Top 11 Industry Applications of Business Analytics in 2024

jaro education
6, June 2024
10:17 am

Business analytics involves the process of gathering, organising, analysing and interpreting data in order to derive insights that may be utilised to make informed business decisions. This also uses statistical data and quantitative analytics tools to gain relevant insights from data and then use those insights to improve company performance.

There are various applications of business analytics, including finance, customer service, marketing, sales and operations. Organisations can spot correlations, patterns and trends in these areas, allowing them to make more informed decisions and streamline their business operations. Let’s explore the uses of business analytics in 2024, which can help teams and organisations boost their operations and make sound business choices.

Applications/Uses of Business Analytics

The is significant in the following industries:

1. Finance

The finance industry is the most frequent consumer of business analytics. Both big data and business analytics have a significant impact on this sector. Business analytics assists financial institutions in assessing possible investments and determining their risk/reward.

Analytical industry examples, in terms of finance, can be credit card companies. They generate and collect vast amounts of data from their customers, including purchasing habits, financial health, and lifestyle choices. Credit card firms share this information with their business partners, allowing them to build better deals and offer discounts that increase earnings. For instance, a credit card firm can share this data with sellers to help them navigate their target audience and forecast the things their customers wish to purchase. After getting this data, sellers can create appropriate marketing strategies to increase their sales.

2. Agriculture

Although agriculture has been practised for centuries, modern methods such as business analytics and big data are now also employed to enhance productivity. Farmers can leverage business analytics to identify the factors that impact crop growth and plan accordingly for the upcoming season. Applications of business analytics include ensuring farmers can manage their tools and machines while improving their performance based on their needs and generated data.

John Deere, a well-known US-based agricultural company, has begun to provide its farmers with various data-driven services to assist them in making better-informed decisions and advancing their agrarian growth. Companies and customers purchasing products from this agricultural firm also leverage business analytics to improve raw material warehousing, storage and shipping operations. The use of business analytics in agriculture also aids cattle management.

3. Human Resources

Human Resources professionals, such as HR managers and talent acquisition people, use business analytics to improve their recruiting operations. HR organisations have a large number of candidates and clients. Data analytics allows them to review their prospects’ profiles rapidly and efficiently. Besides HR-specific companies, HR professionals in other sectors also use business analytics to anticipate and increase employee retention rates and make appropriate decisions. Businesses use business analytics to make critical HR decisions such as payroll, recruiting, and so on.

4. Education

With the latest advancements, the education industry has also seen an extensive increase in the use of technology. The pandemic also accelerated the need for additional technology implementation, as demand for online learning has increased rapidly. Educational organisations use business analytics to enhance the coursework and learning approaches. Business analytics enables them to provide significant information to improve their teaching techniques and learning experiences. Large schools and universities have begun to use business analytics to optimise bus routes and enhance corporate administration (inventory management, decision-making, etc.).

5. Marketing

Another industry, apart from finance that heavily relies on business analytics is marketing. Companies apply business analytics to evaluate several marketing strategies and determine which produces the best results. It enables them to discover marketing solutions with the best ROI (return on investment), allowing them to plan future promotions appropriately.

For instance, A/B testing is a prevalent business analytics method that allows a company to test two versions of a landing page (or another promotional feature) to discover which works better. The organisation would then delete the poorly performing landing page and replace it with the one that produced the best results.

6. Entertainment & Media

Amazon Prime, Netflix and other streaming platforms use big data and business analytics to improve user experience. They collect and analyse data from their millions of users to customise the suggestions as per user needs, thereby improving the platform’s user experience. A user’s viewing history, genre preferences, and other relevant information all contribute to improving their recommendation algorithms. For instance, Spotify suggests playlists and songs based on the genres, songs, albums and artists the user has listened to or engaged with before.

7. Government & Public Sector

Across the world, governments are utilising business analytics and big data to improve their operations. For example, CEDA (Centre of Excellence for Data Analytics), developed by the Indian government, assists government organisations in generating insights from their data. This body assists government departments in defining their analytic requirements, processing big data and integrating departmental data silos in accordance with the department’s objectives.

Furthermore, CEDA focuses on utilising machine learning algorithms in advanced data analytics. Thus, by implementing business analytics, government bodies and organisations will be able to identify areas for improvement and make the required adjustments.

8. Retail Trading

Business analytics is extensively used in e-commerce, and it forms an integral part of the retail industry. Major e-commerce companies like Amazon use business analytics to tailor customer suggestions, which thereby increase sales. Personalised suggestions assist in increasing sales since customers can locate the things they need more simply and fast. Aside from customisation, business analytics assists retail organisations in determining which items sell the best and why they should improve other products appropriately. For example, a product may sell more due to its location in the shop; therefore, the company might replace it with another one that sells less.

9. Transport

In the transportation and travel industry, business analytics plays a critical role. To monitor and regulate traffic, government agencies initially use business analytics. It assists them in improving route planning and developing intelligent transport systems to properly control overall traffic. As governments begin to integrate new technology, the demand for business analytics in traffic control will rise even higher.

On the other hand, the travel industry uses business analytics to build client profiles and improve user experience. For example, a travel agency may utilise business analytics to determine why a given tourist package fails to produce sales using surveys and consumer feedback and then improve it.

10. Healthcare

In the healthcare industry, business analytics can be used to detect trends in disease outbreaks, analyse patient data and improve patient care and delivery of healthcare solutions. For example, a healthcare provider may utilise business analytics to analyse patient data to find patterns in disease outbreaks and take preventive steps.

Moreover, business analytics can be applied to improving mental health, which many people are not comfortable discussing in the open. While it is frequently difficult to address mental health difficulties in person, there has been a tremendous increase in discussing topics like anxiety and sadness online. Despite important issues and hurdles such as privacy, some studies have successfully used business data to better predict psychological well-being.

11. Logistics

Business analytics has several applications in logistics. A well-known field of business analytics is supply chain analytics, which examines a company’s supply chain (warehousing, transportation, logistics and so on) to identify its weaknesses. Businesses employ business analytics to discover solutions to make their transportation systems more efficient and successful. A more efficient transportation system will save the organisation a significant amount of time and resources when transferring raw materials, completed items, and manufacturing components.

Supply chain analytics may also assist an organisation in cutting storage and warehousing expenses by identifying better alternatives and solutions. It enables them to spot emerging logistics issues and address them before they become major difficulties.

Conclusion

Applications of business analytics are diverse. Business analytics plays a significant role in every department, from using its components in sales and marketing to getting patient data in healthcare. It helps different organisations and teams to gather, organise, and analyse data so that they can make informed decisions, which would help businesses to grow in terms of customer experience and sales. With business analytics, different industries can also spot the latest trends and keep updated to stay relevant in the business.

As you can see, the scope and demand for business analytics are increasing over time. Many sectors and companies have realised the importance of business analytics, and thus they want professionals to extract relevant customer and market data, they can create using new strategies, change plans or eliminate outdated processes.

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