Analytics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to navigationJump to search
For the ice hockey term, see Analytics (ice hockey).
Analytics is the discovery, interpretation, and communication of meaningful patterns in data; and
the process of applying those patterns towards effective decision making. In other words,
analytics can be understood as the connective tissue between data and effective decision
making, within an organization. Especially valuable in areas rich with recorded information,
analytics relies on the simultaneous application of statistics, computer
programming and operations research to quantify performance.
Organizations may apply analytics to business data to describe, predict, and improve business
performance. Specifically, areas within analytics include predictive analytics, prescriptive
analytics, enterprise decision management, descriptive analytics, cognitive analytics, Big Data
Analytics, retail analytics, supply chain analytics, store assortment and stock-keeping
unit optimization, marketing optimization and marketing mix modeling, web analytics, call
analytics, speech analytics, sales force sizing and optimization, price and promotion modeling,
predictive science, credit risk analysis, and fraud analytics. Since analytics can require extensive
computation (see big data), the algorithms and software used for analytics harness the most
current methods in computer science, statistics, and mathematics.[1]

Traffic analysis of English Wikipedia itself

Contents

 1Analytics vs. analysis

 2Application of analytics
o 2.1Marketing optimization
o 2.2People analytics
o 2.3Portfolio analytics
o 2.4Risk analytics
o 2.5Digital analytics
o 2.6Security analytics
o 2.7Software analytics
 3Challenges
 4Risks
 5See also
 6References
  7External links

Analytics vs. analysis[edit]

This section may be confusing or unclear to readers. In particular, it is
still not clear what the difference between analytics and analysis is. Please
help us clarify the section . There might be a discussion about this on the
talk page. (March 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Analysis is focused on understanding the past; what happened. Analytics focuses on why it
happened and what will happen next.[2]
Data analytics is a multidisciplinary field. There is extensive use of computer skills, mathematics
and statistics, the use of descriptive techniques and predictive models to gain valuable
knowledge from data.[citation needed]. The insights from data are used to recommend action or to guide
decision making rooted in business context. Thus, analytics is not so much concerned with
individual analyses or analysis steps, but with the entire methodology[according to whom?]. There is a
pronounced tendency to use the term analytics in business settings e.g. text analytics vs. the
more generic text mining to emphasize this broader perspective.[citation needed] There is an increasing
use of the term advanced analytics,[citation needed] typically used to describe the technical aspects of
analytics, especially in the emerging fields such as the use of machine learning techniques
like neural networks, Decision Tree, Logistic Regression, linear to multiple regression analysis,
Classification to do predictive modeling. It also includes Unsupervised Machine learning
techniques like cluster analysis, Principal Component Analysis, segmentation profile analysis and
association analysis[citation needed].

