Analytic Applications
Encyclopedia
Analytic applications are a type of business application software
, used to measure and improve the performance of business operations. More specifically, analytic applications are a type of business intelligence
solution. As such they use collections of historical data about business operations to provide business users with information and tools that allow them to make improvements in business functions.
The maturity levels for business intelligence solutions are as follows:
It may extend further to predictive analytics, or predictive analysis may form part of the analytic application - depending on both the subject matter under analysis, and the nature of the analysis required.
Analytic applications are typically described as a subset of performance management. They specifically relate to the analysis of a business process (such as sales pipeline analysis, accounts payable analytics, or risk adjusted profitability analysis) in support of decision making.
To qualify as an application (rather than simply as a data warehousing tool), these tools should promote some form of automation. The maturity level of this automation is as follows:
In most cases, these three levels are discreet functions, loosely banded together as a single product, and there is little automation of the process from end to end.
Application software
Application software, also known as an application or an "app", is computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks. Examples include enterprise software, accounting software, office suites, graphics software and media players. Many application programs deal principally with...
, used to measure and improve the performance of business operations. More specifically, analytic applications are a type of business intelligence
Business intelligence
Business intelligence mainly refers to computer-based techniques used in identifying, extracting, and analyzing business data, such as sales revenue by products and/or departments, or by associated costs and incomes....
solution. As such they use collections of historical data about business operations to provide business users with information and tools that allow them to make improvements in business functions.
The maturity levels for business intelligence solutions are as follows:
- operational reporting
- analytic reporting
- business dashboards
- analytic applications
It may extend further to predictive analytics, or predictive analysis may form part of the analytic application - depending on both the subject matter under analysis, and the nature of the analysis required.
Analytic applications are typically described as a subset of performance management. They specifically relate to the analysis of a business process (such as sales pipeline analysis, accounts payable analytics, or risk adjusted profitability analysis) in support of decision making.
To qualify as an application (rather than simply as a data warehousing tool), these tools should promote some form of automation. The maturity level of this automation is as follows:
- reading data from a nominated operational system (ERP, CRM, SCM, etc) into a data warehouse optimized for analysis (data led automation),
- reports, dashboards and scorecards based on that data structure (reporting led automation),
- what-if analysis and scenario-modeling (predictive or analytic led automation).
In most cases, these three levels are discreet functions, loosely banded together as a single product, and there is little automation of the process from end to end.