Business analytics uses sorting, collating, processing, and studying data through iterative methodologies and statistical models to generate meaningful and business-relevant insights. These insights help organisations in solving business problems and increase their revenue, efficiency, and productivity.
Business analytics helps companies make better-informed decisions regarding their finances, daily operations, and many other aspects of their organisation. It’s a highly versatile domain and finds applications in multiple industries.
Read on to find out the applications of business analytics in different industries.
Top 11 Industries Using Business Analytics
1. Energy and Fuel
The energy and fuel sector uses business analytics in multiple aspects of its operations. As these companies deal internationally, the severity of their problems is also very high. Implementation of business analytics allows them to mitigate the risks and reduce the chances of facing any prominent issues.
Business analytics focuses on using data to find insights that an organisation can use to make better-informed decisions. Through its use, they can optimise the transportation of their products and pricing.
Royal Dutch Shell, a prominent energy company and the world’s fourth-largest company by revenue in 2015, has started using analytics to create ‘data-driven oilfields’ to reduce the costs of drilling for oil – the largest expenses for an oil company.
2. Agriculture
Contrary to popular belief, there are many advanced technologies and methods such as big data and business analytics in agriculture. Farmers can use business analytics to understand which factors influence their crops’ growth and accordingly prepare for the next season.
Business analytics and data science can help farmers manage their tools and machines while optimising their performance depending on their requirements and generated data.
A prominent US agricultural company, John Deere, has started offering many data-based services to their farmers to help them make better-informed decisions and enhance their agricultural progress.
Companies and buyers of these crops also employ business analytics to optimise their warehousing, storage, and transportation of raw materials. The application of business analytics in agriculture also helps with livestock management.
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3. Government and Public Sector
Governments all across the world have started using business analytics and data to enhance their operations. For example, the central government has established the CEDA (Centre of Excellence for Data Analytics) to help government organisations to generate insights for their data.
CEDA helps government organisations define their analytic requirements, build the required analytics solutions, integrate departmental data silos and process big data as per the department’s requirements.
CEDA also focuses on using machine learning algorithms for advanced data analytics. Through implementing business analytics, government agencies and organisations can find areas for improvement and make the necessary changes accordingly.
4. Finance
Out of all the industries we have shared in this article, the finance sector is probably the biggest business analytics user. There are numerous applications of business analytics and big data in the finance industry. Business analytics helps finance companies in evaluating potential investments and determine their risk/reward.
Credit card companies generate and gather a ton of data from their customers, such as their financial health, buying preferences, and lifestyle choices. They share this data with their business partners enabling them to create better deals and discount offers to enhance profits.
For example, a credit card company might share such data with retailers, helping them locate their target audience and predict what their customers prefer buying. Then the retailers can leverage this information to devise more accurate marketing strategies.
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5. Education
The education sector has started using a lot of technology recently. The pandemic further fueled the need for more technological implementation in this industry as the demand for online learning solutions rose rapidly.
Education companies use business analytics to optimise their courseware and learning methodologies. Business analytics helps them generate valuable insights to improve their teaching methods and enhance their learning experiences.
Large schools and colleges have started leveraging business analytics to optimise bus routes and improve enterprise management (inventory management, decision-making, etc.).
6. Entertainment and Media
Netflix, Amazon Prime, and many other streaming platforms use business analytics and big data to optimise user experiences. They gather data from their millions of users and analyse it to personalise their recommendations and make their user’s interaction with the platform more enjoyable.
A user’s chosen genres, watch history, and other related data help enhance their recommendation systems. For example, a prominent music-streaming platform, Spotify, suggests songs and playlists according to the songs, albums, genres, and artists a user has listened to or interacted with.
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7. Retail Trading
The most notable use of business analytics in the retail sector is E-commerce. Major E-commerce companies, such as Amazon, employ business analytics to personalise user recommendations and, as a result, enhance their sales.
Personalised recommendations help in increasing sales as users find the products they need much easily and quickly. Apart from personalisation, business analytics helps retail companies understand which products sell the highest and why they should optimise other products accordingly. For example, a particular product might be selling more because of its placement in the store, so they can switch their location with another product that might be selling less.
8. Logistics
Business analytics has many applications in business’ logistics. A prominent branch of business analytics is supply chain analytics, where they analyse the organisation’s supply chain (warehousing, logistics, transport, etc.) and find the weak areas in the same.
Businesses use business analytics to identify techniques that can improve their transportation methods to be more efficient and effective. A more effective transportation solution will help the company save a lot of time and resources in transporting raw materials, finished goods, and manufacturing components.
Supply chain analytics also helps a business reduce storage and warehousing costs by finding better alternatives and solutions. It allows them to identify arising problems in the logistics so they can nip them in the bud.
