, suppliers, digital assets and more.