One of the most common business mistakes is confusing analytics and business intelligence (BI). They are not the same thing, even though they both look at and analyze business data.
Understanding the distinction between these two concepts proves critical, especially when considering vendors that offer analytics and BI tools. Choosing the right software or vendor solution for your data needs is vital for business success.
More importantly, leaders need to know how analytics and BI contribute to the bigger picture — the story of their company’s data.
What Is the Difference between Analytics and BI?
Business analytics answer the why questions. For example, why have sales gone up and down over the past year?
By mining through the data and running some statistical analyses, businesses can predict what will happen to sales, for instance, based on what has already happened. Predictive modeling methods allow companies to make smarter data-driven decisions.
In contrast, BI focuses more on what specific elements contributed to sales. Instead of predicting what will happen, BI digs down into the descriptive-analytical data to provide keen insights on what exactly happened.
While they are different, these tools work together.
BI tools allow professionals to create data spreadsheets and trend reports. Analytics tools use this information to predict what will happen. From clean, meaningful data, professionals can apply analytics methodologies to explore the data and extract valuable insights about different elements of the business.
Does BlueVolt’s Embedded Analytics Suite Offer Analytics and BI?
As of the Winter 2020 release, BlueVolt began offering an embedded analytics suite to customers.
These analytics and BI tools let business owners dig into their data to see the success rates of product training course enrollments, course completions, and eCommerce transactions, just to name a few key data metrics.
For BlueVolt customers who want to know more about using their embedded analytics suite, check out this blog: Top 5 Ways to Leverage Business Intelligence.
If you are not part of the BlueVolt family, but you are ready to discuss the benefits of a channel training platform with an embedded analytics suite, our team members are happy to go over the details. Request a call and we'll be in touch.
