Data Analysis vs Business Analysis vs Business

Intelligence vs Big Data

Michael Olafusi is a Microsoft Excel expert and experienced trainer. He loves Excel so much

that he quit his job in the Telecoms industry to focus on doing the impossible

with Excel.

He began his career as a Radio Access Engineer for Nokia Siemens Networks,

then as a Business and MIS Analyst for Comviva Technologies doing revenue

and KPI analysis for Airtel Africa CRBT operations in 10 African countries, and

finally moved to 21st Century Technologies as a Performance Analyst and

Service Delivery Lead.

He is the training director of UrBizEge and is planning to revolutionize the

entire business data analysis industry in Nigeria. And he is also the only Excel

MVP in Africa and first ever Excel MVP from Nigeria.

By A Full-Time Business Data Analysis Consultant

Call:0700ANALYTICS

Global Business Is Powered By Data

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Who Needs Our Business Data Analysis Training?

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Finance AnalystsBusiness AnalystsProject ManagersSales Executives

Data Analysis (a.k.a Data Analytics)

What is Data Analysis?

Wikipedia: Data analysis is the process of inspecting, cleaning, transforming, and modeling data with the goal of discovering useful information, suggesting conclusions, and supporting decision-making.

What is Data Analysis?

InvestorWords: Data analysis is the process of extracting, compiling, and modeling raw data for purposes of obtaining constructive information that can be applied to formulating conclusions, predicting outcomes or supporting decisions in business, scientific and social science settings.

What is Data Analysis?

ORI (Office of Research Integrity, USA): Data analysis is the process of systematically applying statistical and/or logical techniques to describe and illustrate, condense and recap, and evaluate data.

What is Data Analysis?

Business Dictionary: Data analysis is the process of evaluating data using analytical and logical reasoning to examine each component of the data provided.

This is Data Analysis

Data Gathering

Data Cleaning/ Transforming

Insights Extraction

What Does A Data Analyst Do?First, they specialize.

There are no ends to tools and mathematical methods to carry out data analysis. From social value based data analysis that a UN data analyst will focus on to customer behavior analysis that an ecommerce data analyst will focus on to the general business data analysis I focus on.

Then they train themselves to be proficient in the tools they need for their chosen field of application.

Should I Go Back To School?To become a data analyst, yes and no.

Yes, you need to learn the foundational principles of data analysis and the general mathematical methods, especially those of importance to the area of specialization you have chosen.

No, because you can learn them without going back to the university. You can do self-study, online course or a class-based crash course.

What Tools Do Data Analysts Use?Generally, they use three categories of tools:

1. Data gathering, storing and retrieval tools

2. Data cleaning, transforming and analyzing tools

3. Data visualization, forecasting and workflow tools

Often, a tool can work across more than one category. Even with all its limitations, Excel can be made to work across all these categories. Then there are R, KNIME, Python, Tableau, Power BI, Alteryx, RapidMiner, Cognos, SPSS, MATLAB etc.

Business Analysis

What is Business Analysis?

IIBA (International Institute of Business Analysis): Business Analysis is the practice of enabling change in an organizational context, by defining needs and recommending solutions that deliver value to stakeholders.

What is Business Analysis?

Wikipedia: Business analysis is a research discipline of identifying business needs and determining solutions to business problems.

What is Business Analysis?

BA Training Solutions: Business Analysis is the task of understanding business change needs, assessing the business impact of those changes, capturing, analyzing and documenting requirements, and supporting the communication and delivery of requirements with relevant stakeholders.

What is Business Analysis?

Business Dictionary: Business analysis is investigation into the operations of a business to expose the causes behind the results achieved, and the effects of those results on the business.

This is Business Analysis

Identify Business Needs

Research Possible Solutions

Recommend and Guide in Implementing Best Solution

What Does A Business Analyst Do?Think about a project manager. He ensures the prompt and within budget delivery of a project. What about before the project? Who determines which company strategic project to embark on? Who researches the options available and which will deliver best result for the company? Who coordinates between the management and other strategic units of the company to drive through a company re-orientating change project?