Application of analytics[edit]
Marketing optimization[edit]
Marketing has evolved from a creative process into a highly data-driven process. Marketing
organizations use analytics to determine the outcomes of campaigns or efforts and to guide
decisions for investment and consumer targeting. Demographic studies, customer segmentation,
conjoint analysis and other techniques allow marketers to use large amounts of consumer
purchase, survey and panel data to understand and communicate marketing strategy.
Web analytics allows marketers to collect session-level information about interactions on a
website using an operation called sessionization. Google Analytics is an example of a popular
free analytics tool that marketers use for this purpose. Those interactions provide web analytics
information systems with the information necessary to track the referrer, search keywords,
identify IP address, and track activities of the visitor. With this information, a marketer can
improve marketing campaigns, website creative content, and information architecture.
Analysis techniques frequently used in marketing include marketing mix modeling, pricing and
promotion analyses, sales force optimization and customer analytics e.g.: segmentation. Web
analytics and optimization of web sites and online campaigns now frequently work hand in hand
with the more traditional marketing analysis techniques. A focus on digital media has slightly
changed the vocabulary so that marketing mix modeling is commonly referred to as attribution
modeling in the digital or marketing mix modeling context.
These tools and techniques support both strategic marketing decisions (such as how much
overall to spend on marketing, how to allocate budgets across a portfolio of brands and the
marketing mix) and more tactical campaign support, in terms of targeting the best potential
customer with the optimal message in the most cost effective medium at the ideal time.
People analytics[edit]
People Analytics is using behavioral data to understand how people work and change how
companies are managed.[3]
People analytics is also known as workforce analytics, HR analytics, talent analytics, people
insights, talent insights, colleague insights, human capital analytics, and HRIS analytics.[4] HR
analytics is the application of analytics to help companies manage human resources.[citation
needed]
The aim is to discern which employees to hire, which to reward or promote, what
responsibilities to assign, and similar human resource problems.[5] HR analytics is becoming
increasingly important to understand what kind of behavioral profiles would succeed and fail. For
example, an analysis may find that individuals that fit a certain type of profile are those most
likely to succeed at a particular role, making them the best employees to hire.
However, there are key differences between people analytics and HR analytics. "People
Analytics solves business problems. HR Analytics solves HR problems. People Analytics looks at
the work and its social organization. HR Analytics measures and integrates data about HR
administrative processes," says Ben Waber, MIT Media Lab Ph.D. and CEO
of Humanyze.[6] Josh Bersin, founder and principal at Bersin by Deloitte agrees that people
analytics is a larger industry than HR Analytics, explaining, "… over time, I believe it doesn't even
belong within HR. While it may reside in HR to begin with, over time this team takes responsible
for analysis of sales productivity, turnover, retention, accidents, fraud, and even the people-
issues that drive customer retention and customer satisfaction… These are all real-world
business problems, not HR problems."[7]
Portfolio analytics[edit]
A common application of business analytics is portfolio analysis. In this, a bank or lending
agency has a collection of accounts of varying value and risk. The accounts may differ by the
social status (wealthy, middle-class, poor, etc.) of the holder, the geographical location, its net
value, and many other factors. The lender must balance the return on the loan with the risk of
default for each loan. The question is then how to evaluate the portfolio as a whole.
The least risk loan may be to the very wealthy, but there are a very limited number of wealthy
people. On the other hand, there are many poor that can be lent to, but at greater risk. Some
balance must be struck that maximizes return and minimizes risk. The analytics solution may
combine time series analysis with many other issues in order to make decisions on when to lend
money to these different borrower segments, or decisions on the interest rate charged to
members of a portfolio segment to cover any losses among members in that segment.
Risk analytics[edit]
Predictive models in the banking industry are developed to bring certainty across the risk scores
for individual customers. Credit scores are built to predict individual's delinquency behavior and
widely used to evaluate the credit worthiness of each applicant. Furthermore, risk analyses are
carried out in the scientific world and the insurance industry. It is also extensively used in
financial institutions like Online Payment Gateway companies to analyse if a transaction was
genuine or fraud. For this purpose they use the transaction history of the customer. This is more
commonly used in Credit Card purchase, when there is a sudden spike in the customer
transaction volume the customer gets a call of confirmation if the transaction was initiated by
him/her. This helps in reducing loss due to such circumstances.
Digital analytics[edit]
Digital analytics is a set of business and technical activities that define, create, collect, verify or
transform digital data into reporting, research, analyses, recommendations, optimizations,
predictions, and automations.[8] This also includes the SEO (search engine optimization) where
the keyword search is tracked and that data is used for marketing purposes. Even banner ads
and clicks come under digital analytics. A growing number of brands and marketing firms rely on
digital analytics for their digital marketing assignments, where MROI (Marketing Return on
Investment) is an important key performance indicator (KPI).
Security analytics[edit]
Security analytics refers to information technology (IT) to gather and analyze security events to
understand and analyze events that pose the greatest risk.[9] Products in this area
include security information and event management and user behavior analytics.
Software analytics[edit]
Main article: Software analytics
Software analytics is the process of collecting information about the way a piece of software is
used and produced.

