Table of Contents

Introduction............................................................................................................................................................2
Discussion:..............................................................................................................................................................3
Conclusion:.............................................................................................................................................................7
References:.............................................................................................................................................................9

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Implications of Predictive Analytics and Reporting in
Business Analytics
Introduction

In the realm of data science businesses are transforming through digital revolution,
companies with advanced and data-based approach are very popular and competitive
because in this digital world data is everything. Analysis and extraction of raw data can lead
to an unimaginable stage, there are different subject matters have been introduced in
educational institutions, which enable the students and professionals to become beneficial for
different sectors and also for themselves. Research groups in data based are working day in
and out to introduce new ways to tackle the issues related data and its complications. In small
to large scale businesses, there is a department or an individual which gather the data and
analyze it. After analyzing that they provide the filtered data or information to the concerned
authority which make decisions by knowing market trends, customers and stakeholder’s
needs through data analyzation. Analytics is the process of finding, inspecting and drawing
the purposeful meaning of large-scale data. Analytics in business or business analytics can
be defined as the attributes, experiences, software applications and information systems used
to analyze the past performance of the business to make the planning and decision-making
process effective. Business analytics has proven to be quite effective subject matter for
different giant companies, data driven decisions are quite accurate for the growth of business
and customer satisfaction. Customer centered approaches can be driven, which will enable
the businesses to evolve with making the customer satisfaction top priority. Predictive
analytics is actually gathering the past and present data, analyzing it to forecast the business
operations. It will lead a business to attract, grow and retain their loyal customers. Forecasting
the business operations and making decisions on the basis of predictive analytics is very
effective way because a few of the companies are using this approach, it can improve
operations, decisions, lead to manage resources as per data concluded by this approach.

Predictive analytics is a new and very effective approach to for forecasting the future and
enables the businesses to grow by predicting and planning the future. Businesses are using
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predictive analytics tools like data science, data mining, machine learning and artificial
intelligence to gather the data, filter it and then predict or plan for the future approaches
(Delen & Ram 2018). Futuristic approach to a business is a new way towards business
operations and successful management, businesses can now understand their customer’s
needs, market competitiveness, and external risks by using the tools of predictive analytics.
Predictive analytics have many benefits for a business, some of them but not limited to are:
by predictive analytics companies can control and protect themselves from future risks and
damages, understand the business dynamics in the recent and future market, and make the
most of available data which will lead the business to flow in a streamline (Rajni & Malaya
2015). Adoption of the predictive analytics can be very beneficial for the companies but at the
same time it can be so risky because of the cyber threats and cost. There are many sectors
which have adopted predictive analytics including business and education. Business reporting
is considered to be diverse and beneficial for the company and its decision makers. It guides
the company financially and in the management decisions, decision makers would be given a
report to analyze the operational and financial conditions of the company to make a correct
and sound decision. Effective and agile information system can generate a very sound report
and make the way to a successful business operations and customer retention (Wixom et al.
2013).

The purpose of this research report is to review the previously written literature on this topic,
understand the true essence of business analytics, predictive analytics, and reporting in
business analytics. The objective of this report is to access the situation of companies which
are implying business analytics, predictive analytics, reporting and their implications in the
business analytics as a whole.

Discussion:

Business analytics is the development and application of information and insight to assist a
company's strategic and tactical business objectives through data driven decision making
(Kumar & Garg 2018). There are many subsystems which business analytics includes some
of them are: decision management, business intelligence, data management, content
management, content analytics, planning, forecasting the future by past and present data,
predictive analytics, discovering and exploration by gathered data, stream computing,
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warehousing of data, integration of information and governing through data (Kumar & Garg
2018). Due to rapid digital transformation, business analytics has been a hot research area
for research groups, businesses, and business practitioners. Nowadays a lot of transactions
are made digitally which enables the business to collect and analyze the data, make sense of
data and understand the cost benefit applications of business analytics (Agarwal & Dhar
2014). Business analytics benefits the organization by enhancing its performance, directly
increase the profitability, guide to a better decision-making process, make aware of resources
and produce strategies for the successful resource planning, make the decision-making
process easy and rapid, decrease the risks and increase the competitive advantage (CGMA
report 2016). Adoption or implementation of business analytics can be so risky in the form of
not understanding the cost and risk or advantages. There has been surveyed by a research
group by which they concluded that the hindrance to adopt or implement business advantage
is unfamiliarity with digital world, lesser understanding of advantages of business analytics.
(Ram et al. 2016) suggested that business analytics can quite beneficial but there are many
companies who don’t know about the importance of it and expose themselves to open market
without analyzing the situation (Parks & Thambusamy 2017).

