The painful truth about the difference between business
analytics and business intelligence is that if you ask two people to tell you
the difference, you're going to get two conflicting sets of differences
explained to you. A lot of business analysis terms get misused, reinterpreted
and misappropriated until their original meaning is a murky memory from the
distant past.
It's not so much that there is no
difference, it's just that you need to be prepared to acknowledge
that people are going to fight you on it, and that you can't assume that you're
speaking the same language as everyone else in the room until you break it down
into plain English. Everyone has their own idea of what every business term
means, so until we get down to talking about the actual points of data and the
strategies being used, there's going to be a lot of confusion.
In other words, a lot of the difference between business
analytics and business intelligence comes down to semantics, and who showed up
for what meeting. Go to two different offices and you'll find that they've both
developed their own vernacular. Some will use "analytics" and
"intelligence" almost interchangeably while others have a strict
definition for each.
A Look at the Data and Trends
You
need only take a look at Google Trends to see how these terms are used: since
2004, the term "business analytics" has been slowly, gradually
decreasing, while the term "business intelligence" took a sharp
increase in 2009 and has been gradually increasing since, following a spike
here and there over the years.
In
other words, one phrase seems to be replacing the other.
A
common understanding is that business intelligence is
the whole field of business analysis and IT, while business analytics is just
the math part itself, not the strategizing, not the planning and marketing,
just the math. Of course, another common understanding has it the other way
around.
Most
frequently, the difference in semantics seems to come down to one person or the
other insisting that what they do is more dynamic and forward-thinking than the
IT-only, rear-view perspective offered by the other guys. The truth is that by
far the easiest way to communicate with your staff and your partners and your
clients is to just call it "reporting." If you know that a prospect
loves calling it "business intelligence," go ahead and call it
business intelligence when he's in the room, otherwise, you might as well
acknowledge that the terms are used interchangeably in the modern meeting room.
Some people cling to one term or another, but at the end of the day we're all
pretty much talking about the same thing.
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