What is big data analytics?

Big data analytics refers to the systematic processing and analysis of large amounts of data and
complex data sets, known as big data, to extract valuable insights.

Big data analytics allows for the uncovering of trends, patterns and correlations in large
amounts of raw data to help analysts make data-informed decisions. This process allows
organizations to leverage the exponentially growing data generated from diverse sources,
including internet-of-things (IoT) sensors, social media, financial transactions and smart
devices to derive actionable intelligence through advanced analytic techniques.

In the early 2000s, advances in software and hardware capabilities made it

possible for organizations to collect and handle large amounts of unstructured data.
With this explosion of useful data, open-source communities developed big data
frameworks to store and process this data. These frameworks are used for
distributed storage and processing of large data sets across a network of
computers. Along with additional tools and libraries, big data frameworks can be
used for:

• Predictive modelling by incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) and statistical

algorithms
• Statistical analysis for in-depth data exploration and to uncover hidden patterns
• What-if analysis to simulate different scenarios and explore potential outcomes
• Processing diverse data sets, including structured, semi-structured and unstructured
data from various sources.
The five V's of big data analytics
The following dimensions highlight the core challenges and opportunities inherent in big data
analytics.

Volume :The sheer volume of data generated today, from social media feeds, IoT devices,
transaction records and more, presents a significant challenge. Traditional data storage and
processing solutions are often inadequate to handle this scale efficiently. Big data technologies
and cloud-based storage solutions enable organizations to store and manage these vast data sets
cost-effectively, protecting valuable data from being discarded due to storage limitations.

Velocity : Data is being produced at unprecedented speeds, from real-time social media
updates to high-frequency stock trading records. The velocity at which data flows into
organizations requires robust processing capabilities to capture, process and deliver accurate
analysis in near real-time. Stream processing frameworks and in-memory data processing are
designed to handle these rapid data streams and balance supply with demand.

Variety : Today's data comes in many formats, from structured to numeric data in traditional
databases to unstructured text, video and images from diverse sources like social media and
video surveillance. This variety demans flexible data management systems to handle and

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integrate disparate data types for comprehensive analysis. NoSQL databases, data
lakes and schema-on-read technologies provide the necessary flexibility to accommodate the
diverse nature of big data.

Veracity: Data reliability and accuracy are critical, as decisions based on inaccurate or
incomplete data can lead to negative outcomes. Veracity refers to the data's trustworthiness,
encompassing data quality, noise and anomaly detection issues. Techniques and tools for data
cleaning, validation and verification are integral to ensuring the integrity of big data, enabling
organizations to make better decisions based on reliable information.

Value : Big data analytics aims to extract actionable insights that offer tangible value. This
involves turning vast data sets into meaningful information that can inform strategic decisions,
uncover new opportunities and drive innovation. Advanced analytics, machine learning and AI
are key to unlocking the value contained within big data, transforming raw data into strategic
assets.

Big Data Analytics in marketing involves using various tools and techniques to analyze vast
amounts of data for improved decision-making and marketing strategies. This framework
includes collecting data from diverse sources, storing it efficiently, processing it quickly,
analyzing it for insights, and visualizing the results. In marketing, it's used for techniques like
predictive analytics, sentiment analysis, customer segmentation, and churn analysis.

1. Data Collection: Gathering data from various sources, including internal databases, external
databases, social media, IoT devices, and more. This involves both structured and unstructured
data.

2. Data Storage: Utilizing technologies like Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) and
NoSQL databases to manage large datasets. Ensuring efficient storage and retrieval of big data.

3. Data Processing: Employing technologies like Apache Spark and Map Reduce for
distributed processing, enabling parallel computation. This helps speed up analysis of large
datasets.

4. Data Analysis: Using advanced analytics techniques like machine learning, statistical
analysis, and predictive modelling. This allows for the discovery of patterns and trends within
the data.