Predictive analytics is a word that is mostly used in relation to statistical and analytical
procedures. Statistics, optimization techniques, database and machine learning are tools
used to create this process. Its origins can be traced back to classical statistics. It makes
predictions based on present and historical data. Predictive analytics models can be used to
forecast future occurrences and changeable behavior. Predictive analytics methods are
generally used to assign a grade. A higher number implies a higher possibility of an event
occurring, whereas a smaller number implies a lesser probability of an event (Azeroual &
Theel 2018). These frameworks use chronological and operational patterns from data to solve
a wide range of corporate and academic challenges. These methods are important for
recognizing the threats and opportunities for each individual consumer, worker, or supervisor
in a company. Predictive analytics models have prevailed in this discipline as interest in
decision support solutions grow. There are substantial number of terminologies attached to
analytics. Three broad categories in which one can differentiate or categorize all the analytics
(Sree & Pranathi 2015), which are given below:

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  Descriptive Analytics: In this organizations pave their way to analyzation of the data, by
this companies just collect the data, prepare it and then analyze the data to get the
favorable results. In this only historical or past data is all that matters, companies don’t
think out of the box they just ready to be on present.
 Predictive Analytics: As it is prominent from its name that it predicts the future, like
companies collect the data, analyze it and through predictive analytics they analyze
past or historical and present data to forecast the future. This method can improve the
operations and provide financial growth in a substantial way.
 Perspective Analytics: This is the combination of both descriptive and predictive
analytics; it controls what will have to be happen it is like anything business make it
happen in its own way.

From them one can get the whole idea of analytics and its advantages, the idea of predictive
analytics originated from artificial intelligence because artificial intelligence has a way to
predict and do things beyond one’s expectations. Artificial intelligence can predict on the
basis of collected and refrained data (The Management Accountant 2012). Data science is an
application of artificial intelligence and being used by every large-scale business sector. Afiniti
an artificial intelligence-based software and data company which is using artificial intelligence
for customer call centers for its clients. The process is they are using data science or they use
artificial intelligence to connect the call of customer with representative which he/she already
spoken and had sale or purchase. They are implying previous and present data to connect
that call in future. It is a case study of usage of artificial intelligence for the improvement of
business, customer retention and financial growth (NĂstase & Stoica 2010). Predictive
analytics is composed of many research fields or tools like data mining, data science, artificial
intelligence, machine learning, database management system, learning analytics and
business analytics. The utmost purpose of predictive analytics is to provide concrete and
accurate information, insights which should be used for the uplifting of the business, generate
the best outcomes, lead to informed and effective decisions, forecast the future through data
analyzation, value the large amount of data which will lead a company to get its competitive
advantage (Liu 2015). There are many definitions and description of predictive analytics but
the concrete definition is that it is an approach which use the excessive amount of data,
analyze that data statistically and quantitatively, produce the explanations and models to
define those results and make that process easy for the decision makers for the businesses,
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and at the end it should generate informed decisions for the managers and concerned
departments of the businesses (Shanks et al. 2013). It is also serving the businesses
throughout decision making process, connects the intelligence with the data. Predictive
analytics can be breakdown into following segments: mining of data, alerts and patterns for
recognition, modeling of predictiveness, forecasting the future, and analysis of the root cause
of the system.

