Intro

• Business analytics involves a range of tools, from simple reports and graphs to sophisticated like optimization, data mining, and simulation
• In practice, companies that apply analytics often follow a trajectory similar to the spectrum of business analytics
• Predictive and prescriptive analytics are sometimes referred to as advanced analytics
• Not all companies reach the advanced analytics level, but those that embrace analytics as a competitive strategy often do
• Analytics has been applied in virtually all sectors of business and government
• Organizations like Procter & Gamble, IBM, UPS, Netflix, Amazon.com, Google, the Internal Revenue Service, and General Electric have embraced analytics to solve important problems or achieve competitive advantage
• Organizations start with basic analytics and as they realize the advantages of these analytic techniques, they often progress to more sophisticated techniques in an effort to reap the derived competitive advantage.