Answer: The Business Analyst.

Should I Go Back To School?To become a business analyst, no.

It is more of a skill you acquire from professional training classes and on the job experience. It is a lot more like project management, except that it is not so much about meeting set budgets and micro-managing allocated resources. It is more about painting the big picture for everyone in the company and being a central point of contact between management and the other staff in identifying and driving through a strategic change agenda.

What Tools Do Business Analysts Use?First, a lot of good writing and communications skill. You will managing and aligning a lot of divergent opinions/agendas.

For the rest checkout the following books (I recommend the Seven Steps... one as I have it):

Business Intelligence

What is Business Intelligence?

Tech Target: Business intelligence (BI) is a technology-driven process for analyzing data and presenting actionable information to help corporate executives, business managers and other end users make more informed business decisions.

What is Business Intelligence?

Wikipedia: Business intelligence (BI) is a set of techniques and tools for the acquisition and transformation of raw data into meaningful and useful information for business analysis purposes.

What is Business Intelligence?

Gartner: Business intelligence (BI) is an umbrella term that includes the applications, infrastructure and tools, and best practices that enable access to and analysis of information to improve and optimize decisions and performance.

What is Business Intelligence?

OLAP: Business Intelligence (BI) refers to technologies, applications and practices for the collection, integration, analysis, and presentation of business information. The purpose of Business Intelligence is to support better business decision making.

This is Business Intelligence

Automate the Data Analysis Process

Present the Insights To Management

Drive Management Decisions

What Does A BI Analyst Do?Everything the Data Analyst does, automate it all, provide management a high-level report with drill-down capabilities and enable better management decisions.

Note: The BI Analyst has to bring his final output to a level non-technical management staff can relate to and instantly understand.

Should I Go Back To School?To become a business intelligence analyst, yes and no.

For same reasons as the data analyst ones. Only that this time you will need to be more business domain savvy and not too focused on fancy complicated tools. Managers care more about simplicity than complex looking reports that require expert interpretation.

What Tools Do BI Analysts Use?Since BI analysts are focused on driving business decisions with insightful automated reports, they are fortunate to have tools specifically built to achieve that.

Popular ones are Power BI, Tableau, Spotfire, Sisense, Qlik, Domo, Salesforce, SAP, SAS and Birst.

Big Data

What is Big Data?

SAS: Big data is a term that describes the large volume of data – both structured and unstructured – that inundates a business on a day-to-day basis.

What is Big Data?

Wikipedia: Big data is a term for data sets that are so large or complex that traditional data processing applications are inadequate.

What is Big Data?

Gartner: Big data is high-volume, high-velocity and/or high-variety information assets that demand cost-effective, innovative forms of information processing that enable enhanced insight, decision making, and process automation.

What is Big Data?

Webopedia: Big Data is a phrase used to mean a massive volume of both structured and unstructured data that is so large it is difficult to process using traditional database and software techniques.

This is Big Data

image: kavyamuthanna.wordpress.com

What Does A Big Data Analyst Do?Everything the Data Analyst does but on a more complicated level working with data larger than what regular/traditional data analysis tools can handle.

It requires a lot more technical knowledge too and some programming skills.

Should I Go Back To School?To become a big data analyst, yes and no.

For same reasons as the data analyst ones. Only that this time you will need to learn new/emerging tools that can handle big data.

You will also focus a lot more on the technical tools than the other types of analysts (in our comparison).

What Tools Do Big Data Analysts Use?• Hadoop/Spark

• NoSQL Databases

• Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Bluemix, Amazon Web Services

• Python, R, Scala, Java, Hive, Pig

Verdict

Where do you want to belong?

•Data Analyst?•Business Analyst?•BI Analyst?•Big Data Analyst?

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