What is analytics?

Analytics is the art and science of discovering insightful relationships amongst data. The insights can be used to control or predict outcomes of processes or systems of any type based on what has happened in the past. When the data is simple, we can figure out causes and effects intuitively. However, in real world situations with numerous potential influences on an outcome, such relationships or correlations are less obvious or easy to determine. This is when analytics becomes useful.                                                         

What can analytics do for your business?

It is a misconception that analytics is only meant for large corporations with deep pockets. Analytics can be used at various levels and to varying degrees to create value and competitive advantage. If you have a knowledge gap with respect to a process or system, then analytics may very well be able to help. You may want to know what factors are the biggest contributors to your operating cost; or which customers are most likely to buy from you again.

Closing such gaps will enable the making of better decisions, like which overheads to prioritize on controlling or which customer to cultivate better relationships with. All this to the end of a more favorable outcome at the top line, bottom line, or both.

Even if you don’t have a specific pain point to address, yet you are collecting a data in various functions or departments, you may able to find opportunities to exploit after seeing how all that data is connected.

The analytics process

First, you have to extract and ‘clean’ your data. This can be as simple as compiling or consolidating some MS Excel files or as complex as automating access to a data warehouse with open source tools like Hadoop. ‘Cleaning’ means to ensure there are no formatting errors or accounting for missing elements. The data is run through an analytics tool or process that is chosen based upon the objective or intent of the work done. For a basic BI application, the outcome can be a set of insights such as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) shown on a dashboard. The advantage of this is that you can monitor status in real time as your measured data updates as well as track how your KPIs are changing. However, you could go further to build a model, based on your data’s history and into which you can put hypothetical conditions to observe possible KPI outcomes. Otherwise, you can extrapolate current conditions based on trends to see where your KPIs are headed. The great advantage of this, is that with newer more recent data, the model may be updated, so it never has to become obsolete.

How Simafore can help you

At Simafore, our mission is to democratize analytics. We make the tools affordable and accessible for just about any business or organization. Our analytics is a means to a business solution for you. If you don’t know where your opportunities or needs lie, then we will gladly assist you to identify a set of business priorities. From there, we will evaluate your data architecture (what data you store and retrieve; and how you do it) to define a low cost, high impact project in line with your business objectives.

Once we’ve conducted the analytics work, your solution can be provided to you as a secure cloud based dashboard or app for accessibility. For additional security, it can be hosted internally within your own network or on stand-alone computers. The app, or application, will be a purpose-built tool based on your data for the operating system or platform of your choice. You can then use the app to model or predict outcomes from the inputs you provide. Maintenance of the app will reconfigure the underlying model per the latest and greatest data to ensure it is up to date and giving you value on an ongoing basis.