Key Differences Between Business Analysis and Business Analytics

Business analytics and business analysis are often considered interchangeable terms, but they hold slightly diverse meanings. The aim of business analytics is data and reporting—examining past business performance and forecasting future business performance. On the other hand, the business analysis focuses on functions and processes—determining business requirements and suggesting solutions. Although both of these fields incorporate data or system analysis, what is done with the data, and what skill sets are needed by professionals in these fields can vary.

Here’s a quick guide aiding you to figure out the similarities and the primary differences between business analysis and business analytics.

Business Analysis: Definition and Activities

Business analysis is the practice of assisting firms in resolving their technical difficulties by understanding, defining, and solving those issues.

Now, let’s see some of the activities that are carried out while performing Business Analysis:

• Company analysis: Business analysis aims at figuring out the requirements of a firm in general and its strategic direction and determining the initiatives that will enable the business to address those strategic goals.
• Requirements planning and management: It focuses on planning the requirements of the development process, identifying what the top priority is for execution, and managing the changes.
• Requirements elicitation: It outlines techniques for collecting needs from relevant members of the project team.
• Requirements analysis and documentation: It explains how to establish and define the needs in detail to allow them to be effectively carried out by the team.
• Requirements communication: Business analysis explains methods to help stakeholders have a shared understanding of the needs and how they will be carried out.
• Solution assessment and validation: It also explains how a business analyst can execute a suggested solution, how to support the execution of a solution, and how to evaluate possible flaws in the implementation.

Business analysis is performed by Functional Analysts, Systems Analysts, Business Analysts, and Business Requirements Analysts.

Watch this short video from Intellipaat that provides some more insights into business analytics:

Let’s dig deeper into what business analytics is and what its applications are.

Business Analytics: Definition and Its Applications

Business analytics is also known as data analytics. It is a process of collecting, evaluating, and drawing valuable outcomes from the enormous amount of data available. Some widely used applications of Business Analytics are:

• Finance
• Marketing
• HR
• CRM
• Manufacturing
• Banking and Credit Cards

Business analytics is performed by Data Scientists and Data Analysts.

Business Analysis vs Business Analytics

Most people believe that business analysis and analytics are the same, but they are not! Let’s know about the primary differences between business analysis and business analytics:

Business Analysis

• It mainly aims at the methods and determining the business needs.
• It is employed to figure out the organizational needs and possible problems to have productive outcomes.
• Here, the tasks are carried out by Functional Analysts, Systems Analysts, and Business Analysts.
• Business, functional, and domain skills are needed to perform business analysis.
• The architectural domains for business analysis include enterprise architecture, process architecture, technology architecture, and organization architecture.

Business Analytics

• It aims at data and reporting.
• It is widely practiced to reckon further stats and make decisions to bring improvements in the business.
• Here, the tasks are carried out by Data Scientists and Data Analysts.
• Mathematical, statistical, and programming skills are needed for executing business analytics.
• The architectural domains for business analytics include data architecture, technology architecture, and information architecture.

So far, you have clearly understood the difference between business analysis and business analytics in our blog on Business Analytics vs Analysis. Though both business analytics and analysis sound completely different now, they also have some common features, and these are explained below.

Business Analysis vs Analytics: Similarities Explained

Business analysis and business analytics have some commonalities. They both:

• Examine and enhance businesses
• Determine solutions to issues
• Establish things based on the requirements

Business analysis is a practice of identifying business requirements and figuring out solutions to specific business problems. This has a heavy overlap with the analysis of business needs to function normally and to enhance how they function. Sometimes, the solutions include a system’s development feature. It can also incorporate business change, process enhancement or strategic planning, and policy improvement.

On the contrary, business analytics is all about the group of tools, techniques, and skills that help the investigation of previous business performance. It also aids to gain insights into future performance. In general, business analytics aims mostly at data and statistical analysis.

Skills Required to Excel in Business Analytics and Analysis

To excel in the business analysis and analytics domains, there are few skills that one should have. Let’s read about the skills required to pursue a career in the fields of business analytics and business analysis.

Skills Needed to Outstrip in Business Analysis

It is a versatile field, and one needs to be proficient in all skills required to be an expert Business Analyst, who should be good at outlining problems and suggesting solutions to them for an organization.

Here are a few skills that are required to excel in the field of business analysis:

• Basic skills: Proficient in communication, management, research, and problem-solving skills
• Technical knowledge: Understanding software development and IT skills
• Domain skills: Initiation, documentation, and comprehension skills and creativity

Skills Needed to Outstrip in Business Analytics

• Knowledge of statistics: Prior knowledge of statistics is not necessary, but it will be helpful to outshine in the domain of business analytics
• Programming skills: Prior knowledge of programming and proficiency in mathematics
• Data visualization techniques: Transforming large amounts of data into pictures and graphics that are simple to understand
• Presentation skills: Demonstrating the results in a lucid format to a variety of audiences

Conclusion

On a concluding note, it is better to say that both disciplines are essential to successfully run a business. From the blog, we can conclude that business analysis is completely focused on determining the business requirements the firm needs to provide value to the relevant stakeholders. On the other hand, business analytics is mainly aimed at examining past business performance to identify problems and foretelling the future to make business decisions.

Check out the tips and start mastering the skills mentioned in this Difference Between Business Analysis and Business Analytics blog to prepare yourself to pursue a career in this domain.