Marketing Strategy • Analytical marketing strategies help to measure the

effectiveness of marketing tools and the development of any brand. An advertising campaign
and marketing initiatives require a huge amount of investment. So how to understand the
budget? Which channels are most effective? How much profit is to be obtained? Marketing

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analytics strategies provide the answers to all these questions. 1.1 Significance of Marketing
Analytics Strategies • Marketing analytical strategies are critical in addressing and resolving
marketing issues. The prime motive behind implementing these strategies is to evaluate the
effective marketing programs in terms of return on investments in a business. • The outcomes
of adopting these strategies: • Comparisons with competitors • Recommendations for effective
allocation of budget and resources • Data processing analysis • Collection of data through all
the channels of communication and units in the company • Creating a structured template for
reporting the purpose of effective analysis of units • Thus the marketing analysis strategies help
in the given aspects: • Having a holistic view of business • Improving the management of the
company and finance • Forecasting and planning marketing initiatives • Increasing the
effectiveness of existing marketing programs through the allocation of resources • Increase the
profitability and return on investments • Thus you should set a proper marketing analytics
framework within the organization to have the right processes along with the right technology
platforms to capture data-driven strategy and deliver consistent information about this.

Analytics Marketing Strategies : Marketing analytics is the

practice of combining and analyzing databases, identifying patterns and then coming up with
actionable insights that improve the return on investments of marketing efforts. Modern
marketing analytics provides a holistic picture of the business and lets you plan and optimize
the whole process based on revenue attribution. Besides this you should follow a new
marketing strategy to survive long term with competition from customer-focused services and
products. Today almost all businesses are following self-service, AI-powered analytics to
analyze and visualize the data and design the dashboards. Here are some prime analytics
marketing strategies as described below:

1. Exploring The Top Marketing Analytics Resources : You need to explore top marketing
analytics resources, some of these are as follows: • Hear From Peers • Get the Buyers Guide •
Know the Trends These all are prime tools that can be used by you to explore marketing
techniques. You should get the buyer’s guide, this will enable you to meet the expectations and
requirements of customers. Besides this, you should also follow the latest marketing trends to
navigate today’s fast-paced world.

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2. Website Marketing Analysis As far as digital marketing tools are considered, the website
is the best tool for it. Here you should understand the top pages of the websites to generate a
high amount of conversion and traffic. Besides this, you should also identify the pages that are
receiving high traffic but not conversions. Heatmaps can help you in analyzing the audience
interaction with each element on your page. This will enable you to identify pages that are
getting a high bounce, identify the audience, their demographics, devices they are using to
access your content and the ranking of keywords on your web pages

3. Social Media Analytics The social media platform has become the most accessible and
diverse tool from the perspective of marketing. This marketing strategy can help you to
understand the sentiments of people and how they are responding and engaging with you. This
will enable you to take decisive action and approach the right audience of the target market. To
implement a successful analytics marketing strategy you would have to reach more people and
engage with the followers to understand the improvements they are looking for.

4. Campaign Analytics This strategy helps you in tracking your campaign, like how these are
performing, getting the leads or not. So what you can do is understand the lead conversion rates
from multiple channels and sources. After doing this, you have to identify the opportunities by
product category and the source of lead. With this, you need to identify the content and platform
that is majorly resonating with your audience. This will enable you to optimize the messaging
and target of your content strategy.

5. Link Analytics • Link is the most crucial aspect of searching algorithms. By taking the
assistance of link analytics you can view the link of the site, the domain, and page authority of
referring domains, like the total number of inbound links, top pages by link, anchor text and
many more. • Thus having transparency is the prime motive of marketing managers. For this,
they have to set a common agreement on different KPIs. in today’s competitive age it is
essential to opt for effective marketing strategies by learning the art of positioning your brand,
as it can help to win over the competitors. In addition to this, another important element of a
reliable marketing analytics framework is to build an effective analytics dashboard. This
dashboard should represent KPIs by unifying data strategies from different marketing data
sources.

