Data analytics and business intelligence are two intertwined fields, both concerned with extracting knowledge from data to inform decision-making. Data analytics analyses raw data to uncover patterns, trends, and relationships, whilst business intelligence provides historical and current data for business users to understand performance and make informed decisions. Data analytics has a broader scope, exploring hidden patterns and future possibilities. Business intelligence focuses on providing insights for current and past performance.
Books:
- Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data by Charles Wheelan – This book offers a fun and accessible approach to learning statistics. It uses real-world examples to explain statistical concepts in a way that is easy to understand, even for those with no prior knowledge.
- Data Science for Business by Foster Provost and Tom Fawcett – This book bridges the gap between data science and business by providing a practical guide to using data analytics to solve business problems. It covers topics such as data mining, machine learning, and customer analytics.
- Business Intelligence: The Savvy Manager’s Guide by Malcolm Munro – This book provides a comprehensive overview of business intelligence for business managers. It covers topics such as data warehousing, data visualization, and using BI to improve decision-making.
- Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning by Thomas Davenport – This book explores how businesses can use analytics to gain a competitive advantage. It discusses topics such as building a data-driven culture, using analytics to improve customer relationships, and using analytics to drive innovation.
- Storytelling with Data: A Guide for Business Professionals by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic – This book teaches you how to effectively communicate data insights through storytelling. It covers topics such as choosing the right data visualisations, crafting a compelling narrative, and presenting your findings to a non-technical audience.
Articles:
- Business Intelligence and Analytics News, Trends, Analysis – This website offers a running feed of articles on the latest trends and developments in BI and data analytics. It’s a good way to stay up-to-date on what’s happening in the field.
- How business intelligence and data analytics enhance each other – This article explains the complementary nature of BI and data analytics, providing a good foundational understanding of how they work together.
- Big Data Analytics and Business Intelligence in Industry – This research paper explores how big data and advanced analytics are transforming BI in various industries. It provides good insights into the practical applications.
- Business Intelligence: Next-Generation Data Analytics – This article explores the evolution of BI towards incorporating advanced analytics and AI for real-time decision making. It’s a good read to understand the future direction of BI.
- Storytelling with Data: Communicating Effectively with Data Visualisation – This Harvard Business Review article by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, author of the popular book “Storytelling with Data”, emphasizes the importance of data visualization in effectively communicating insights.
Guides:
- DataCamp – Offers various data analytics courses, including free introductory ones. They cover the basics of data wrangling, cleaning, analysis using Python, R, and SQL.
- A Beginner’s Guide to Data Analytics – This guide provides a good starting point, explaining the core concepts, benefits, and process of data analytics.
- Simplilearn – Data Analytics Tutorial for Beginners – This online tutorial offers a step-by-step approach to data analytics, covering topics like using Python for data analysis and exploring data analytics career paths.
- Data Analysis with Python – This guide focuses on using Python for data analysis. It covers data reading, processing using libraries like Pandas and NumPy, and data visualization with Matplotlib.
- Microsoft Power BI for Beginners – This guide, offered by Microsoft itself, provides a great introduction to Power BI, a popular BI platform. It covers the basics of getting started, data import, creating reports and visualizations, and sharing insights.
- Tableau – Business Intelligence Basics – This guide from Tableau, another leading BI platform, offers a comprehensive overview of business intelligence concepts. It covers data warehousing, data visualization best practices, and how BI helps businesses make data-driven decisions.
- Techopedia – Business Intelligence Guide – This guide provides a more technical perspective on BI. It covers various BI tools and technologies, data governance, and best practices for implementing a BI strategy within an organization.
Podcasts:
- The Data Skeptic – This popular podcast covers a wide range of topics in data science and statistics, with a healthy dose of skepticism towards overhyped trends. They frequently discuss applications in business intelligence and data analytics.
- The Analytics Power Hour – Hosted by a group of data analytics experts, this podcast offers insightful discussions on various data analytics topics, from the technical aspects to the business applications.
- The Business of Data Podcast – This podcast focuses on the business side of data, featuring interviews with data and analytics leaders who share their experiences and insights on using data to drive business growth.
- Data Stories Podcast – This podcast explores the stories behind the data, interviewing data storytellers and analysts about how they communicate insights through data visualization and storytelling.
- Leading with Data – While not exclusively focused on BI and data analytics, this podcast frequently discusses using data to drive leadership decisions and foster a data-driven culture in organizations.
Tools:
- RapidMiner – An open-source data mining platform with capabilities for text analytics, text classification, and sentiment analysis.
- MonkeyLearn – A user-friendly text analysis tool that allows you to extract insights from text data like customer reviews, social media posts, and surveys.
- Tableau – A leader in data visualization, Tableau allows you to create interactive dashboards and reports with drag-and-drop functionality. It requires some familiarity with data concepts but offers a user-friendly interface.
- Looker – Known for its ease of use and exploration functionalities, catering to users who want to analyse data without coding.
- SAP BusinessObjects – SAP BusinessObjects is a suite of front-end applications that allow business users to view, sort, and analyse BI data. It offers tools for reporting, data visualization, and dashboard creation. SAP BusinessObjects is known for its robust enterprise-level capabilities and integration with SAP’s other enterprise applications.
- Sisense – Sisense is an end-to-end BI software that enables users to prepare, analyse, and visualize complex data. It is known for its ability to handle large data sets and provides tools for both data preparation and analytics. Sisense also offers embedded analytics and customization options for various use cases.
Data analytics and business intelligence work together. Data analytics provides the raw insights, while business intelligence transforms them into actionable information for business users. Both disciplines are crucial for data-driven decision-making in today’s world.