Business analytics: new concepts and trends

Abstract

Research question: In the last decade, the concept of Business analytics (BA) has gone through revolutionary changes. It has gained a lot in popularity and attracted immense interest both in academic and commercial communities. Accepting this reality, the main research topic of the paper is to investigate and present the global tendencies regarding the development of business analytics concept. Motivation: We have been motivated by huge changes in ICT environment and have studied how they reflect on the domain of Business analytics. Idea: The main idea was to elaborate and make distinction between crucial characteristics of the classical and new emerging concepts of Business analytics. In addition to technical aspects, the broader business context of all presented concepts and phenomena are discussed. Findings: Dealing with essential elements of the BA concept, this paper points out that the history of Business analytics has been strongly influenced by the changes and innovations in the sphere of information communications technologies (ICT). In particular, the paper addresses two tendencies connected to the status of Business analytics in the digital economy. The first tendency concerns the emergence of Big Data phenomenon and its implications on both business and public environment. The other tendency concerns the increasing business request and need for data and analytics democratization. The paper concludes that specifically two forms of analytics – embedded analytics and self-service analytics – appeared as strong enablers of the process of data and analytics democratization. Contribution: Although a considerable part of the paper tackled the issue of the ICT trends and its impact on the business analytics, one specific part of the paper presents the broader business implications of data and analytics deployment. Our opinion is that this part provides a significant contribution to the BA topic. We demonstrate that there is strong evidence that one of the most important benefits that BA brings to the company is competitive advantage. Also, it is emphasized that the other big issue in business domain concerns the forms of BA deployment in the organization. We strongly support the opinion that successful BA deployment requires a clear data and analytics strategy, with elements of proposed ICT innovations and BA solutions.