[Link] Research– With keyword research, you can obtain very detailed insights into how
your business is appealing to your potential customers and if there are areas that you can
optimise. View how competitive your target keywords are, the average monthly search volume
for that particular keyword, the estimated CPC’s if you decide to bid on those keywords, the
number of clicks that you are getting for that keyword and the click through rates. Thus the
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marketing analytics strategies are necessary for any business to obtain timely , reliable,
complete and operative information.

Tools : It is the practice of studying the data of Marketing efforts of various channels and
campaigns and form models in order to report the metrics like ROI, Channel Performance, etc.
to identify parameters for improvement. Marketers will be able to provide answers to the
analytics questions that are most important to their stakeholders by monitoring and reporting
on business performance results, diagnostic metrics, and leading indicator metrics • The
intelligence derived from marketing analytics allows you to spend each dollar as effectively as
possible. • However, despite the emergence of several platforms and technologies that can
streamline the marketing analytics workflows, it remains a challenge for companies to build
concrete, actionable data analytics solutions for marketing efforts. According to a survey of
senior marketing executives published in the Harvard Business Review, “more than 80% of
respondents were dissatisfied with their ability to measure marketing ROI.” • To set up a
practical marketing analytics framework within your organisation, you must have the right
processes along with investing in the right technology platforms to capture data-driven strategy
and deliver unified and consistent information on your measurement metrics.

Financial analytics is the creation of ad hoc analysis to answer

specific business questions and forecast possible future financial scenarios.
The goal of financial analytics is to shape business strategy through reliable,
factual insight rather than intuition. By offering detailed views of companies'
financial data, financial analytics provides the tools for firms to gain deep
knowledge of key trends and take action to improve their performance.

The benefits of financial analytics

➢ As a subset of business intelligence and enterprise performance management,
financial analytics affects all parts of a business and is crucial in helping
companies predict and plan for the future.
➢ Financial analytics involves using massive amounts of financial and other
relevant data to identify patterns to make predictions, such as what a customer
might buy or how long an employee's tenure might be. With a wealth of data
from various departments throughout their organizations, corporate financial
teams are increasingly using this data to help company leaders make informed
decisions and boost the company's value.
➢ By helping businesses understand their top- and bottom-line performance
(along with other indicators, including financial and macroeconomic data),
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 measure and manage their assets, and forecast variations within the
organizations and industries in which they compete, financial analytics offers
insight into organizations' financial status and improves the profitability, cash
flow and value of the business. Financial analytics also helps companies
improve income statements and business processes.

Financial analytics and the CFO's role

Business transformation and advances in technology -- from big data to customer
analytics software to data warehouses -- have contributed to companies' move to use
financial analytics. The changing role of the corporate finance department has also
influenced this move.

Chief financial officers traditionally relied on historical data and trends to forecast
future performance. However, they are changing their focus as they increasingly tap
into technologies, such as advanced data analytics, machine learning and
automation. As finance departments have begun adopting financial analytics to
home in on what's happening in the business and what that's likely to mean going
forward, their roles have changed from information provider to problem solver.
Having more timely access to information helps companies make quicker, better
informed business decisions.

Many experts consider predictive analytics an essential element in the digital

transformation of finance. A key part of this is the ability to examine historical and
new data to assess what's relevant to a specific company -- be it macroeconomic
data, industry trends or petroleum prices -- to improve forecasting and decision-
making.

The importance of financial analytics

Financial analytics can help companies determine the risks they face, how to
enhance and extend the business processes that make them run more effectively, and
whether organizations' investments are focused on the right areas.

Advanced analytics and its ability to use big data will enable organizations to rethink
their strategies for solving problems and supporting business decisions. Analytics
can also help companies examine the profitability of products across various sales
channels and customers, which market segments will add more profit to the business
and what could have an impact on the business in the future.