9. Marketing
Apart from finance, another industry that uses business analytics extensively is marketing. Organisations use business analytics to test out different marketing methods and find the one which offers optimal results. It helps them identify the marketing implementations with the highest ROI (Return on Investment), which allows them to make future promotion plans accordingly.
For example, A/B testing is a prevalent analytics implementation where a company uses two versions of a landing page (or another promotional aspect) and sees which one performs better. Then, the company would remove the landing page that performed poorly and only uses the one which offered the best results.
10. Human Resources
Human resources professionals, such as HR managers and talent acquisition specialists, use business analytics to enhance their recruitment processes. HR companies have numerous candidates and clients. Through data analytics, they can go through their candidates’ profiles quickly and efficiently.
Apart from HR companies, HR professionals in other industries use business analytics to predict and improve their employee retention rate and make decisions accordingly. Business analytics helps companies in making major HR-related decisions regarding payroll, recruitment, etc.
11. Transport
The transport and travel industry uses business analytics in many areas. First, governments employ business analytics to monitor and control traffic. It helps them in optimising route planning and develop intelligent transport systems to manage the general traffic effectively. As governments start implementing more technologies, the demand for business analytics in traffic management will increase further.
On the other hand, travel companies use business analytics to create customer profiles and find ways to optimise their user experiences.
For example, a travel agency might use business analytics to figure out why a specific tourism package fails to generate sales through surveys and customer feedback and optimise the same.
Top Organizations Using Business Analytics in Their Operations
After learning “what are the applications of business analytics,” you should now concentrate on some real-life examples of the use of business analytics. Understand the application of business analytics in various industries with examples from top companies:
Netflix
The application of business analytics in various industries, including the entertainment world, has become immensely popular. Netflix is one of the major streaming giants with innumerable subscribers. The company focuses on the application of business analytics to remain ahead of competitors like Amazon Prime.
Netflix uses methods to increase the average watch time of users on its platform. A user watching 15 hours of content every day is less likely to cancel. Therefore, Netflix focuses on the applications of business analytics to make users complete this watch time.
Netflix enables auto-play, which ensures that the next episode automatically plays until the user opts out. The automatic suggestion enables viewers to spend more time on the platform and also enables Netflix to understand user preferences.
Amazon
Like the power of business analytics in the IT industry, top eCommerce companies are also making use of it. Amazon examines your past purchases, things on your wish list and online shopping basket, product reviews and ratings, and search history. When you add a book to your online shopping basket, related books bought by other customers are also suggested. Amazon does this by using the persuasive power of suggestion to boost sales and improve your shopping experience. Leaving you with more than you came expecting is the goal.
Nissan
Nissan, a big name in the motorsport world, relies on business analytics applications to recruit new talent. The company uses racing video games to hire people. The motorsport company collaborated with Sony to create an annual contest for finding the best gaming racers. The objective is to find the best racers and transform them into real-life racing drivers.
Zara
Zara is one of the biggest fashion brands without a significant budget for marketing. It has primarily emerged victorious in the market with business analytics application. One of Zara’s approaches to using big data analytics is gathering information from Instagram, surveys, and social media. The central nervous system of the company stores all of this information to comprehend the fashion sensibilities of its clients worldwide.
After that, information is compiled in its data center, where analysts process data all day long to support new design releases. Zara is able to create clothing that, as soon as it leaves its stores, becomes a trend because it knows its clients inside and out.
McDonald’s
McDonald’s has also been largely influenced by the applications of business analytics in different sectors. McDonald’s has switched from traditional menus to digital screens. It has given them total control over how, when, and what they display to consumers. The information to be displayed on these screens about food and drink is chosen after conducting a business analysis.
This helps the fast-food chain determine which dishes are more pertinent, timely, and appealing to a sizable client base. Additionally, it tailors the content displayed on the screen according to what’s popular. The data-driven menu and tailored promotions have helped McDonald’s maintain its market share.
How To Start a Career In Business Analytics?
Business analytics has applications in almost every industry, and as the number of companies grows, the demand for business analytics professionals will increase accordingly.
If you’re eager to become a business analytics professional, we recommend checking out some of our popular business analytics courses. They will teach you the necessary skills and help you become a job-ready business analytics professional:
- Executive Post-Graduate Programme in Business Analytics (with LIBA)
- Global Master Certificate in Business Analytics (with Michigan State University)
- Business Analytics Certification Program
- IIT Delhi’s Business Analytics Program
These courses are online, so you can study business analytics from home without leaving your current job or interrupting your studies. Through these courses, you will learn directly from industry experts who will help you understand business analytics’s fundamental concepts and quickly resolve your doubts.
You will also receive access to upGrad’s Student Success Corner, where you get personalised resume feedback, career counselling, and dedicated mentorship to help you prepare for a career in business analytics and get the job of your dreams.
Conclusion
With applications in so many industries, the scope for business analytics in India is very bright. From government departments to E-commerce companies, business analytics helps multiple sectors, and as time goes on, its applications will only increase.
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