Challenges[edit]
In the industry of commercial analytics software, an emphasis has emerged on solving the
challenges of analyzing massive, complex data sets, often when such data is in a constant state
of change. Such data sets are commonly referred to as big data. Whereas once the problems
posed by big data were only found in the scientific community, today big data is a problem for
many businesses that operate transactional systems online and, as a result, amass large
volumes of data quickly.[10]
The analysis of unstructured data types is another challenge getting attention in the industry.
Unstructured data differs from structured data in that its format varies widely and cannot be
stored in traditional relational databases without significant effort at data
transformation.[11] Sources of unstructured data, such as email, the contents of word processor
documents, PDFs, geospatial data, etc., are rapidly becoming a relevant source of business
intelligence for businesses, governments and universities.[12] For example, in Britain the discovery
that one company was illegally selling fraudulent doctor's notes in order to assist people in
defrauding employers and insurance companies,[13] is an opportunity for insurance firms to
increase the vigilance of their unstructured data analysis. The McKinsey Global Institute
estimates that big data analysis could save the American health care system $300 billion per
year and the European public sector €250 billion.[14]
These challenges are the current inspiration for much of the innovation in modern analytics
information systems, giving birth to relatively new machine analysis concepts such as complex
event processing, full text search and analysis, and even new ideas in presentation.[15] One such
innovation is the introduction of grid-like architecture in machine analysis, allowing increases in
the speed of massively parallel processing by distributing the workload to many computers all
with equal access to the complete data set.[16]
Analytics is increasingly used in education, particularly at the district and government office
levels. However, the complexity of student performance measures presents challenges when
educators try to understand and use analytics to discern patterns in student performance, predict
graduation likelihood, improve chances of student success, etc. For example, in a study involving
districts known for strong data use, 48% of teachers had difficulty posing questions prompted by
data, 36% did not comprehend given data, and 52% incorrectly interpreted data.[17] To combat
this, some analytics tools for educators adhere to an over-the-counter data format (embedding
labels, supplemental documentation, and a help system, and making key package/display and
content decisions) to improve educators' understanding and use of the analytics being
displayed.[18]
One more emerging challenge is dynamic regulatory needs. For example, in the banking
industry, Basel III and future capital adequacy needs are likely to make even smaller banks adopt
internal risk models. In such cases, cloud computing and open source programming
language R can help smaller banks to adopt risk analytics and support branch level monitoring
by applying predictive analytics.[citation needed]

Risks[edit]
This article possibly contains original research. Please improve
it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements
consisting only of original research should be removed. (March 2015) (Learn
how and when to remove this template message)

The main risk for the people is discrimination like price discrimination or statistical
discrimination. See Scientific American book review of "Weapons of math destruction"
There is also the risk that a developer could profit from the ideas or work done by users, like this
example: Users could write new ideas in a note taking app, which could then be sent as a
custom event, and the developers could profit from those ideas. This can happen because the
ownership of content is usually unclear in the law.[19]
If a user's identity is not protected, there are more risks; for example, the risk that private
information about users is made public on the internet.
In the extreme, there is the risk that governments could gather too much private information, now
that the governments are giving themselves more powers to access citizens' information.
Further information: Telecommunications data retention

See also[edit]
 Analysis
 Analytic applications
 Architectural analytics
 Behavioral analytics
 Business analytics
 Business intelligence
 Cloud analytics
 Complex event processing
 Continuous analytics
 Cultural analytics
 Customer analytics
 Dashboard
 Data mining
 Data presentation architecture
 Embedded analytics
 Learning analytics
 List of software engineering topics
 Mobile Location Analytics
 News analytics
 Online analytical processing
 Online video analytics
 Operational reporting
 Operations research
 Predictive analytics
 Predictive engineering analytics
 Prescriptive analytics
 Semantic analytics
 Smart grid
 Social analytics
 Software analytics
 Speech analytics
 Statistics
 User behavior analytics
 Visual analytics
 Web analytics
 Win–loss analytics