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Continuous visibility into financial and operational performance will help with more
than just decision-making; it will also increase visibility regarding the processes that
support those decisions. So, rather than getting data on employee turnover rates and
the related costs after the fact, financial analysts and HR leaders will be able to see
what problems employees are having and intervene to improve performance and
prevent costly turnover. Another plus is the potential for improved electronic linkage
of records across the supply chain so that data will only need to be entered once.

Types of financial analysis

Financial analysis refers to the process of evaluating businesses, projects, budgets
and other finance-related entities to determine the stability, solvency, liquidity or
profitability of an organization. In addition to focusing on income statements,
balance sheets and cash flow statements, financial analysis is employed for
evaluating economic trends, setting financial policy, formulating long-term business
plans and pinpointing projects or companies for investment.

Types of financial analysis include the following:

• Horizontal analysis refers to the side-by-side comparison of an organization's

financial performance for consecutive reporting periods. The aim is to determine
major shifts in the data. Later, this information could be applied to a more
detailed analysis of financial results.

• Vertical analysis pertains to the proportional analysis of a financial statement.

Each line item on a financial statement is listed as a percentage of another item -
- for example, every line item on an income statement is provided as a percentage
of gross sales, while every line item on a balance sheet is given as a percentage
of total assets.

• Short-term analysis provides a detailed review of working capital, involving

the calculation of turnover rates for accounts receivable, inventory and accounts
payable. Any differences from the long-term average turnover rate should be
studied further because working capital is a significant user of cash.

• Multi-company comparison entails tallying and comparing major financial

ratios of two organizations, usually in the same industry sector. The aim is to
determine the companies' relative financial strengths and weaknesses.

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• Industry comparison contrasts the results of a specific business and the average
results of an entire industry. The purpose is to determine any unusual results in
comparison to the industry average.
Key types of financial analytics
Examining financial and other relevant information, financial analytics offers
various views of companies' past, present and future performance. The following are
key types of analytics that can help companies of different sizes:

• Predictive sales analytics might include the use of correlation analysis or past
trends to forecast corporate sales.

• Client profitability analytics helps differentiate between clients who make

money for a company and those who don't.

• Product profitability analytics entails assessing each product individually,

rather than establishing profitability overall at a company.

• Cash-flow analytics employs real-time indicators, including the working capital

ratio and cash conversion cycle, and might include tools such as regression
analysis to predict cash flow.

• Value-driven analytics assesses a business' value drivers, or the key "levers" the
organization needs to pull to achieve its goals.

• Shareholder value analytics, which is used to tally the value of a company by

examining the returns it provides to shareholders, is used concurrently with profit
and revenue analytics.
Financial analytics software programs
software can help reduce the complexity. Financial analysis software can speed up
the creation of reports and present the data in an executive dashboard, a graphical
presentation that is easier to read and interpret than a series of spreadsheets with
pivot tables.

Popular financial analysis software programs include the following:

• Oracle Financial Analytics is the modular component of Oracle's integrated

family of business intelligence software applications. It enables insight into the
general ledger and provides visibility into performance against budget and the

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 way staffing costs and employee or supplier performance affects revenue and
customer satisfaction.

• SAP S/4HANA Finance helps organizations define financial goals, develop

business plans and monitor costs and revenue during execution.

• SAS Business Analytics provides an integrated environment for data mining,

text mining, simulation and predictive modeling -- a mathematical model that
predicts future outcomes -- as well as descriptive modeling, a mathematical
model that describes historical events and the relationships that created them.

• IBM Cognos Finance provides out-of-the box data analysis capabilities for
sales, supply chain procurement and workforce management functions.

• NetSuite provides financial dashboards, reporting and analytic functions that

allow personal key performance indicators to be monitored in real time.

• MATLAB allows developers to interface with programs developed in different

languages, which makes it possible to harness the unique strengths of each
language for various purposes.

What is supply chain analytics ?

