Chapter 16 – Quick Reference Guide

Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on the quick reference guide that encapsulates some important related topics. Business analytics refers to the front-end applications that are used within the business intelligence (BI) environment. As opposed to standard reporting applications that report about the mechanics of running of a business, business analytics provide an insight into the process of improving the business. Business analytics can incorporate applications, such as human productivity analytics, business productivity analytics, sales channel analytics, supply chain analytics, and behavior analysis associated with analyzing customers and their behaviors. Business analytic applications use or extract data from the central data warehouse and either formulate an interactive analytical process by providing access to different focused aspects of the data (as separated into individual subject area data marts) or manage their own views of the data internally. The chapter describes that the words “data” and “information” are used interchangeably. Data is a collection of raw value elements or facts used for calculating, while information is the result of collecting and organizing data in a way that establishes relationships among data items, which in turn provides context and meaningful reasoning or measuring; knowledge is the concept of understanding information based on recognized patterns in a way that provides an insight to information.