References[edit]
 1. ^ Kohavi, Rothleder and Simoudis (2002). "Emerging Trends in
Business Analytics". Communications of the ACM. 45 (8): 45–
48. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.13.3005. doi:10.1145/545151.545177.
2. ^ "Analysis vs. Analytics: Past vs. Future".
3. ^ lukem (2016-11-04). "People Analytics: Transforming
Management with Behavioral Data". Programs for Professionals |
MIT Professional Education. Retrieved 2018-04-03.
4. ^ "[VIDEO] The Difference Between People Analytics and HR
Analytics". Analytics in HR. 2018-03-08. Retrieved 2018-04-03.
5. ^ "People analytics - University of Pennsylvania". Coursera.
6. ^ "People Analytics: MIT July 24, 2017". HR Examiner. 2017-08-
02. Retrieved 2018-04-03.
7. ^ Bersin, Josh. "The Geeks Arrive In HR: People Analytics Is
Here". Forbes. Retrieved 2018-04-03.
8. ^ Phillips, Judah "Building a Digital Analytics Organization"
Financial Times Press, 2013, pp 7–8.
9. ^ "Security analytics shores up hope for breach detection".
Enterprise Innovation. Retrieved April 27, 2015.
10. ^ Naone, Erica. "The New Big Data". Technology Review, MIT.
Retrieved August 22,2011.
11. ^ Inmon, Bill; Nesavich, Anthony (2007). Tapping Into
Unstructured Data. Prentice-Hall. ISBN 978-0-13-236029-6.
12. ^ Wise, Lyndsay. "Data Analysis and Unstructured Data".
Dashboard Insight. Retrieved February 14, 2011.
13. ^ "Fake doctors' sick notes for Sale for £25, NHS fraud squad
warns". London: The Telegraph. 26 August 2008. Retrieved 16
September 2011.
14. ^ "Big Data: The next frontier for innovation, competition and
productivity as reported in Building with Big Data". The Economist.
May 26, 2011. Archived from the original on 3 June 2011.
Retrieved May 26, 2011.
15. ^ Ortega, Dan. "Mobililty: Fueling a Brainier Business Intelligence".
IT Business Edge. Archived from the original on July 5, 2011.
Retrieved June 21, 2011.
16. ^ Khambadkone, Krish. "Are You Ready for Big Data?". InfoGain.
Archived from the original on March 14, 2011. Retrieved February
10, 2011.
17. ^ U.S. Department of Education Office of Planning, Evaluation and
Policy Development (2009). Implementing data-informed decision
making in schools: Teacher access, supports and use. United
States Department of Education (ERIC Document Reproduction
Service No. ED504191)
18. ^ Rankin, J. (2013, March 28). How data Systems & reports can
either fight or propagate the data analysis error epidemic, and how
educator leaders can help. Presentation conducted from
Technology Information Center for Administrative Leadership
(TICAL) School Leadership Summit.
19. ^ Alan Norton (9 July 2012). "10 reasons why I avoid social
networking services". TechRepublic. Retrieved 4 January 2016.

External links[edit]
Look up analytics in
Wiktionary, the free
dictionary.

Categories:
 Analytics
 Financial data analysis
  Formal sciences
 Business terms
 Business intelligence
 Big data
Navigation menu
 Not logged in
 Talk
 Contributions
 Create account
 Log in
 Article
 Talk
 Read
 Edit
 View history
Search

 Main page
 Contents
 Featured content
 Current events
 Random article
 Donate to Wikipedia
 Wikipedia store
Interaction
 Help
 About Wikipedia
 Community portal
 Recent changes
 Contact page
Tools
 What links here
 Related changes
 Upload file
 Special pages
 Permanent link
 Page information
 Wikidata item
 Cite this page
Print/export
 Create a book
 Download as PDF
 Printable version
Languages
 Deutsch
 Français
 Bahasa Indonesia
 Кыргызча
 日本語
 Русский
 Svenska
 Українська
 Tiếng Việt
Edit links
 This page was last edited on 13 May 2019, at 10:36 (UTC).
 Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License;
additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of
Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia
Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.

 Privacy policy

 About Wikipedia

 Disclaimers

 Contact Wikipedia

 Developers

 Cookie statement

 Mobile view