Reporting is the form of collection, formation, and distribution of huge data into quite
understandable form, it is a form of presentation of collected and analyzed data which will
lead a company to an informed decision-making process (Spies 2010). Reporting in business
analytics can be understood as in the form of manual or digital report, dashboards, and
analytical reports which are presentable at the final stage or after the launch of product to
understand the feedback of customers, make changes according to needs of customers and
work on suggestions collected by customers. It is quite inevitable for the successful
businesses to not to prefer informed decisions, but it only be achieved by using business
reporting. Reporting at any stage for business is quite crucial because it produces exceptional
patterns for the business through data and presentation of the data. Reporting contains
dashboards which are composed of visualizations, images, texts and different substances to
deliver information, it is very comprehensive and coherent way to communicate the
information and deliver the information according to the needs of relevant companies (Chae &
Olson 2013). In business analytics its implications are quite amazing because it provides
understandable and presentable information in a very concise manner. Reporting in business
is a very good way to communicate with customer and it answer each question on the daily
basis as provided by stakeholders or customers. It is a centralized process where each
information comes from a central or single source which leads a company or business,
analyzation is visualized by this process which enables the business owners to see and act
accordingly. Reporting can be understandable by an example of financial statements shared
by the concerned department annually which is composed of texts, images, calculations, and
visualized graphs through which decision maker or concerned department can understand the
flow of whole year and act on the decisions accordingly. The financial statements only favor
the business and its decision makers but reporting model should be wholesome which can
understand the customer needs, suggestions, risks, competencies, and opportunities. Self-
serving reporting can be the solution of this problem because it provides customers full
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authority to build their own report and company can act according to the report put forward by
the customers. This is a limited process because it authorizes the customers but some of the
customers don’t know the gentleness of the data and they can manipulate that data according
to their ill intentions, such as many propaganda groups can spread the private data and
expose the business and defame the business which is quite easy for those due to excess
authority of social media platforms (Sharda et al. 2013). One can easily abuse the power
given by any business. It is commonly taken as the representation of information like what
happened at that specific area or at that specific business, also it provides information to the
businesses to spend the revenue next month/year according the report which has been
presented this month. Business should use this reporting process for their companies to stay
updated and in business analytics is a very important process which leads to an informed and
critical decision-making process.

Conclusion:
Business analytics provides a wide range of services to different sectors like businesses,
academia, industries etcetera. It comes under business intelligence and information systems,
companies should use this approach to maximize their revenue, insights and produce
futuristic approach which is provided by business analytics. Adopting the business analytics is
not risky but as suggested by previous studies and surveys, businesses and individuals failed
to adopt it because they don’t know the importance of business analytics and if informed, they
adopt it happily. The implications of predictive analytics in the business analytics are; it
provides future forecasting to the businesses, maximize their productions, increase
profitability, and lead to an informed decision-making process. Predictive analytics is quite
effective for the businesses because it not only provides future forecasting but also generates
ideas through artificial intelligence, machine learning and data mining which ease the
businesses to understand the needs of customer, provides customer retention and generates
new customer by providing them deserving solutions to their problems. It increases
company’s sight and customer satisfaction, which leads the companies to grow along with
customer satisfaction. There are many businesses and industries which are using predictive
analytics to grow their business and satisfy the customers like it is already mentioned
previously the example of Afiniti. Reporting in business analytics is a comprehensive way to
present the collected in different forms i.e., texts, images, dashboards, and so on. It is a

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simple and elegant way to present the data set which leads the decision makers to make
informed decisions. It is a final form of document composed of huge data but its presentation
should be quite simple and easy to understand, it provides a way to interact with customers
directly and solve their problems on regular basis, which provides the company an opportunity
to satisfy its customers and increase its economic growth. There are some models of
reporting which are business centric but they should be customer centric like they should
include reporting directly from the customers, it is quite controversial process because there
are many customers which are not loyal to the business so they can manipulate the data and
defame the business. The implications of reporting in business analysis can be beneficial in
many ways like it can provide easy form of information to business like annual financial
statements which define the performance of whole year, through financial statements can
estimate their investments, expenditures, monthly and yearly revenue and make decisions on
the data which has been provided by financial statements. Predictive analytics and reporting
can prove to be game changer if they utilized wisely, they are cost benefit, effective in many
ways, increase the profitability and decrease the risks. Forecasting of the future can save the
companies from future risks and they can make informed decisions which open the new ways
for the business and individuals.

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