Understanding Analytics and Big Data

Big Data analytics refer to the process of collecting, organizing and

analyzing large sets of data to identify patterns and other important
information. An analysis of Big Data helps organizations to take
strategic decisions based on the information extracted from Big
Data. For example, sales data can be analyzed to decide whether or
not a product should be sold in a particular month based on the
product’s sales trend in that month. Generally, Organizations
require the information that comes after analyzing the data. As you
know, data is available in structured and unstructured formats. So it
becomes a challenge for organizations to perform data analysis. The
data of different formats is collected, combined and then analyzed.
The focus of this study would be to help you understand what
characterizes analysis and why it is required. This study will also
discuss a variety of concepts related to creating a great analysis.
Comparing Reporting and Analysis
A very common mistake organizations make is to relate reporting with
analysis. An organization often requires both reporting and analysis to
explore new business insights from Big Data. For this, it is essential to
know the difference between a report and an analysis.

Reporting is process in which data is organized and summarized in an

easy to understand format. Reports enable organizations to monitor
various performance parameters and improve customer satisfaction.

Analysis is a process in which data and reports are examined to get

insights from them. These insights help an organization to perform
important tasks in a timely manner, such as planning a new strategy,
taking important business decisions, introducing a new product, and
improving customer satisfaction.
In simple words, reporting can be considered as a process in which
raw data is transformed into useful information and analysis as a
process that transforms information in to insights.

Reporting is used as a tool to monitor the day to day business

operations of an organization. A good report enables an organization
to ask the most relevant questions related to the business and
customers. Analysis , on the other hand, enables organizations to
answer these questions based on summarized data at a deeper level
and thereby find ways to implement the insights. However, there
exists one major difference between them. Reports enable an
organization to understand what is happening but analysis helps an
organization understand why it is happening and what action can be
taken for it.
Reporting
A reporting environment is also known as a Business Intelligence (BI)
environment. Such an environment enables users to select and view
reports, run them, and view the results. Reports might contain
various visual elements to aid understandability, including graphs,
charts, and tables. The key factors that define a report are as follows:
 They provide data that the user has been asking for.
 They provide the data in a predefined format for easy
understandability.
 They show the stakeholders what had happened in the past.
 They allow the data analyst to define several pieces of data with
few indices.
As a result, reports are quite inflexible. Different prompts and filters
can be used to create complex report templates. The user usually fills
information in the prompts and filters that are already in place.
Analysis
An analysis refers to a process that involves a person trying to
solve problem, finding the data required to obtain the required
answer. Analyzing the data, and interpreting the results to
suggest a recommended course of action.
The following are the important points that define an analysis.
 It provides answers to the questions being raised.
 It provides the steps required to get answers to the questions.
 The analysis is specific to the questions being addressed.
 Analysis requires a person who guides the process.
The main difference between reporting
and analysis:
Reporting
Provides data
Provides what is asked for
satisfying stakeholders
Is typically standardized in format
Does not involve a person as it is
generated automatically
Is fairly inflexible as a rigid
format is used
Analysis
Provides answers to questions
Provides what is needed to take
strategic decisions
Is typically customized in the
form of text or reports
Involves a person leading the
process
Is extremely flexible as it can be
defined in any format
In Big Data, analytics is viewed from two perspectives:
 Decision-oriented analysis: This approach is also called the
traditional business intelligence approach. Here, analysis try
to use the results of the analysis in the process of making
business decisions.
 Action-oriented analysis: This approach is used when a rapid
response or an action is expected to a critical situation. In
this type of analysis, a particular pattern emerges or specific
types of data are detected and an appropriate action is
required to be taken. For example, if sales data is analyzed,
you may find negative or missing values that need to be taken
care of by taking the appropriate action.
The Analytic Process
An analytics process contains all or some of the following phases:
1. Business understanding – The first phase involves identifying
and understanding the business objectives. It deals with the problems
to be solved and decisions to be made. The main goal is to enhance
business profitability. Once the business objectives are determined,
the analysts evaluate the situation, and identify the data mining goals.
According to the defined goals, a project plan is created between the
analytics team and the IT or development team.
2. Data collection – The process of collecting data is an important
task in executing a project plan accurately. In this phase, data from
different data sources is collected first and then described in terms of
its application and need of the project. This process is also called data
exploration. Exploration of data is required to ensure the quality of
the collected data.
3. Data preparation – From the data thus collected, unnecessary
or unwanted data is to be removed in this phase. In other words, the
data must be prepared for the purpose of analysis.
4. Data modelling – In this phase, a model is created by using a
data modelling technique. The data model is used to analyze the
relationships between different selected objects in the data. Test cases
are created to assess the applicability of model and data is structured
according to the model.
5. Data evaluation – The results obtained from different test cases
are evaluated and reviewed for errors. After validating the results,
analysis reports are created for determining the next plan of action.
6. Deployment – In this phase, the plan is finalized for deployment.
The deployed plan is constantly checked for errors and maintenance.
This process is also termed as reviewing of the project.
Types of Analytics
When you decide to dive into Big Data analysis, you must first identify the
problem that you are trying to solve. To solve that problem, you might have
a lot of data from which valuable insights can be derived. Further, important
patterns may emerge out of that data.
You must know what you are interested in. For example, are you interested
in analyzing customer behaviour patterns? Or do you want to analyze your
system log data to predict when problems are likely to occur? In order to
solve these problems, four types of Big Data analytics are used. These are as
follows:
 Prescriptive: It finds the best course of action for a given situation.
 Predictive: In this type of analytics, the future is predicted on the basis of
past patterns.
 Diagnostic: This analytics determines what has happened in the past and
why.
 Descriptive: It helps in determining what is happening at the present
time.
When analyzing data, you can also categorize Big Data analytics as follows:
 Basic analytics: Basic analytics is used to explore the data whose value is
not known. In other words, the data may or may not prove to be useful.
Basic analytics usually involves visualizations of sample statistics. This
type of analytics is used specially when a lot of disparate data needs to
be analyzed. The process of basic analytics includes investigating what
happened, when it happened, and its impact.
 Advanced analytics: It is not just confined to answering questions such
as what happened, when it happened, and its impact. It goes one step
beyond by finding the cause for what has happened and the measures
that can be taken to avoid it from happening again in the future.
 Operational analytics: It means making analytics an important part of
business process.
 Monetized analytics: It helps business to take important and better
decisions and earn revenues.
Characteristics of Big Data Analysis
There are few additional characteristics of Big Data analysis besides the 3Vs-
Volume, Velocity and Variety, that make it different from traditional analysis.
 It can be programmatic – Big Data analysts must use code to handle raw data.
Analysts can use the code to manipulate or explore data. This is specially
useful when you have large volumes of data.
 It can be data driven – A hypothesis driven approach is used by several
analysts to develop a premise and gather data to see if the premise is correct
or not. However, Big Data uses a large volume of data to drive the analysis.
 It can use a lot of attributes – Analysts is the past used hundreds of attributes
of the data set for analysis, and today Big Data uses thousands of attributes
and millions of observations to conduct analysis.
 It can be iterative – Big Data analysts use iterations on models that provide
more computational power. These models allow the analysts to do iterations
to the required level of analysis. Because of this, new applications are
designed and developed to analyze requirements and time frames to
complete the analysis.
Thank You…