Supply chain analytics is the analysis of information that companies
derive from a number of supply chain-related applications, including
supply chain execution systems for inventory procurement, inventory
control, order processing, storage management and execution, and
freight management. Each step in the network of the supply chain
affects the one after it, and ultimately, any problem at any step can
impact the company's capacity to meet its commitments to customers.

Supply chains management include many different operations,

workers, and organizations, which generates an overwhelming amount
of information. That's where supply chain analytics come into play: by
turning this massive amount of data into understandable dashboards,
reports and visualizations that drive key decisions and lead to better
outcomes. Easy access to these analytics has become crucial in an
increasingly competitive environment.

What are the 4 types of supply chain Analytics?

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Descriptive Analysis
Descriptive analytics examine what has happened in history to identify
patterns in data. These insights can come from internal supply chain
execution software as well as from external systems that provide
visibility into suppliers, distributors, different sales channels and
customers.

Data driven Analytics can compare the same type of data in real time
over different time frames to pinpoint patterns and generate hypotheses
about the potential causes of changes.

An electronical device company can look at a descriptive analytics

dashboard on a daily basis and discover that half of its deliveries to
distributors are late. The company's executives can then dig deeper
into this problem and learn that trucks have slowed down due to a
torrential rain in the district around this group of distributors.

Predictive analytics
As the name suggests, predictive analytics takes the guesswork out
of predicting what might happen and the business impact of various
scenarios, from potential supply chain disturbances to other outputs. By
forcing executives to consider these possible scenarios before they
happen, they are enabled to act proactively rather than reactively. It
gives them time to develop a strategy for dealing with an expected
increase or decrease in demand, for example, and they can respond
correspondingly.

Considering the same electronical device company, it may examine the

latest economic projections from the Federal Reserve and anticipate a
10 to 20 percent decline in sales in the next quarter. In light of this, he
orders fewer raw materials from his providers and lowers the working
hours of part-time staff for the following 30 days. It could therefore be a
real competitive advantage if competitors do not have the same metrics
and perspectives.

Prescriptive Analysis
Prescriptive analysis combines the results of descriptive and predictive
analysis to recommend actions a company should take now to
accomplish its goals. Such analysis could help companies fix
challenges and avoid major supply chain disruptions, potentially by
evaluating both its own information and its partners' information. Since
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prescriptive analytics are more complex, they require more powerful
software that can quickly process and interpret massive amounts of
data.

Prescriptive analytics can tell our electronical device company that one
of its key suppliers in Western Europe is likely to go out of business in
the next year. A consistent history of back orders, reduced capacity,
and declining economic conditions in the region are all indicators of this
risk.

In response, the manager could request a meeting with the supplier's

management to determine if they are in financial trouble and how it
could help. If no clear solution is found, the company can begin to look
for other suppliers to replace this one before it's too late.

Key difference between Supply Chain Analytics and

Business Analytics
Business analysis centers on providing new perspectives and insights
into business behavior based on large amounts of data and statistical
analysis methods. On the other hand, Supply chain Analytics is
traditionally focused on using a consistent set of metrics to measure
historical performance and drive business planning, which is similarly
driven by data and statistical methods.

Risk Management : There are risks involved in industries when they

change any of their business strategies or create a new product for
whether it will be a success or failure. Earlier, there was no platform or
tool to get some insight into it. Suppliers now have the choice to share
their products data with their partners and customers which creates a
complete transparency and a highly effective communication channel
for both parties. This way the manufacturer can see exactly whether the
supplier is delayed with production or just in time, to then adjust all the
related processes and avoid waiting times. Quality data can also be
shared in the same way; manufacturers can have all the production and
product related quality metrics from their suppliers before even
receiving the parts. By having greater visibility into supplier quality
levels and other performance metrics, the manufacturer can have a
clear visibility on their supplier portfolio and have insightful data in their
hands when it comes to supplier contract negotiations

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